Stars Who Love Rescue Cats!

See all the celebrities – Nina Dobrev! Lea Michele! Carrie Ann Inaba! – who’ve opened their home and hearts to shelter cats
By Amy Jamieson
June 15, 2012 08:00 PM

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NINA DOBREV

Credit: Courtesy Nina Dobrev

A cat named Jama-Lynx holds the key to Dobrev’s heart, but that doesn’t stop the Vampire Diaries star from cuddling other friends. She recently tried to find homes for two kittens that crossed her path in Bulgaria.

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LEA MICHELE

Credit: Courtesy Lea Michele. Inset: Gregorio T. Binuya/Everett

Meet Glee’s resident (rescue) cat lady! (mom to a feline named Sheila) helped costar Heather Morris find her own rescue kitty.

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CARRIE ANN INABA

Credit: Courtesy Weintraub Photography

The Dancing with the Stars judge has six cats: Squeaker, Taz, Zeus, Mia, Bubble and Miley. Because she works closely with a network of animal rescuers, she’s fostered many, many more. “I go to bed crying sometimes, because you can’t save them all,” she told PEOPLE. “We try, and I feel good about that.”

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CHRIS COLFER

Credit: Courtesy Chris Colfer. Inset: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Age is just a number! The Glee star adopted an 8-year-old (and slightly overweight!) cat named Brian from California’s West Valley Animal Shelter in April. “It was heartbreaking to see so many sweet animals needing homes,” he wrote on Twitter. “Please think about rescuing!”

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WHOOPI GOLDBERG

Credit: Lou Rocco/ABC/Getty

When a kitten that survived being thrown from a moving car on New York’s Verrazano Bridge visited the show in 2011, he captured The View host’s heart. Vinny later moved in with Goldberg and her other cat, Oliver.

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IAN SOMERHALDER

Credit: Courtesy Ian Somerhalder

The Vampire Diaries star’s litter of adopted cats is an eclectic bunch. “One is a feral cat from Hawaii who grew up in the jungle, another one is a rescue from a dungeon in New York and the other one’s from Canada,” he told PEOPLE.

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KATE WALSH

Credit: Courtesy Purina

The Private Practice two dogs and two rescue cats, Pablo and Billy, are more than just pets. “I love them all equally but in different ways, like my children … err, I mean cats,” she Tweeted.

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DENISE RICHARDS

Credit: Courtesy Denise Richards(3); Curtis Hilbun/AFF-USA

Countless cats and dogs have been taken in by the , like gray-striped Freddy, who was so young he needed to be bottle-fed.

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JENNA FISCHER

Credit: Courtesy Jenna Fischer

The Office star’s love of cats made her the purr-fect foster mom for a couple of kittens found on set in 2009.

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JESSE EISENBERG

The actor’s door is always open to homeless cats. “I’m a foster parent for cats, and the more movies I do, the more guilty I feel – and the more cats I feel the need to get to alleviate the guilt from doing the movies,” Eisenberg told Conan O’Brien in 2010.

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TERI POLO

Credit: Courtesy Teri Polo. Inset: Michael Buckner/Getty

When three rescue cats wound up on the set of her show Man Up, Polo couldn’t say no. After learning that their mom was killed by a coyote, she brought home the cats she named Lily, Linus and Thomas.

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ANGUS T. JONES

Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty

The Two and a Half Men star fell for “super-playful” kitten Mascot when the little guy was just 4 weeks old. “[A friend] found this cat somewhere and it had five kittens and it was in a box,” he told PEOPLE.

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By Amy Jamieson