Hoarding House

October 21, 2015March 5, 2016

Caesar

Temporary Name:

Caesar

Gender: Male
Color: Brown Tabby
Fur: Short
Born: Approximately 8/22/10

Caesar is one of our colony cats that has had a few near-tragedies happen to him. He’s a great big lover that is caught between being a street cat and a house cat. He escaped starvation, a dog attack, a hoarding house, and a seriously injured paw. We would like to get him off the street before his nine lives run out!

Caesar loves people, napping on the bed, and sitting in cars. He’s going to need patience to teach him the formalities of a real home, but his is very willing to learn and loves people unconditionally.

Adopted!

Despite his rough start, and his rough middle to life, Caesar has remained extremely appreciative of the people that take time to care for him.

Caesar before and after being nipped, 8-23-12

He arrived in our colony quite emaciated. He was a gangly and cantankerous teenager who fattened up and mellowed out after being nipped and accepted into the colony as a friend.

There was a terrible incident with a neighborhood dog that tried his best to kill Caesar. I pulled Caesar out of the dog’s mouth after a long chase and wrestle (I admit I was even biting the dog in a panic). In the ensuing drama with Animal Services, our hoarding neighbor claimed Caesar as her pet, and because I had been bit by both dog and cat, Caesar had to be quarantined for rabies evaluation. Unfortunately, his 30-day in-house quarantine turned into a full year incarceration in our hoarding neighbor’s home. On release or escape, he turned up looking greasy, ill, and emotionally drained.

We were able to fatten him up and get him clean, but he retained his weary, broken look for quite a while. He showed some signs of being trapped in a space with too many animals and too little resources–some cat aggression (being very assertive of his personal space), security seeking, and food gulping. Despite his anxieties, he remained a loving, people-friendly guy who wanted nothing more than to spend time hanging out with humans.

Shortly after another neighborhood dog incident (this time with three cat fatalities), Caesar showed up with an injured paw. Because I’m a worry wart and totally broke, I have a 48-hour rule unless something is obviously urgent. SO after two days and Caesar’s paw swelling to three times its size, I allowed myself to rush him to our vet. He receive basic medical care (thanks to VISA who keeps giving me room on my credit card), and his paw has been slowly healing.

But once he arrived with a hurt paw, he had been moved from a street cat to a pseudo-house-cat in our over crowded house. Our hope is to find a long-term foster, or a happy furever home, so that he doesn’t have to risk his neck on the street again.

I’m not going to lie–he’s going to need some patience to fully convert to a real house cat. It is painfully obvious what his life in the hoarding house had been like while I’ve been watching him find his way around our home. I am heartbroken daily to see him limp around and learn about real life with people who care about him. It is clearly his deepest hope to be a cherished pet, and I hope he can find lovely humans to give him that chance.

Update: We recently discovered Caesar playing with a rattle mouse, and discovered he’s a huge fan of toys! There are a few videos on our Facebook page just for fun!

Update: On 11/8/15 Caesar went for a sleep over with a new family. After two days they were in love with the big guy and he was officially adopted!

Health history:

8/22/12 – I finally was able to trap Caesar and bring him to an Operation Catnip clinic where he was neutered and given his rabies and FIV+ vaccines. At that point he was seriously malnourished (see gallery image).

Caesar's swollen paw 10-13-15 — Caesar’s swollen paw 10-13-15

1/11/14 – a neighborhood dog escaped (a known cat-killer) and attacked Caesar. I personally pulled Caesar out of the dog’s mouth after a long struggle. After much drama, I was able to make sure he was free from major injury. he was quarantined in our local hoarder’s house for 30 day (long story). We did not see him for over a year of imprisonment in the hoarder’s house. Since she claimed him as her pet, there was nothing we could do to even see him.

2/15/15 – Caesar was released from captivity (or escaped) back onto the street. He was filthy and foul looking, and definitely emotionally drained. It took a few months of care and kindness to get him back to his former self. He still has some cat aggression from being confined to a space with multiple cats and limited resources.

10/13/15 – Caesar arrived at our colony (two days after neighborhood dogs terrorized the colony and killed three cats) with a hurt foot. After a 48 hour delay, his foot had tripled in sized and he was in obvious anguish. We took him to our vet where he received pain killers and a long-lasting antibiotic. It took several more days of indoor confinement before he began to finally improve.

