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Inside the sprawling Cotton Mill antique store, a formerly homeless cat named Eve enjoys a tongue bath on top of a checkerboard quilt — an unofficial greeter with a scratched-up ear.
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“She used to be called Evil Mama,” said Raylene Jessup, the store’s owner. “She was mean as all get-out.”
A few steps further, a tabby cat named Mr. Hissy sprawls out under a glass-bottom table lamp — a contented refugee plucked from the parking lot of an IGA.
“For the first three months, he bit me every day,” Jessup said. “I had to put on oven gloves.“
In all, Jessup keeps 30 felines wandering inside her 100-year-old cotton mill in Selma, a 19th-century brick relic repurposed as a flea market for random treasures and an adoption center for Johnston County’s vagabond cats.
In 20 years there, she counts 4,411 orphaned cats placed in new homes — most of them arriving scruffy, sometimes diseased, occasionally with umbilical cords still attached, but leaving vaccinated, spayed, neutered and rehabilitated.
Among her success stories: a cat originally named Feral, now known as Mr. Lovebug.
“I guess I’m just a social worker,” said Jessup, 68. “I could have retired five years ago.”
Jessup actually did work as a social worker in Wake County, which likely informs her attraction to society’s cast-offs.
When she bought the mill on Anderson Street, people called her insane, struck by a midlife crisis.
In its day, the Selma Cotton Mill boasted eight sets of railroad tracks that backed right up to the building, loading cotton picked directly from the fields. During World War II, workers made parachutes inside.
In its second life, the mill hosted a furniture store that manufactured wrap-around desks for public schools, then a soap factory that made cleansers for washing transfer trucks. But the owner, Jessup said, cheated on his wife and lost the building in divorce.
Meanwhile, the roof sagged, and the skylight needed replacing.
“It had a killer history,” Jessup said, “but it was falling apart.”
When Jessup bought the mill — with the caveat it could never be sold back to the soap-maker — no bank would lend her the money. But a well-known CEO, who shall remain nameless here, fronted the money himself, impressed with her notion to conserve the land and save a crumbling building.
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And once she sold her house in Raleigh and took up permanent residence, she noticed that Selma had a glaring social problem.
“There’s cats everywhere,” she said. “Literally everywhere. Every parking lot. I couldn’t go anywhere and not see a cat.”
Add to this Johnston County’s record for euthanasia:
In 2025, the county killed 62% of all dogs and cats it took into shelters, more than twice the statewide rate, according to NC Pet Project.
So after taking them in gradually, then watching a trickle become a gush, Jessup started as a 501(c)(3). Today, any of the items marked CAT on the price tag means the shelter gets 100% of the proceeds.
Still, she gets critics.
On Yelp or Google reviews, people harp on the pee smell inside — an exaggerated complaint, in my opinion.
More than that, they object to Jessup’s insistence on giving cats away for free — considered a no-no that invites people with bad intentions.
But eight blocks from downtown Selma, Jessup is manning her post very much on the front lines. She gets litters of cats dropped off in boxes. She once collected dozens of pregnant cats from a hoarder, along with ferrets, rabbits and a turtle.
One of her oldest cats, Nitro, is back at the Cotton Mill for a third time — returned twice by tearful owners claiming allergies or sad circumstances. Jessup isn’t going to turn down a fresh start for any animal because the adopter lacks $100.
“I placed humans for adoption, and I didn’t charge for humans,” she said. “I’m not about to charge for cats.”
In a half-hour’s time, I browsed through the maze of eccentric riches: a cigar box full of linotype letters, a saxophone, a portrait of Elvis, a portrait of Jesus, a Fats Waller record for phonographs.
I found a solid-wood, seven-drawer dresser for $125 and a stained-glass window for $99 — bargains, all.
But the most precious find wound around my left ankle and purred, telling me the story of dark, wet nights spent curled up under a gas station canopy, dreaming of soft blankets and home.
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