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Officials remove 500 cats from Bonner County home

From staff reports
September 7, 2006

Dozens of cats in pet carriers wait for processing at the Voice of the Animals shelter in Blanchard, Idaho, on Thursday. Bonner County authorities served a search warrant and began closing down the shelter and removing the animals Wednesday. (Jesse Tinsley) More information For more information on animal hoarding, follow this link to the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium at Tufts University. Map: 1031 Stone Rd., Blanchard, Idaho

In an apparent case of animal hoarding, animal welfare groups are working with Bonner County officials to remove more than 400 cats and kittens – many of them ill and dying – from six dilapidated trailers at a would-be shelter near Blanchard, Idaho.

Authorities who served a search warrant at Voice of the Animals on Wednesday found the carcasses of 40 cats in freezers.

The animals are being taken to a county-owned warehouse at Priest River, said Gail Mackie of SpokAnimal CARE, which is assisting with the rescue, along with the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection agency and four other animal welfare groups. The Humane Society of the United States is the lead agency in the case, Mackie said.

Cheryl Perkins and Ed Criswell, who operated the shelter at 1031 Stone Road, are each being charged with a single count of animal cruelty through negelect, said Bonner County Deputy Prosecutor Louis Marshall. The charge is a misdemeanor in Idaho.

The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday served a search warrant at the shelter, which lacks a permit. Bonner County officials said in February that the shelter violated zoning regulations, and that they wanted it shut down.

In addition to cats, authorities on Wednesday found dogs, goats and chickens, generally in better condition than the cats, said Dr. Jeff Rosenthal, a veterinarian who is executive director of the Boise-based Idaho Humane Society and was on hand for the seizure.

“This is probably going to be the largest single animal seizure in Idaho history,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal said every surface in the trailers was covered in feces and urine. “Unsanitary would be an understatement.”

Many of the cats were infected with ringworms, among other health problems, Rosenthal said. They are “universally parasitized,” he said.

There’s no telling how many of the 200 cats he helped examine Wednesday will survive, he said.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know how many cats died on a daily or weekly basis” at the shelter, Rosenthal said. “Just because somebody wants to help animals doesn’t mean they have the ability to run a legitimate animal shelter.”

A letter from the sanctuary's owners to the county planning department on Aug. 30 led to a search warrant being served Wednesday, Marshall said.

Criswell and Perkins wrote that "conditions had become substandard to the point anmials were dying."

The letter indicated that the property was being foreclosed on and "they had no idea what they were going to do with the animals," Marshall said.

The Associated Press reported in 2004 that many of the animals at Voice of the Animals were sick with a strain of diphtheria, and the sanctuary director was quoted saying that one to four cats were dying every day.

"We’re doing rescues that nobody else is willing to do," said Perkins, the sanctuary’s chief executive officer. "We get the worst of the worst. And we know it’s not much, but we’re trying to give the cats a good home and to save animals."

Sanctuary director Criswell said at the time that Voice of the Animals took elderly cats that were considered unadoptable by shelters, and had a special unit for cats diagnosed with leukemia. The animals were treated with holistic health products, he said, and fed with 2,500 pounds of donated dry cat food a month.

Criswell said in 2004 that only three cats had been adopted from the sanctuary in the previous three years.

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