After 300 cats were removed from a single Toronto apartment, one veterinary assistant said she was surprised at the well-being of the animals.
The non-profit group Toronto Cat Rescue said online that it had been alerted of a “perilous hoarding situation” and helped remove at least 70 cats on Saturday.
Unfortunately, volunteers said they found dead cats inside the residence. As of Monday, there were still more than a hundred cats left in the apartment.
City workers dressed in HAZMAT suits were also spotted entering the apartment.
A neighbour who lives across the unit said the smell that filled the hallways and nearby apartments was “unbearable.”
“It’s so strong. You come into the hallway and you can’t breathe,” Jeanette Lawrence told CTV News Toronto. She knew her neighbour had a lot of cats, but was shocked to discover just how many.
“I thought maybe, like 30-something,” she said. “But 300 plus, that’s way too much. I’m a cat person and I love cats, but I only have one for a reason, because I know that’s all I can handle.”
Another 18th-floor resident, Stephen Collins, said the smell had become so bad that he worried there was a dead body.
Karley Lux, who works with the Birch Dan Animal Hospital and gave checkups to some of the retrieved cats, said the animals were doing fairly well considering how they were found.
“There’s no fleas or infection. I think one of them needs a dental, but that’s about it, which is pretty surprising” the veterinary assistant said, adding the cats were also well-socialized.
A City of Toronto by-law limits pet owners to just six cats in a single residence.
Toronto Cat Rescue’s executive director Brenda Vandersluis said cats aren’t intended to live in such large colonies.
“Certainly, they’d be having competition for food. It’s just impossible to care for 300 cats,” she said.
Her group said the cats have been temporarily placed with foster families and that all the animals will be vaccinated and spayed or neutered.
Toronto Cat Rescue even noted this is actually the second incident involving a large hoard of cats that they’ve dealt with recently.
In late March, the group removed a hundred cats from another Toronto home.
“It’s a terrible way for cats to live,” the group said in a statement about cat hoards in general. “Unsterilized cats breed prolifically, and with only a nine week gestation things get out of control very quickly.”
The non-profit, no-kill group has more than 400 foster homes and approximately 1,100 volunteers. The group also added, “if you know that someone has too many cats, it is best to report it sooner rather than later.”
