1525 West Willetta
Phoenix, AZ 85007
December 9, 2002
Doug Lingner
City of Phoenix
200 West Washington, 11th Floor
Phoenix, AZ 85003
Dear Councilman Lingner,
My neighbor and I are at loggerheads. At issue are her cats.
She cares for about forty of them. She owns about fifteen or twenty, but feeds
an additional twenty or more stray cats on a daily basis. She keeps a few cats
inside her house, but most are allowed to roam the neighborhood freely. In the
evenings, she shuffles up and down the street, banging on a can of cat food,
calling the cats to dinner.
As you might imagine, living next door to her sucks. There
are new piles of cat feces in my yard on a daily basis. If I observe a cat
defecating in my yard and move towards it to hiss and scare it away, she chides
me, telling me that the cat is waiting for dinner, and not to bother it. In
addition to the strays she feeds, she has constructed an elaborate fenced “cat
run” in her backyard where about ten more cats reside. If you’re still busy
imagining how much living next door to her can suck, stepping in cat poop every
time I take garbage to the alley or push a lawn mower through the yard, keep
imagining. Imagine, now, the stench coming from eight or ten closely confined
cats in a small, eighty square foot cat run. Imagine trying to use your backyard
for barbequing, but instead of enjoying the company of good food and good
friends, you’re forced inside instead by the stench of her cats. Friends no
longer want to come to my house due to the odor. This is what I put up with on a
daily basis, and have put up with since moving into my house in 1997.
Anything I do on my property that impacts--or has the
potential to impact--the cats is wrong, and I hear about it. Several years ago,
for example, my radiator hose was leaking, and perhaps a tablespoon of
antifreeze dripped onto my driveway. I didn’t discover the leak until the
following day, in traffic, of course. After getting the hose fixed, I returned
home to a lecture on what antifreeze can do to cats. This afternoon, we nearly
came to blows over the situation.
I am in the process of extensively remodeling my home, and
the company doing the demolition knocked loose a vent that covers my crawlspace.
This now allows cats access to my crawlspace, which I definitely don’t want.
I’ve chased cats out from under the house several times. On Saturday, I
replaced the cover, and secured it with a large rock, yet today when I stopped
by my house to pick up my mail, the cover and rock were dislodged. As I pulled
up to the house, five cats promptly ran into the crawlspace. As I moved toward
the vent, my neighbor came charging from her house, hollering at me to “leave
those cats alone.” She and I are now past the point of my politely discussing
the cat situation, and are now at the point of angry shouting.
I really like my neighbor, but I can’t stand her forty
cats. She can’t see that I have the right to enjoy my property without the
disruption of the constant stench of urine and fecal matter produced by these
cats. As I said, we’re at loggerheads. I’m sure many of my other neighbors
feel the same, I just happen to live closest to the problem.
I have contacted both the City and the County in the past
regarding the situation. They both told me that there are no ordinances
regulating cats. Animal control won’t do anything. The Humane Society will
lend me a trap, but will then apparently charge me to take in the cat. Although
Animal Control will be out in twenty or thirty minutes if there’s a dog
running around loose in the street, it appears that neither the City nor the
County have any ordinances or regulations relating to the control of cats.
In addition to the nuisance aspect of the situation is the
public health aspect. Cat feces can contain a parasite that causes the disease
toxoplasmosis. Although in most people it produces mild flu-like symptoms, it
can be transmitted by a pregnant women to her fetus, where it can often be
fatal. Additionally, if a baby is infected at birth or shortly after, the
parasite can lie dormant for months or years, eventually causing blindness,
mental retardation, epilepsy, and heart disease. Although she has a lawn service
that cleans her yard weekly, what about the feces in other places, such as the
alley? Contact with even contaminated soil can cause the disease. Our
neighborhood is a Superfund site waiting to be discovered.
It’s time for that to change. The city of Lincoln,
Nebraska, recently amended their animal code to allow residents to own no more
than five cats, unless they have a permit to operate as a “cattery.”
Additionally, cats are not permitted to run “at large” in the neighborhood,
but must be confined by the owner. Owners must purchase a permit or license for
each cat. [Lincoln Municipal Code, Title 6 et seq. specifically 6.12.132,
available online at http://interlinc.ci.lincoln.ne.us/city/council/agenda/2002/102802/02157.pdf,
adopted unanimously as Ordinance 18092 on November 18th, 2002.]
Why can’t a similar bill be introduced in Phoenix? The
City regulates all sorts of other public nuisances, citing people for
infractions such as junk cars in front yards, overgrown yards, and houses in
disrepair. I live a few blocks from the Fairgrounds. If I attempted to use my
front yard to park cars, I’d face a hefty penalty, and possible jail time. My
neighbor two doors to the west was apparently recently required by the City to
remove scores of cardboard boxes from the front of her house. Why can’t the
City require that cats be controlled? They definitely qualify as a nuisance.
When asked “what need does one person have for forty cats,” my neighbor’s
only response is that she has a soft spot for the stray cats that come around.
Her soft spot for strays is everybody else’s nuisance, and needs to be
controlled.
I’d be happy to invite you over some evening to witness
this pestilence of Biblical proportions first-hand. You can watch the "feeding
of the cats" at about dusk, then if you’d like to hang around and try to
enjoy a glass of wine in the backyard as the winds grow calm, you can experience
the overpowering stench of her cat run for yourself. Please let me know when a
good time would be to “sniff your constituents.” If the holidays are busy
for you, we can do it after the first of the year.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for acting.
David L Bell