Quick Details

Litter box: B [very familiar with a litter box but because of his hoarding past, he is still concerned about safety]
Other cats: D+ [again, due to his hoarding history, he is defensive toward other cats who enter his personal space but he likes being part of a family]
Cuddling: B- [He loved people and being held, but may be emotionally needy at times]
Food: A+

Caesar before and after being nipped, 8-23-12

Caesar’s release from hoarding house 2-15-15

Caesar loves cars 4-12-15

Caesar’s enormous paw 10-13-15

Caesar’s swollen paw 10-13-15

Caesar was such a good boy at the vet 10-13-15

Caesar with hoarding house in background 10-20-15

Caesar’s face 10-20-15

June 3, 2015

The Cathouse Three

As part of the ongoing saga with my hoarding neighbor, I’ve been waiting to hear what happened to the three cats that Alachua County Animal Services liberated from the house. Last I heard they had seen a vet and were at the shelter. But nothing else.

This morning I got a call from Animal Services asking if I minded if the one-eyed male was released back into the neighborhood. What? Of course I don’t mind! I asked after the other two which turned out to be small females that were now in the system and up for adoption. Yippee.

Not long after that, two ladies from Gainesville Pet Rescue arrived with a cat in a box. We had a lovely conversation about feral cats, resources for animal advocates and activists in Alachua County, and how to handle issues that arose like kittens and colony food needs. Apparently GPR is heavily involved with helping the street cats and feral cats make their way out of the shelter alive.

I also immediately looked up the two female cats and put it out there on Facebook to get them circulating the interwebs. Fingers crossed that they get into good homes. All of the cats that came out of that house over the years are super people-friendly and love affection. Some are nervous about other cats.

The one-eyed male was released and I’ll be keeping my eye out for him (haha no pun intended!). And here are the ladies:

Zoey is at Animal Services (ZOEY – ID#A519957)
https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/32324076/

Zelda is at Animal Services (ZELDA – ID#A519956) This picture doesn’t do her justice!
https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/32324075/

May 14, 2015

The Serious Stuff, Part 2

Part two of the house across the street drama unfolded unexpectedly on Wednesday afternoon. I had wondered if there would be any follow up after the three cats were removed the previous Saturday. I worried that maybe they hadn’t seen or been able to trap any other cats inside the house.

Well, that is no longer a worry.

First three Animal Services van showed up. They started taking pictures and making notes around the outside of the house. Being that kind of person, I waited a few minutes and then went over there to tell them that most of the outside cats were nipped, and that I was looking for a litter of kittens by a new mommy. We talked about the situation for a few minutes, then I walked back to the house, and got intercepted by my other neighbor wanting to know what was going on.

While we stood in the street talking, a code enforcement car showed up, followed by a marked police car which parked on the corner with lights on. Then another police car.

The Animal Services office told me the circus was about to arrive, and she wasn’t lying. They were waiting on legal clearance to enter the house to collect evidence of animal neglect (hence the police). Code enforcement had to be there to support the abandoned building claim. But then the code enforcement office went nanners when she saw the place. (Purely selfish glee on my part since twice code complaints about the house had been brushed under the rug.)

In order for anyone to go inside, they needed to turn the power on again. And in order to do that they needed a fire truck on had in case something went bad once the power was turned on. In the mean time, the people poking around and looking in the windows started to get a sense that this was a bad situation, and they started bringing in people with a higher pay grade to get involved. This was going to be messy. And everyone so far had a really sick look on their faces.

Fire trucks showed up and got sent back because now they realized they needed guys in hazmat fire suits to enter the building because of the condition of it. The power kicked on unexpectedly before the fire trucks arrived though. And people were unofficially poking their heads inside the house, chomping at the bit to get the nightmare over with.

The Cox cable sales lady happened to show up and we stood in my driveway watching the fire department and police folks struggle with getting into the house. Fortunately I have a cold and can’t smell anything, but the Cox lady cold, and she reeled when they opened the house door and the wind whipped the stench through the neighborhood. I don’t know why, but even though there were flashlights moving about in the house, they had the fire guys bring a battering bar around and break in the front door locks too.

And then the clouds started to build up for rain we’ve been waiting days for. The utility company sent out trucks, and then bigger trucks with huge arms. And more city cars showed up. More cops. More code enforcement. The GRU guys pulled one of the giant trucks up into the side yard and sent a guy way up in the arm to do something to the main power lines right about the time the storm broke and it started to rain. At this point people started to clear out and wrap things up. And then like magic everyone was gone and the thing was done.

All in all there were four different Animal Service vans and trucks, two code enforcement cars, four other generic city cars and trucks, three marked cop cars, two unmarked cop cars, two huge fire trucks, three GRU trucks, and two enormous utility trucks with giant arms.

