October 27, 2008

A Florida couple has devoted their lives to tending to the 100 cats that share their home. (Pet Pulse Photo by John McQuiston)

ENGLEWOOD, Fla. -- How's this for karma: A man whose car once sported a bumper sticker reading, "I Love Cats -- Dead Ones" now shares his home with 100 cats, all very much alive.

Rick Kingston and his wife, Chrissy, turned their home into a "no-kill" cat shelter, called Puffy Paws Kitty Haven, in 2006. Now cats relax in every nook, cranny, corner in the Englewood, Fla., residence, about 15 miles south of Sarasota.

The Kingstons live in the 2000 square-foot house with the feline menagerie.

And they've heard all the possible jokes about their living situation.

"People call me the cat man, call her the cat woman," Rick Kingston said. "No, we're just Rick and Chris."

But they don't deny that their lives are unusually intertwined with those of the animals they shelter.

Neither Rick nor Chris has a full-time job. At a daily cost of more than $100 to care for the cats, much of the scratching and clawing in the house comes from the Kingstons struggling to raise necessary funding.

Innocent Beginnings

Chrissy Kingston was 18 and working a contracting job at a private residence when she noticed two kittens near the porch and asked the home's owner about them.

" 'Take them,' " Chrissy remembers him saying. " 'I don't want them anyway.' "

"So I did. That's when I fell in love with cats."

She had just three cats when she and Rick married 11 years ago. Rick's job involved traveling as far north as Tampa. He'd find stray cats and litters of kittens and bring them home. The menagerie began to grow.

It was also when the strange looks and the questions began to come. People noticed the Kingstons at Wal-Mart buying hundreds of pounds of cat litter and asked why they needed so much.

"Everytime we tell someone we have 20, 30, 40 cats, they say 'ooh, your house must stink,' " Rick said.

It didn't stink, they say, because of Chrissy's fastidiousness. She had a house cleaning business and her skills came in handy in keeping her own home clean.

The number of cats continued to climb. Strays showed up. People began to surrender their unwanted pets at the house.

At this point, their home wasn't a shelter, it was just a house with an unusually large number of pet cats, which seemed to adjust well to sharing their territory with each other.

"We've been really lucky'" Chrissy said. "We've never had a cat hurt another cat."

They worked in equal parts to put food on their table and in the cats' bowls. The effort began to overwhelm them.

Incorporation

One day in the fall of 2006, after Rick had managed to scrape $50 together, he told Chrissy that he was going to Wal-Mart to buy a video game. No, you're not, she told him. Some of the cats need medicine.

"I went through the roof," Rick said of the incident. The couple later agreed the financial burden had become too great for them to bear.

"We're taking care of the community's kitty cats," Rick told Chrissy. "We need to ask the community's help."

By December 2006, they established a not-for-profit organization, Puffy Paws Kitty Haven, allowing them to solicit donations. They now offer cats for adoption and welcome visitors by appointment.

The Kingstons are now in the process of filing IRS paperwork for 501(c)(3) status.

"Once that goes through we'll be able to get grants," Chrissy said. "That will be a big help."

First they have to find a lawyer who will file the paperwork for them at a reduced fee. Non-profit status has not eased the financial crunch.

Crisis

Most of the money comes in from small donations. Rick handles the fund raising with telemarketing, salvaging donated junk cars for scrap metal and freelancing graphic design work.

People drop off food, litter and supplies. Some simply leave it outside. Don Gucciardo wanted to see what he'd be supporting first before he donated some materials.

"I made phone calls. Then I wanted to personally see it," Gucciardo said. "And, yeah, I'm satisfied that these people are sincere about what they're doing. The place is clean, the cats look well-cared for."

The daily challenge of fund raising became a crisis when Rick suffered a heart attack in September.

Chrissy tried to step in and help but she already had her hands full caring for the cats.

"Making sure they're fed, boxes are done, it's clean -- is anywhere from 18 to 20 hours a day," she said.

She gave up the last of her home cleaning jobs last year.

They fell two months behind on their Florida Power & Light bill and faced losing electricity.

"We can't let the cats roast," Rick said.

Local media took an interest in their plight and the resulting publicity generated enough donations to pay the power bill.

Always On The Edge

The surge of goodwill got them caught up but the pressure on the Kingstons to keep up with the cats' demands is constant.

They go through 18 pounds of dry cat food, almost 50 pounds of canned food and 250 pounds of cat litter a day.

"It's very stressful because you have to come up with $100 a day or these cats don't eat," Rick said.

A local veterinarian offers services at a reduced cost but the Kingstons have to pay for medications, as well as for testing supplies. Each new cat that comes in must be tested for feline leukemia. The cats are all spayed or neutered. Kittens born in the shelter come from cats already pregnant when they arrived.

Though their routines are ruled by the cats' needs, the Kingstons believe they're doing what's best for themselves and the cats.

"(At) times when I get overwhelmed, which is a lot, I step back and see how happy they are," Chrissy says. "And I see how happy people are when they come over and adopt them."

As many as half of their cats are not adoptable because of age, disease, injury or personality problems. The recent financial scare forced them to create a plan in case their shelter fails, but they know the alternative for many of the cats would be death.

"Unfortunately, if we ever had to relinquish the animals, half of them would be euthanized, because of the physical, emotional and behavior problems," Rick said.

For more information about Puffy Paws Kitty Haven, visit PuffyPawsKittyHaven.com.

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