Lynn Rettig was given her first kitten when she was 5, and she knew right then her life would never be the same.

"Annie" seemed almost human -- so capable of love yet also independent. Rettig was smitten.

At 18, she owned three cats, a perfectly reasonable number, she says. Then things got out of control.

By the time a city of Middleton building inspector declared her house uninhabitable due to feline filth, Rettig owned 40 to 45 cats. The exact number eludes her.

"It's sometimes hard to keep count," said Rettig, 48, a part-time college student who is unemployed. "They move so fast."

The Dane County Humane Society, acting under contract with Dane County, seized 42 cats and is housing them until a March 20 custody hearing. Rettig, who may face animal cruelty charges, can't imagine life without her pets.

"They're my children, not of my blood but of my heart," she said.

The stench of cat urine and feces overwhelmed authorities when they entered Rettig's home Feb. 13.  They had gone there after being contacted by Robert Rettig, Lynn Rettig 's brother, who was concerned about his sister's welfare. The house was owned by their mother, who lived there until moving in October to a nursing home.

According to a police report, most of the rooms were covered with cat hair and had areas of cat feces overflowing litter boxes.  In one room, "only the portion immediately inside the swing of the bedroom door was clear (of feces)," the report stated. "The feces appeared to be at a depth of one inch to an estimated six inches against the far walls."

The bedroom where Rettig's mother had slept was strewn with debris and cat feces. The toilet was broken and the bathtub was filled with several inches of putrid brown liquid, according to Rettig's brother.

Lynn Rettig was ordered to vacate the premises immediately.

Rettig said she acquired the cats gradually, and that all but four of them are from the same family. Years ago, when she lived with her parents in Madison, someone dumped two cats -- one male, one female -- in the neighborhood. The cats gravitated to the Rettig's' backyard.  "Kittens started happening," she said.

Rettig, who has never married, said she and her mother gradually had the cats spayed and neutered and declawed. The last kittens were born in 2003.

"I didn't want to acquire all these cats, but once I did, I had the responsibility to care for them," she said. Giving any of them away would have been too hard emotionally, she said.  "A lot of people don't like to think of cats as children, but when that's all you have . . ." Her voice trailed off.

Asked about the state of her home, she said there were "a couple of rooms I couldn't keep up with." She didn't notice a stench.  "I'm not the world's greatest housekeeper, period," she said.

Robert Rettig, 51, a theater designer in New Richmond, calls his sister a cat hoarder.  "She's a textbook case," he said, adding that his mother, who has Alzheimer's disease, also had an unhealthy propensity to collect cats.

In 2003, when Lynn Rettig lived with her parents in Madison, the city took the elder Rettig's to court on charges of violating health and sanitation ordinances. The family was ordered to clean its home and to reduce its cat population to no more than five by March 1, 2004.  Instead, Rettig and her mother bought the Middleton home and moved there with their cats in February of 2004.

Robert Rettig said his sister boasted to her new neighbors that she had outsmarted the city of Madison.

Shortly thereafter, Madison health officials sought an ordinance to limit the number of animals per household. A public outcry killed it.

Cheri Carr, a humane officer at the Dane County Humane Society, said the organization sees a couple of cases of animal hoarding each year. The typical hoarder is single, elderly and female, and the animals being hoarded usually are cats in poor health, she said.

Lynn Rettig is an unusual case in that she is relatively young and her cats are in reasonable health given the "abhorrent" living conditions, Carr said. She has forwarded her report to the Dane County District Attorney's Office, which has not made a charging decision. Carr would like to see Rettig charged with multiple criminal counts of animal cruelty.

"You can't live in 10 inches of feces and call it humane," she said.   The goal is to get Rettig help through court-ordered probationary conditions, Carr said.

Rettig said she is not familiar with the term "cat hoarder."  She has a bachelor's degree in music from Edgewood College and is taking classes at UW-Madison and Madison Area Technical College in hopes of being accepted to a master's degree program in public management. One family friend, who asked not to be identified, called her "supremely intelligent."

