Most of the garage where feral cats lived in Greene was destroyed in a fire last week. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

GREENE – Tommy’s Feral Feline Friends, a nonprofit devoted to the care of wild cats, lost a home it called Paradise last week when a fire destroyed a Lane Road garage that has long provided shelter for some feral felines.

Flames engulf a garage Tuesday at 284 Lane Road in Greene. Fire Chief John Soucy said no one was injured in the blaze, which was caused by a wood stove. The blaze began around 3 p.m. and took firefighters almost an hour to extinguish. John Soucy photo

The cause was a wood stove, Fire Chief John Soucy said.

Rose Murphy, a co-founder of the group that began decades ago, said in a Facebook post that she felt sick and helpless when she heard the structure was ablaze.

When she later learned each of the cats there had come through unscathed, she “shouted and ran around with so much joy and happiness in my heart.”

That they all came through it was an “incredible miracle of joy,” Murphy said. She did not say how many cats had been there.

But the loss of the garage is a blow to the group founded 32 years ago to “try to save the lives of these forgotten feral cats” that are often born in the wild, abandoned or abused. It offers them shelter, food and medical care, including rabies shots, spaying and neutering.

It comes on the heels of the December death of another co-founder, Norm Blais, who had long played a key role in the charity along with Murphy.

Murphy, who could not be reached Thursday, posted on the Tommy’s Friends Facebook page that a section of the lost garage they called Paradise was a place “you never want to leave.”

“On a cold winter’s night, the wood stove simmering,” she said, “all the babies” would nestle in their favorite hangouts inside while she relaxed in a recliner with a hot drink and a delicious treat — “paradise for the soul,” Murphy noted.

The place offered “every amenity wrapped in joy, laughter, love, kindness, compassion and peace,” she said.

“This is where so many babies have been rescued, fostered and rehabilitated,” Murphy said. “So many wonderful memories.”

The demise of the 284 Lane Road garage where, Murphy said, “many ferals resided” means that the cats who stayed there have “lost their home.”

“Although they still reside there, how sad for them to lose their sanctuary,” she said.

The group, registered with the state since 2003, has been looking for a building “the feral cats can call their own.”

The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society cites Tommy’s Friends as one of four groups in the area that it says are working to help unowned cats. The others are Community Cat Advocates, Friends of Feral Felines and the Cat Coalition of Western Maine.