Beverly and Keith Burnham have spent nearly a decade and a half running a cat rescue out of their Jessup home, converting front rooms into intake and veterinary exam space, tiling floors and walls for easier cleanup, and turning their garage into an adoption room. As of August 17, that operation, Sunshine's Friends Cat & Dog Rescue, is finally a licensed animal rescue facility in the eyes of Anne Arundel County.
The couple has owned the home for 28 years and lives in its basement apartment, according to The Baltimore Banner. Two employees work out of second-floor bedrooms, and the rescue can shelter as many as 50 cats at a time, including sanctuary cats that remain on the property for good. The nonprofit was established in 2014 and primarily serves northern Anne Arundel County and eastern Howard County, rehabilitating feral cats, spaying and neutering them, and finding forever homes through adoptions or barn placements for cats that prefer life outdoors.
A New County Law Made It Legal
The licensing became possible only after the Anne Arundel County Council passed a law in 2025 allowing animal rescues as conditional uses in select zoning districts, including residential, industrial park, and rural agricultural areas. Anne Arundel County Animal Services now licenses and oversees Sunshine's Friends under that framework, which the county's Department of Animal Services felt was needed after concluding the area lacked adequate rescue services, the Banner reported.
Claudia Roll, who leads the county's Animal Care and Control division, said Beverly Burnham called her office as soon as the legislation passed to ask about licensing Sunshine's. Roll took over the department in January 2025, bringing 30 years of animal welfare experience, according to a Buzzsprout interview, and has pushed to expand collaboration between the municipal shelter system and private rescues. That partnership matters in a county where Maryland Department of Agriculture shelter statistics recorded 1,529 live cat intakes in 2021 alone, along with 205 owner-requested euthanasias and 112 general cat euthanasias — the kind of overcrowding pressure that keeps demand high for rescue capacity outside the county shelter.
Renovating a Family Home Into a Working Shelter
Turning a private residence into something resembling a clinic took years of physical work. The Burnhams reconfigured walls and rooms to add adoption space, installed tile flooring throughout the house and on part of the walls, and converted front rooms into intake and veterinary exam rooms, the Banner's reporting shows. Beverly Burnham told the outlet the rescue tries to stay sensitive to operating inside a residential neighborhood, an awareness that likely shaped the county's licensing terms.
Those terms are specific. The underlying legislation, Bill No. 68-25, caps residential rescues at 30 cats at any one time, bars keeping cats outdoors, and requires animal-housing structures to sit at least 100 feet from neighboring residential property lines, per Anne Arundel County's legislative fiscal summary. The bill took effect December 12, 2025, and any rescue already operating before that date, as Sunshine's Friends was, had six months to formally apply for a county license under Section 12-4-709 of the county code.
The Money Behind the Mission
Running the rescue is not cheap. Sunshine's Friends spends an estimated $25,000 per month, funded by donors, Maryland Department of Agriculture grants, and donations, the Banner reported. Adoption fees run up to $150. That state grant pipeline is part of a broader program: the Maryland Department of Agriculture awarded $1,001,665 in December 2025 through its FY26 Spay and Neuter Grants Program, spread across 38 projects statewide to cover 14,444 surgeries in 2026. Sunshine's Friends has drawn on that kind of funding before, having completed a state-backed project between October 2017 and April 2018 that trapped, neutered, and vaccinated 130 community cats across four colonies in Jessup near industrial warehouses and mobile home parks.
The rescue's community-facing work now dwarfs what its physical shelter alone can hold. Beyond the cats housed on-site, Sunshine's Friends facilitates roughly 650 spay and neuter surgeries each quarter for low-income pet owners and feral colonies, while taking in and rehoming around 160 animals per quarter, according to a WeRescue profile of the organization. The group also helps dogs through foster programs, even though its licensed facility centers on cats.
Partnering to Prevent Financial Euthanasia
Sunshine's Friends hopes to formally partner with H.E.A.R.T. Inc., an Annapolis-based mobile veterinary nonprofit, so it can offer on-site spay and neuter services. H.E.A.R.T. — short for Helping Every Animal Receive Treatment — provides mobile veterinary care aimed at reducing what its board president, Robin Catlett, calls financial euthanasia. Catlett said the problem often affects people who love their pets but simply cannot afford necessary care, a description that lines up with the mission driving both organizations' outreach work.
Keith Burnham said the rescue would rather relocate feral cats to safer settings than return them to wherever they were originally trapped, reflecting the group's broader philosophy of finding barn placements or adoptive homes rather than releasing cats back into risky environments. Volunteers Kristin Grogan and John Lee have experienced that mission firsthand: Grogan adopted two kittens from Sunshine's last month, naming them Edgrr and Lenoir.
Planning for What Comes Next
With the license secured, the Burnhams are already thinking beyond their own involvement. They want Sunshine's Friends to continue operating after they are gone and plan to eventually turn their home over to a trust dedicated to the rescue, ensuring the property keeps functioning as a shelter regardless of who is living in the basement apartment. For now, the rescue says it still needs more volunteers, foster homes and funding to keep pace with demand.
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