Given the emotional strain she's been under, Rettig said she voluntarily submitted to an evaluation at the Dane County Mental Health Center. She said she was told she is holding up well and that she is not a threat to herself or others.

Rettig said she's planning to move to an apartment in a Madison suburb that limits tenants to two cats.  She hopes she can get at least two of her 42 cats back.

She starts crying at the thought.  "How I'll choose two, I don't know."

Four characteristics of animal hoarding as listed by the national Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium:

1.  A failure to provide minimal standards of sanitation, space, nutrition and veterinary care.

2.  An inability to recognize the effects of this failure on the welfare of the animals, humans in the household and the environment.

3.  An obsessive attempt to accumulate a collection of animals in the face of progressively deteriorating conditions.

4.  A denial or minimization of problems and living conditions.

Animal hoarding Hoarding is characterized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- the bible of psychiatric disorders -- as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The national Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium calls hoarding a "pathological situation."

Update 3/21/06:  Custody of 41 cats seized from a feces-ridden Middleton home was awarded to the Dane County Humane Society, which has been caring for them since Feb. 13.

Sandra Newbury, chief veterinarian at the Humane Society, testified at a hearing that the cats that had belonged to Rettig, will either be available for adoption by others or will be euthanized. She said decisions about the cats' fates would be made on a case-by-case basis.

"What started as a love of cats just veered somehow out of control," said Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi, who made the ruling allowing the Humane Society to keep the cats that were rounded up at Rettig's home. She also ordered Rettig to pay for 34 days worth of care for the cats, at a cost of $10,800.

Rettig wept during the hearing but decided not to testify.  "Apparently, there doesn't seem to be any need," Rettig said. She asked that she be allowed to be present if any of the cats are euthanized and that she be allowed to take pictures of all of them "so I have something to remember them by."

Newbury said that would be impractical because any cats would be euthanized at various times and not all at once. Typically, the society charges more to euthanize animals with the owner present because they are emotionally more difficult for staff to handle, she said.

Rettig still faces the possibility of animal cruelty charges. Assistant District Paul Humphrey, who prosecutes animal cruelty cases, said a decision could be made in the next day or two.

Update 7/31/06:  Initially, the cats were so terrified of human contact they could be held only with towels covering their eyes.  Gradually, volunteers coaxed them toward sociability, first by petting them under the towels, then by plying them with treats such as veal-flavored baby food.

The 15 adult cats, part of a batch seized from Rettig, are now ready to be adopted after four months of rehabilitation by Dane County Friends of Ferals.

"I'm hoping that as soon as people know they're available, we'll find homes for them quickly," said Alison Colby, the group's director. "Being in a shelter is not the life we want for them."

The cats' owner, Lynn Rettig , has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of providing improper animal shelter.

The Humane Society was awarded custody of the cats in March. Most have been put up for adoption by the Humane Society, Colby said, although one died in surgery and two were euthanized.

The Dane County Friends of Ferals,  an all-volunteer organization, founded in 2001 by Dr. Susan Krebsbach, a Madison-area veterinarian, vaccinates and neuters or spays feral cats, then finds outdoor homes for them with responsible caregivers. Feral cats are untamed cats that revert to a wild state to survive.

"Typically, we are not in the business of socializing cats," Krebsbach said. "In most cases, we try to find safe homes for cats that don't welcome human contact."

The group made an exception for the Middleton cats, which will need to have indoor homes because they have been declawed on all four paws and would not be able to fend for themselves outdoors. The cats are unusual in that they were somewhat wild even though they'd lived indoors their entire lives, Krebsbach said.  "They weren't really what I'd call feral, they were just very fearful," she said.

Krebsbach trained nine volunteers in what she calls forced interaction.  "The only way we could really get these guys to come around was to force ourselves on them -- to get them to learn that people aren't half-bad," she said.

