Dozens of cats taken from Electric City home

Animal control workers removed over 60 cats from a home in Electric City Monday.

Representatives from Pasado’s Safe Haven, a rescue operation from Monroe, Wash., along with Grand Coulee Police Chief John Tufts, completed taking the cats from Mardee Davis at 103 W. Grand Avenue.

Davis said Tuesday that she had called Pasado’s for help.

“I have been trying to get help since things started piling up on me,” Davis said.

Friends are coming this weekend to help her clean the place, she explained.

Davis said she had been busy helping her ailing father, who passed away Jan. 29, and that she then was ill herself.

One problem she has had, she said, is that “people continue dropping off stray cats at my place.” Feeding them hasn’t been a problem, she said, and she has been having the male cats neutered, she added.

Davis, 50, has for a long time taken in stray cats in an effort to find homes for them.

Kim Koon, from the rescue operation, told Tufts that in 20 years of this kind of work, it was the worst home she had ever seen.

Koon told Tufts she had visited the home on April 3, and at that time took a number of cats that needed a veterinarian’s attention.

Davis said Tuesday that Koon had called to let her know the cats are well and being well cared for.

“We were greatful to the owner for reaching out and allowing us to come in and help,” noted Tami McMinn, communications manager at Pasado’s. “A lot of people don’t do that.”

She said close to 40 of the cats had already been taken by six other agencies that adopt them out, but Pasado’s kept the medically worst cases because they have the facilities to care for the cats, most of which have upper respiratory infections, including three that will need to have an eye removed.

“The volume of trash and filth in the house really slowed our work, ” Laura Henderson, Pasado’s Safe Haven Executive Director, said in a Tuesday post on the organization’s website. “We had to work carefully because there were cats and kittens hiding under multiple layers of debris and feces. We wanted to make sure we got them out safely.”

Tufts said that when he arrived Monday there were three rescue trucks at the site, and that he could smell the cats from across the road, upwind.

Tufts went inside the single-wide trailer to take pictures and speak with Davis. He said there were feces everywhere and the cat urine smell was so bad it burned his eyes.

Tuft’s report is being sent to the Grant County Prosecutor’s Office to reveiw for possible charges of animal cruelty in the second degree.

After Koon’s first visit April 3, her rescue business was setting up places to receive the large number of cats. Some 71 cats were taken in the two visits, most of them Monday.

The crew from Pasado’s wore full hazmat suits and respirators to enter the trailer because of high levels of ammonia and dangerous conditions, the organization’s website states.

Davis had told Tufts that once the cats were gone she would bug “bomb” the house to kill the flies. Tufts said he would be back in a few days and Davis said she would welcome that, Tufts stated in his written report.

In the meantime, Tufts notified Electric City’s code enforcement officer of the cat problem. The city code deals with dogs, but doesn’t limit the number of cats you can have. You can have two dogs in the city.

McMinn, with the rescue facility, noted they had retrieved 114 cats from a home in Wenatchee about a year ago.

Pasado’s Safe Haven posted this account and video of the Electric City rescue on their website Tuesday.