A sanctuary that’s 600 cats’ meows

Last year, The Cat House took in 1,030 kittens from the Central California Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Fresno – “way beyond our capacity,” says Lattanzio, a decision that “broke me [financially]” – but that pales beside the 2,000 cats that Fresno County euthanizes each month.

Observers blame Central California’s animal problem on several factors: a farm environment where animals run free, an itinerant population of migrant workers who often cannot take pets when they move, and persistent myths that animals are healthier when not neutered or spayed.

The souring economy continues to push families and pets out of their homes, and that has produced a secondary wave of migrations – not economic or political refugees creeping across borders, but abandoned cats thrown over the Cat House fence in the dark of night by owners unable or unwilling to care for them.

Some years, up to 100 cats fly over Lattanzio’s fence. The newcomers may turn up the next morning in her kitchen or join an outdoor colony and go unnoticed for days. Lattanzio points to a black cat, with one eyelid sewn permanently shut, resting by a plum tree. “I don’t have [a] black cat with [a] surgically sutured eye,” she says. “I would know that I had one. That one’s dumped.”

All day Lattanzio wears a cordless telephone and headset. The phone rings constantly. She doles out referrals for free spaying or neutering, or suggestions on how to adopt out a litter. But she can’t take new cats right now: She repeats this to callers many times each day.

With monthly bills of $2,000 for cat food and $400 for litter, plus 12 employees who help with seven hours of cleaning and feeding per day, Lattanzio is strapped for cash. Although she receives donations from as far afield as Denmark and Australia, she has shouldered most of the expenses herself over the years.

The phenomenon of homes that double as animal shelters can be a mixed blessing. For one thing, they’re subject to personal circumstances to which public-run shelters are generally immune. The deaths of people in charge of home shelters have occasionally flooded nearby facilities with hundreds of displaced animals.

But in Central California, The Cat House on the Kings has become a mainstay. “Lynea is doing a wonderful thing,” says Kelly Joos of the Valley Animal Shelter in Fresno.

“They’re a great organization,” agrees Beth Caffrey of the Central California SPCA in Fresno. “They pull animals from our shelters all the time. We all work together.”

About 20 people or groups visit The Cat House each week – to adopt, browse, or seek veterinary care. Although not every cat here is a prime candidate for adoption, Lattanzio often sends the healthier, friendlier ones out to adoption fairs, or to shelters in the San Francisco Bay Area, where rates of abandoned and feral cats are lower, shelters and rescue groups have more room, and these feline refugees are more likely to find homes. There’s an element of deal-making to the process: Lattanzio strikes agreements with shelters that she’ll give them five litters of kittens – always popular on the adoption market – for every feral cat she takes away.

“I’m like a wholesaler,” she says.

•••

As night falls, The Cat House comes alive. Catatonic cats spring into action. A Halloweenish soundtrack of bumps and creaks ripples through the house, and each of Lattanzio’s 65 roommates seems to take a turn walking on her bed. Lattanzio doesn’t sleep as well as she’d like; hence, her recent decision.

“The whole thing is theirs,” she says. “The whole house. I’m giving it to them.” From now on, the house where Lattanzio has lived for 25 years will belong to the cats. Lattanzio is vacating the bedroom that she’s shared with 65 cats, and moving into a guest house on the grounds. The sanctuary’s work will continue, but Lattanzio will finally sleep in peace, accompanied only by Pookie-Boo, a petite Manx.

“I have one,” says Lattanzio, “only one out of 600 [cats], that I will take with me to the other house.”

Previous

1 | 2