The cats are being housed at MadCat Pet Supplies in Middleton, which donates free space to Friends of Ferals.  "They are just like any other cats now," said volunteer Margie Prusynski of Madison, adding that group members are very good at matching cats with prospective owners.

"Anyone thinking about adopting should trust us that we'll find the right cat for you," she said. "We're very invested in these cats. The last thing we'd want to do is match these cats with another home that doesn't work out."

Update 9/17/07:  Rettig was found guilty under a no contest plea of Intentional Improper Animal Shelter - Sanitation a class A misdemeanor in violation of WI statute 951.14(4):

Update 9/26/07:  A woman who once harbored more than 40 felines in houses in Madison and Middleton where conditions became so bad one was declared uninhabitable and the other had to be torn down had two cats seized Friday from her room at a Madison housing cooperative that "had the unbearable stench of cat urine."

Rettig, 49, is under a court order not to have any pets after being charged last year with two misdemeanor counts of providing improper animal shelter.

One of the charges stemmed from conditions found in 2003 at a residence Rettig shared with her elderly parents on Whitcomb Drive in Madison, where city animal control and health officers found more than 40 cats and deep piles of cat feces throughout the home. The house was later torn down by its new owner, Susan Peters, of Oconomowoc, who said, "It stunk so bad. It was terrible. Everything had to go."

The other charge resulted from similar conditions found by Dane County humane officers in February 2006 at a house on Larkspur Court in Middleton. Rettig moved there with her mother after the city of Madison took the elder Rettig's to court on charges of violating health and sanitation ordinances and the family was ordered to clean its home and to reduce its cat population to no more than five.

The cats were rescued by the Dane County Humane Society after a city of Middleton building inspector deemed the home uninhabitable due to feline filth.

On Friday, Madison police executed a search warrant at Rettig's room at the Lothlorien Co-op at 244 W. Lakelawn Place, after learning that Rettig might have been violating the conditions of her signature bond by having cats.

Tim Frank, animal services officer for the Madison-Dane County Health Department, said he removed two cats from Rettig's room and took them to the Dane County Humane Society, where they were in protective custody. Frank said he did not notice any odor or any feces outside of the litter box, which was reasonably clean, and the cats appeared to have been be well cared for.

Police also seized 37 cans of food, three boxes of dry cat food, a pet carrier, a cat bed pillow, water and food bowls, a litter sifting system and an empty jar of cat treats.

Frank said it is likely the two cats, which Rettig somehow managed to get from among those she had at her Middleton home, will eventually be put up for adoption.

Rettig is scheduled to be sentenced on the two charges Oct. 22. Attempts to reach Rettig at the co-op were not successful.

Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said, "Any potential new charges are under review."

"This is definitely what we would call a hoarding case," Frank said. "It's usually a psychological problem."

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders characterizes animal hoarding as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the national Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium calls hoarding a "pathological situation."

The typical hoarder is single, elderly and female, and the animals being hoarded usually are cats in poor health.

"By the time that we become aware of these problems, it's usually been going on for a long time," said Tommye Schneider, director of environmental health for the Madison-Dane County Health Department. "Each case is very individual."

According to the search warrant filed in Dane County Circuit Court, police reviewed a letter that Tony Anderson, a maintenance coordinator at Madison Community Co-op, whose residences include Lothlorian, intended to send to Judge John Markson but erroneously addressed to someone else. The letter referred to "information he had received that (Rettig's) room had the unbearable stench of cat urine."

Police went to Lothlorian, where they were told by residents that Rettig had two cats, which an officer saw in the window of Rettig's room on a subsequent visit. The co-op's finance coordinator, Kathleen Parker, also told police that in a Sept. 10 meeting, Rettig told her "between taking care of my cats and working, I don't have time for a lot."

Avi Appel, finance officer of Madison Community Co-op, said he could not provide any information other than what was in the search warrant.

According to Lothlorian's Web site, residents can have up to five cats, saying, "Anything under 5 lbs. that stays in your bedroom is your business."

Reference:

Madison.com

Wisconsin State Journal