Love Has No Bounds : Fur Flies Over Limit on Cats

The telephones at Santa Ana City Hall rang incessantly Thursday with the protests of outraged residents. Some threatened to vote to oust City Council members from office. Others said they’d put an initiative on the November ballot. In parking lots elsewhere in the city, volunteers covered windshields with protest flyers and walked door to door with petitions.

What was the source of this angry outpouring of civic activism?

Cats.

On July 7, the City Council gave preliminary approval to a new ordinance that would limit each household to three cats. Feline lovers were indignant.

And on Thursday, a half-page newspaper advertisement appeared in the Orange County Register: “PLEASE HELP US SAVE OUR PETS,” it implored readers. “YOUR HELP IS URGENTLY NEEDED!”

People for Pets, the organization that placed the advertisement, urged cat owners to call City Hall in advance of a Monday hearing, when the council is expected to take a final vote.

“I’m very upset about it,” said Patti Chavez, who keeps six cats in her home on Diamond Street. “People shouldn’t tell us how many pets we can have. And there’s no way I could decide which ones to let go. To me they’re like my children.”

Councilman Wilson Hart, who voted for the measure, stressed that the law isn’t really aimed at people who have five or six cats, although he admitted that animal control officers would have to investigate if they got a complaint. It’s aimed, he said, at people with dozens of the critters.

Specifically, the law was drafted after neighbors complained about the “Cat Man of Santa Ana,” who reportedly keeps 35 to 50 cats at his home.

Victoria Reinking, spokeswoman for Animal Pro-Life, a Tustin-based group that works to place stray and abandoned animals in new homes, said she began to organize the cat-saving effort after the council vote two weeks ago. Her group sent out a “Pet Owners’ Alert” to supporters and members and then took to the streets with petitions.

By Thursday, they had collected about 300 signatures. For good measure, they translated their message into Spanish and canvassed homes in primarily Spanish-speaking areas of the city Thursday afternoon.

Included in Reinking’s petitions is the name of outgoing City Manager Robert C. Bobb, who signed on his way into a supermarket the other day. Bobb said he believes that people with more than three cats should be allowed to “grandfather” their pets under the new law.