Officials: 100 cats in house


Wednesday, March 10, 2004

JOE SNAPPER
THE SAGINAW NEWS




A Saginaw woman's addiction could cost at least a hundred lives and is a threat to her own health, say friends and officials who insisted the time had come to intervene.


But it's not alcohol or drugs they must pry away.

It's the cats.

Animal control officials found scores of felines -- they expected the number could top 100 -- during this morning's inspection of a South Washington Avenue home that had become overrun with the pets.

"They're literally everywhere," Robert J. Davis, a city code enforcement specialist, said. "It's literally the worst I've ever seen."

Dozens of cats jammed in a single home will turn feral and averse to capture "or, in other words, wild, and not a lot different from a raccoon or possum," said Mark A. Wachner, director of Saginaw County Animal Care Center.

"You can't socialize 100 cats," he said. "We'll probably put most of them down because they're not handleable."

Davis, joined in his inspection by Saginaw police officers and animal control officials, said his first inclination was to condemn the home at 633 S. Washington because it was unsanitary and dangerous. The smell was overwhelming.

"You've got the Vick's in your nose and the respirator and you're still gagging," he said after an initial 20-minute inspection. "We're concerned for her safety. They're afraid that if she knocks herself out, some of the cats are pretty aggressive, and they'll eat her up."

Experts say the practice of hoarding pets is known clinically as "collecting." In Saginaw, city ordinances allow a maximum of seven dogs and cats in a dwelling.

Wachner said city inspectors and family members of Rosemary A. DeGesero, who owns the three-story mansion built in the 1880s by a lumber baron, called him with tales of vast numbers of cats and also "stuff, lots of stuff."

DeGesero, 84 this month, declined to say how many cats she owns, but insisted they are "fat and healthy." She said "a woman" assists her daily with their care.

A friend of one of DeGesero's relatives, who asked to remain anonymous, said the decision to intervene on her behalf came after her living conditions became dangerous. The likelihood of high ammonia levels from excessive cat urine could threaten her health, Wachner said.

"To walk into her home you can barely breathe," said the woman. "It's just contaminated. No one should live that way. We had to intervene."

Most hoarders claim their animals are healthy when they are actually living in squalor, say researchers at Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine in Medford, Mass.

"Hoarders are often not lying," the researchers' newsletter from September 2000 indicated. "They lack the insight into the true nature of the conditions."

It adds: "Many hoarders provide seriously unsanitary and restricted environments for themselves and for the other people in their households."

Wachner said he knew DeGesero in the 1970s when he worked as a kennel aide. He recalled doctors noting her many, many cats.

She once owned a leopard, he said. Leslie Fulbright, 22, of Saginaw recalls visiting DeGesero's big cats as a child with his grandmother, Joanne Hummel-Cox.

"He'd pet the lions, the panthers, everything she used to have," said Hummel-Cox, 67, of Saginaw. "She would say, 'Now get down on your haunches, because you're taller than my babies.' They would just roll around. That was her love."

Wachner said he planned to enlist DeGesero's friends and family to use live traps on the anti-social cats -- which he likened to "a child raised in a closet."

"It's less stress for them," he said of live-trapping felines, which can get "nasty. Obviously, you don't want to step on them or they'll turn around and nail you." t

Joe Snapper is a staff writer for The Saginaw News. You may reach him at 776-9715.







© 2004 Saginaw News. Used with permission

House of cats due a big cleaning


Thursday, March 11, 2004

JOE SNAPPER
THE SAGINAW NEWS




A Saginaw woman will leave her cat waste-infested home
Saturday as cleaning crews sanitize and sift through
"an inside landfill," says the city inspector tackling
the feline fiasco.


From Our Advertiser




Animal control officials' search of a South Washington
Avenue home Wednesday turned up no evidence of neglect
in scores of cats. As a result, officials will allow
about half of the cats to remain at 633 S. Washington,
and deliver the rest to the Saginaw County Humane
Society and a private cat shelter, city Permit
Enforcement Specialist Robert J. Davis said.

Authorities have not yet pinned down the exact number
of cats, but they say the human living conditions amid
the felines are "the worst they have ever seen."

"There's no animal cruelty," said a "pleasantly
surprised" Mark Wachner, director of Saginaw County
Animal Care Center. "Most of the ones I saw were pretty
social. There were some other ones running around the
house."

Saginaw police joined Davis and Wachner in a Wednesday
morning inspection of DeGesero's home. One officer
emerged, saying: "Cages are everywhere, cats are
everywhere. There's probably more than 100" cats.

Wachner said he saw "25-plus" cats and has concluded
100 may exist.

"It's impossible to get a count," he said.

Inside the three-story mansion, 2-foot piles of various
items choke many rooms and block most exits, Davis
said. About a half-dozen volunteers, including two of
DeGesero's children, will sort out treasures from junk,
and then scour the home with soap, vinegar and bleach.

"There will be probably be a smell in this home that
lingers forever," he said.

Davis said that while litter boxes appear cleaned, cat
waste hidden in the debris made the home "like a giant
litter box." He said the full extent of city code
violations remains unclear.

"It has the appearance of an inside landfill," he said.
"There's like an 18- to 30-inch wave of debris that has
made (some) rooms impassible."

Saginaw ordinances don't outlaw large numbers of
animals -- except for a total ban on pigs -- but
require them kept in "a clean and sanitary condition,"
City Attorney Thomas Fancher said.

Davis initially wanted to condemn DeGesero's home. But
Saginaw preservationist Thomas B. Mudd, a friend of
DeGesero's, quickly intervened and brokered the deal to
save the historic house and cats she loves.

Now public agencies are teaming up to ease a possible
transition for DeGesero, who will leave for about a
week and return to a clean home. Davis had described
the odor in her home so pungent that Vick's in his
nostrils and a respirator mask could not keep him from
gagging.

A private company has donated a large trash container
to make it easier to empty the brick home, Davis said.
A Saginaw agency, Supervised Independent Living, will
care for DeGesero during the cleaning process, he said.

The effort won't cost anyone anything except time, said
Davis, adding that he will meet with DeGesero's family
and volunteers again Monday.

"The community often comes together in these
situations," he said.

Mudd said DeGesero's home was built in the 1880s by
Saginaw lumber baron Charles Lee and that her family
has had the home for at least 100 years. Her father,
Dr. Michael Ryan, one of the first doctors on staff at
Saint Mary's hospital, 800 S. Washington, moved in
around the turn of the century.

Mudd said he's known DeGesero for years and believes
she should not face eviction or the loss of her cats.
Wachner had worried he would have to put to death what
he suspected were feral cats.

Such an event could kill her, said Mudd. But that won't
happen, said Davis.

"We're going to leave her the ones that are most dear
to her," said Davis of the cats. "We just want people
to be safe. That's really why we go into these homes."
t

Joe Snapper is a staff writer for The Saginaw News. You
may reach him at 776-9715.







© 2004 Saginaw News. Used with permission