Hoarding - 81 cats seized San Carlos, CA (US) Incident Date: Friday, Nov 5, 2004 County: San Mateo Local Map: available Disposition: Alleged Abuser names unreleased

Case ID: 2923 Classification: Hoarding Animal: cat View more cases in CA (US) Login to Watch this Case

A company hired to clean carpets ended up calling police instead after finding a home filled with 81 cats covered in their feces and urine, officials said.

The cleaners arrived at the house on the 1200 block of Alameda de las Pulgas at 8:45 a.m., Friday and notified police, who, in turn called the Peninsula Humane Society.

"The carpet had a lot of feces on it," said Donna Raffaelli of the San Carlos Police Department. "They didn't want to clean the rugs."

Humane officers spent three hours rounding up the cats and will be forwarding their report to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office for possible prosecution.

Humane Society spokesman Scott Delucchi said a woman living there surrendered the cats.

Some of the cats have already been deemed healthy by a veterinarian, and are now eligible for adoption.

"Most are in pretty good shape," he said. "Very few will be euthanized."

Humane officer Debi Denardi said she arrived to find feces all over the floor, cats everywhere, and an ammonia smell, "to the point it could burn your eyes.

"We wore masks to go in, and we could only stay in the house for about 20 minutes," Denardi said.

The tenant who surrendered the cats and another woman had been renting the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home since about May, the landlord said.

After checking their application and references, he had rented to them -- one in her 60s and the other in her 70s -- because they "appeared pleasant."

"In retrospect, I should have gone to see where they were living prior," the San Carlos resident said, who wanted to remain anonymous.

"I suspect the cat situation didn't immediately happen. They probably already had cats in their prior residence."

The lease allows them only two pets.

The landlord said when he went to prune the bushes in front of the house last week, he smelled something coming from the partially open windows.

He thought one of the women had died, he said.

Instead, he found one tenant sleeping. When he checked on her, he told her to take care of the cats and to get the carpets cleaned. He wanted to start the process of having them evicted, he said.

The health department deemed the house uninhabitable Friday, and the women were asked to leave, he said.

The landlord estimates there is at least $5,000 worth of damage, including the cost of replacing the carpet.

"We certainly will pursue our rights to the damages in refurbishing and the loss of rent," he said.

Humane Society officials said the find is likely the biggest cat-hoarding case in county history.

Because the cats appear to be in good shape, and there is no evidence the women were abusing them, the women could face a lesser charge of providing inadequate care and attention, instead of animal cruelty, Denardi said.

Neighborhood Map

For more information about the Interactive Animal Cruelty Maps, see the map notes.

Back to Top

Add this case to:

Del.icio.us

|

Digg

|

Furl

|

References

	The Argus Online - Nov 9, 2004
	San Francisco Chronicle - Nov 6, 2004

« CA State Animal Cruelty Map

Not sure what these icons mean? Click here.

Note: Classifications and other fields should not be used to determine what specific charges the suspect is facing or was convicted of - they are for research and statistical purposes only. The case report and subsequent updates outline the specific charges. Charges referenced in the original case report may be modified throughout the course of the investigation or trial, so case updates, when available, should always be considered the most accurate reflection of charges.

For more information regarding classifications and usage of this database, please visit the database notes and disclaimer.