Although I saw ACAS officers preparing humane cat traps, I did not see any traps being removed with cats in them. From the conversations I had with them, any animals inside at that point were dead. I didn’t ask, but again, everyone in and out of there looked disturbed. Rumor from code enforcement is that the building will likely be condemned. Throughout it all, I don’t think anyone was able to locate or contact the home owner but I suspect they are trying very hard.

This is not how I would have liked to resolve this. I feel like I should have been a better person and pushed harder to end this before it got to this point. I’ve been trapping as many cats as I can for three years and putting them through Operation Catnip (our fabulous TNR program). I have pulled seven litters of kittens out of the neighborhood and put them on better paths. I watch over my cat colony the best I can. And three cats were taken out of that house alive.

And the heartbreaking part beyond the animals is that this isn’t about a malicious person doing terrible things on purpose. This is likely someone unable to cope, getting way over her head, and not having a way to get out. As much as I hate what happened over there, I cannot hate the person, because she is obviously not whole and healthy.

May 7, 2015

The Serious Stuff, Part 1

It’s very hard for me to write this because it’s been a long and painful internal battle of mine. And it also is about emotional issues, as well as legal vs. right. But this is the thing that started the wheels spinning in the right direction, and helped to bring resolution to a situation that has been eating away at my conscience.

The root of my neighborhood cat troubles has been a constant stream of young, unfixed cats coming from the general vicinity of a specific neighbor’s house. Over the course of the last three years, I have been able to observe this person’s emotional decline from a slight distance. We are not a neighborhood of tremendous interaction, so I don’t claim to know her situation. Only the things I pieced together from observation and other neighbors.

Initially I got involved with Operation Catnip as a solution to the quickly growing cat population. It was a race to fix them before they had more babies, or irritated my less-compassionate neighbors to the point that they … took care of the cats. Over time, the situation revealed itself to be a lonely woman with possible emotional issues that left her unable to cope with the cats she fed and cared for.

Things became alarming about a year ago when I had a brief chance to interact with her, and I got the feeling that all was not well with her and her need for these cats. Then in January it seemed to me that the power in her house wasn’t on and she didn’t actually stay there. Only stopped in to feed the cats. And then her visits became more brief and more irregular.

In the mean time, more cats were showing up in my colony, and a few looked emaciated, with stained paws and serious emotional issues. I started being able to identify the cats that had been trapped in her house by the smell, the behavior, and the condition of their bodies.

Yet I was in a quandary because legally I had no really evidence or course of action. Investigating her empty house would be trespassing. I had nothing except observations to give to Animal Services as a reason to check the welfare of the animals that may or may not be in the house. And this woman and I owned our homes so there would be no escaping any ill will stirred up. I was on the horns of a dilemma between my instincts telling me something was wrong, and lacking proof to bring local agencies into action.

I admit I tried a few things, I reported the house for code violations (which were horrendously dismissed with blatant abandon, but that’s another story). But I couldn’t figure out what exactly I should do.

Then one of our colony cats, Jane, went missing for a week. She showed up again, completely emaciated and so bad looking that I canceled my Saturday plans to take her in to my vet immediately. There was still no actual evidence, but I knew she had been trapped in that house without food and/or water.

For a few weeks, I struggled with nursing her back to health and figuring out how to get Animal Services into that house legally, when the most beautiful miracle happened to take the situation to the next level.

A couple were doing door-to-door cable sales for Cox, and they heard the sounds of animals in distress in the house. As good Samaritans, they cautiously investigated, discovered that the power at the house was not running on a hot day, and that the back door was cracked open enough that cat paws were able to poke through. They called Animal Services immediately.

I happened to see them in the yard, and being ‘that’ kind of neighbor, crossed over there to find out what was going on. They told me, and I followed up a call to Animal Services myself to give them a little more info on the situation and find out if they were actually sending an officer out to investigate.

Sure enough, the next day an ACAS officer came out and walked around the house. I spoke to him and he agreed the situation didn’t look good at all. He posted a ‘Notice of Abandonment’ on the door and left. This gave the homeowner 24 hours to contact Animal Services. If no contact, ACAS could legally enter the building to liberate any trapped animals.

I was not home the next day, so I didn’t know what happened. But a follow-up call on Monday confirmed that they rescued three cats, who had been taken to a vet and then moved to the shelter. That was all of the info they could tell me at the moment.

Little did I know the circus was about o come to town. But that’s another story. The big deal here is that I know I should have trusted my instincts and pushed harder for a way to resolve this situation faster. But a wonderfully compassionate stranger was able to start the ball rolling. And we’ll see how this whole thing plays out.