Tammy Nemec sits outside in her lanai surrounded by the cats she loves.

They’re all over the place. Lounging on cat condos, climbing a series of wooden catwalks and munching Friskies cat food from over-sized platters.

Nemec strokes one particularly needy orange cat named Lucas as she talks about how much her life has changed in the last two months.

“It’s really been a whirlwind in the best, positive way,” says Nemec, the founder, president and live-in caretaker for nonprofit cat rescue Rescue Cats Rock. “And we’re only going to go up from here.”

Nemec and her approximately 80 rescue cats moved into their North Fort Myers mobile home in January, after a series of News-Press articles rallied cat lovers to donate enough money for her to a put a $35,000 down payment on the place.

Up until then, she and her cats had faced the possibility of being homeless when their lease ran out at their former rental house. “The outlook just looked horrible for her future and for the kitties,” says Rescue Cats Rock vice president Christy Stone.

© Andrea Melendez/The News-Press/USA Today Florida Network Tammy Nemec, founder and live-in caretaker for Rescue Cats Rock, tends to her 80 cats in her new mobile home and attached "catio". Things keep getting better for Rescue Cats Rock, the cat rescue that The News-Press helped raise enough money to buy a permanent home. An anonymous donor just wrote them a check for $100,000 and they’ve paid off the mortgage on their North Fort Myers mobile home.

Read more: 83 cats and nowhere to go: North Fort Myers charity Rescue Cats Rock could be homeless

And more: Rescue Cats Rock buys N. Fort Myers 'forever home' after donors rally to save its 79 cats

But then the good news kept coming for Nemec and her nonprofit. Now she and her beloved cats never have to worry about being homeless again — or even paying a mortgage.

Thanks to the generosity of one anonymous couple, the mobile home’s $75,000 mortgage was paid off just weeks after she made that down payment.

All of it.

The anonymous couple showed up one day with checkbook in hand, soon after Nemec had purchased the home. Then, right there in the middle of her new bedroom, they told Nemec they were writing her a check for $100,000.

To say Nemec was stunned is an understatement.

“I kind of lost my balance and sat down on the floor,” she says. “It was so surreal. … And, of course, I was crying.”

Nemec says she looked up at her friend and asked if she was dreaming. She wasn’t, her friend assured her.

It was all real.

“The man said, ‘My wife and I have been praying about this,’ ” Nemec says. “He said, ‘We believe this is God’s money. And we believe that God is telling us we should help you.’ "

Still, that's only the most extreme example of animal lovers' generosity. And Nemec and Stone say they’d never be where they are now without the help of donors in Southwest Florida and the rest of the country — whether they gave $5 or $10 or $100,000.

They all made a difference in the lives of those cats.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Stone says. “I’m grateful beyond words. And I’m rejuvenated by the thought that there are so many good people in this world.”

© Andrea Melendez/The News-Press/USA Today Florida Network Tammy Nemec, founder and live-in caretaker for Rescue Cats Rock, tends to her 80 cats in her new mobile home and attached "catio". Things keep getting better for Rescue Cats Rock, the cat rescue that The News-Press helped raise enough money to buy a permanent home. An anonymous donor just wrote them a check for $100,000 and they’ve paid off the mortgage on their North Fort Myers mobile home.

One of those donors, Crown Roofing of Fort Myers, installed a new roof for the mobile home’s enclosed patio — nicknamed “the catio.” The cats have free rein and can move easily through a cat door between the catio and the two-bedroom mobile home.

Nemec says she called 20 different roofing companies before she found Crown Roofing. She was looking for someone to donate roofing materials and labor. All said “no.”

But Crown Roofing likes to help out local charities, says Michelle Grojean, the company’s marketing director. And besides, co-owner Christopher Copeland loved the cause.

“He’s very, very fond of animals — and especially cats,” Grojean says. “Animals are near and dear to his heart.”

Nemec says the outpouring of donations puts Rescue Cats Rock in a good position to keep growing and help even more cats. But she doesn't want people to stop giving, either.

Most of that $100,000 check has already been spent on the mortgage, a reverse-osmosis water system and helping build the new catio. And Rescue Cats Rock’s bills never stop.

There’s a lot of work left to do, Nemec says. The new catio needs to be reinforced with hurricane straps and 2-by-12-foot beams to bring it up to code, for example. And the septic tank needs new drainage.

Plus there are the never-ending bills of about $2,500 per month, such as veterinarian visits for all those cats — including emergency visits for many of the sick and injured cats Nemec takes in — and about 80 cans of cat food every morning.

© Andrea Melendez/The News-Press/USA Today Florida Network Tammy Nemec, founder and live-in caretaker for Rescue Cats Rock, tends to her 80 cats in her new mobile home and attached "catio". Things keep getting better for Rescue Cats Rock, the cat rescue that The News-Press helped raise enough money to buy a permanent home. An anonymous donor just wrote them a check for $100,000 and they’ve paid off the mortgage on their North Fort Myers mobile home.

Rescue Cats Rock operates entirely on donations, Nemec says. She lives on a disability check of $771 a month (she broke her neck and back in a car accident when she was 21, she says). So it’s donors and volunteers who keep her beloved charity going.

Nemec started Rescue Cats Rock in 2015, and it officially became a nonprofit about one year ago. The goal: to save sick, injured or feral cats that might otherwise go un-adopted and euthanized.

She says she adopts out as many of the cats as she can — about 20 in the last month alone. But those cats who can’t find homes have a "forever home" with her, she says.

“It’s not my house,” she told The News-Press last month. “It’s the cats’. … This is their house.”

For Nemec, these cats aren’t just something she loves. She says they’re a mission from God.

Until those cats arrived, she says, she was living a troubled life involving drug and alcohol abuse, and she served six months of jail time in 2014. When she got out, she says, she knew she needed to make a change.

© Andrea Melendez/The News-Press/USA Today Florida Network Tammy Nemec, founder and live-in caretaker for Rescue Cats Rock, tends to her 80 cats in her new mobile home and attached "catio". Things keep getting better for Rescue Cats Rock, the cat rescue that The News-Press helped raise enough money to buy a permanent home. An anonymous donor just wrote them a check for $100,000 and they’ve paid off the mortgage on their North Fort Myers mobile home.

She says she's been sober now since Feb. 7, 2014, the day she was arrested for probation violation on drug paraphernalia charges.

At one point, Nemec's Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor told her to get a plant — something that could help occupy her mind. But she says she needed more than that.

And she found that in her cats — her new purpose in life.

“I needed something that I could hold and I could love and pour my heart into,” she says. “And these cats were it for me.

“It’s not about me. It’s about them. This has absolutely nothing to do with me. I’m just the instrument.”

Then God kept giving, she says, inspiring The News-Press to write about Rescue Cats Rock. And that, in turn, inspired animal lovers to open their checkbooks and their hearts.

Now she's excited about Rescue Cats Rock and its promising future. And about all the cats she'll be able to save.

“I’m grateful to every single person,” Nemec says. “Every single one. Every person who donated, everyone who said a prayer for us.

“This story really isn’t about me. It’s about God and his creatures.”

To learn more about Rescue Cats Rock, call 440-4073, email to myrescuecatsrock@gmail.com or visit facebook.com/RescueCatsRock.org or rescuecatsrock.org.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells (Facebook), @charlesrunnells (Twitter), @crunnells1 (Instagram)

This article originally appeared on The News-Press: Rescue Cats Rock: 80 cats move into their new home. Then anonymous donor pays off mortgage