About Us
The Ark Cat Sanctuary is celebrating our 20th year of helping cats in Northern Arizona!
Our mission
Our mission is saving cats and kittens that desperately need help due to homelessness, injury, and/or illness. The Ark Cat Sanctuary is located in Parks Arizona but we take in cats and kittens from all over Arizona (both owner surrenders and found strays) and from other Arizona rescues and shelters in dire need of assistance (including Yavapai, Navajo, Coconino, Mojave and Maricopa County) as space allows. We regularly accept cats and kittens from the Navajo Nation where there are few shelters and limited veterinary access.
In 2025 the Ark took in 700 cats and kittens without any government funding relying entirely on grants, adoption fees and donations.
Cats historically have had much harder time getting rescued/finding placement because they are not as visible to the public as dogs - we help provide cats a pathway to rescue from many underserved communities in Arizona and also help get wanted cats spayed/neutered/vaccinated/microchipped and back to their loving homes when requested. We are the only shelter in Northern Arizona that solely accepts cats and on any given day the Ark Cat Sanctuary has more cats in our care than both local contracted shelter locations in Flagstaff combined.
History
As a child Susan Marue first noticed cats around her neighborhood and started buying catnip with her allowance to bring to them starting her life-long love of cats. When she was 8 years old a kitten followed her home and her parents agreed to let her keep him. As she grew up she became the person that her friends and neighbors went to when they needed help with cats.
Sue relocated to Parks, Arizona in 2005 with her own cats and during the drive she picked up a stray cat in distress near a gas station. Seeing the need in the community Sue founded the Ark Cat Sanctuary in 2006 to help cats with nowhere else to go and by 2008 the Ark was registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In 2010 she took in 40 cats and that number steadily increased each year as the operation grew until 2014 when the Ark took in over 500. In 2012 the Ark Cat Sanctuary began partnering with PetSmart to do adoptions out of the Flagstaff PetSmart store and does most of our adoptions there. Sue regularly works 80 hour weeks caring for the cats at the Sanctuary and doesn't take a salary. She believes the Ark's biggest accomplishment to date has been working with the Coconino Humane Association to help them get to no kill status in 2016 when they were the open admission City and County animal shelter.
Our Operation
The Ark facility is located on 10 acres near Parks, AZ. Our ED lives at the Sanctuary & provides 24-hour care for medical intakes, small kittens, and resident cats. We have an Isolation Room for sick/injured cats needing additional care, a Mom & Kitten Building with private dens for pregnant/nursing moms & kittens, an FeLV room, & multiple indoor/outdoor areas for feral & longer term feline residents. Our long term residents live in one of twelve indoor/outdoor coyote-proof enclosures where they have 24 hour access to cozy beds and indoor protection from inclement weather, food & water, litter boxes, enrichment (cat trees/scratching posts/etc), fresh air and sunshine, and their cat roomates.
The Ark employs ~10 paid contractors who provide routine daily care for the Sanctuary cats and who staff our adoption center at the Flagstaff PetSmart store. We rely on volunteers for transporting cats to vet appointments & spay/neuter trips, foster care of kittens, social media, and for projects at the facility.
Our main rescue partners are Tuba City Humane Society, PetSmart Charities/PetSmart Flagstaff, Navajo National Animal Control, and Pet Angels in Kingman.
We take at-risk cats & kittens from the public and rescues in Northern Arizona, many of which have been turned away by municipal shelters. We then provide the care they need to become healthy and adoptable, and adopt them into loving homes. Cats with behavioral/health issues who are not immediately adoptable have a home at the Sanctuary for as long as needed. Sometimes cats are brought in as "feral" but we find that with a little time & love that they were just scared strays and are in fact very sweet, adoptable cats. Sometimes even feral cats decide to become housecats after a few years in our care and go up for adoption.
The Ark is also unique locally as we do not charge surrender fees so people dealing with financial hardship have somewhere to turn when they can't care for their cats. While $25-$50 may not seem excessive as a surrender fee for a single owned kitten/cat it can quickly put help out of reach financially for people living paycheck to paycheck who suddenly find themselves with a couple of adult cats and an unexpected litter of
kittens. Just five kittens and a mom would cost $175 just to surrender. By not charging a surrender fee we also avoid penalizing people for trying to help cats they don't own (some shelters charge a surrender fee if someone has been feeding a stray for just a couple of days).
