Cat Hullabaloo : Posh Housing for 20 Felines Has Some Neighbors Snarling

To a well-kept and usually tranquil Studio City neighborhood, a unique NIMBY movement has come on little cat feet--about 80 of them.

The tale of the “cathouse,” as her offended neighbors call the new structure on Francine Katzenbogen’s million-dollar estate, is enough to give pause to the most dedicated advocate of the philosophy of “Not in My Back Yard.”

Katzenbogen, of New York City, wants to move 20 cats that she inherited from her mother and brother into a $100,000 guest house she constructed for them on an estate she bought on Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

But her neighbors have appealed to city authorities to stop her, complaining that even such luxuriously housed felines will create health problems, bother dogs, disrupt traffic and attract pet-eating coyotes.

Also, the cats, who would have their very own little floor-level windows, would stare.

“I love to go out in the garden and I don’t feel like I should be scrutinized by 20 cats,” said neighbor Ruth Wiseman, complaining that a balcony section of peeping felines would give her the willies.

“Where the garage used to be is now the cathouse. It’s not a nice expression but that’s what it is,” she said.

Wiseman and more than 50 of her neighbors signed petitions and sent letters to city officials to protest Katzenbogen’s request for a zoning variance that would exempt her from the city’s three-cat limit. If it is granted, she must also obtain a city kennel license.

The variance, which a city investigator recommended be approved, will be discussed today at a public hearing before a zoning administrator from the city Planning Department. The hearing will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Van Nuys Woman’s Club on Sylvan Street.

Katzenbogen was flying from her current home in Brooklyn on Thursday so she could attend the hearing, hoping to persuade city officials she is not bonkers.

“I feel maybe they think I’m a crazy little old lady,” Katzenbogen said in a telephone interview from New York.

“I’m not. I like to dress well. I love Chanel.”

Katzenbogen, who describes herself as “a woman of means” and “older than 39,” said she and her mother slowly accumulated 14 cats over 13 years because they could not turn their backs on abandoned animals. Katzenbogen inherited six more cats after her 34-year-old brother died suddenly in 1988.

To ease their grief over his death, Katzenbogen and her mother decided to move from their longtime home in New York. Katzenbogen bought the 5,894-square-foot Studio City house in 1989, but before they were able to move, her mother was found to have cancer. She died in October, 1990.

Since then, Katzenbogen said, she has been without family except for the cats, who live with her in a three-story Brooklyn house. She said she is eager to start a new life with them on her 14-room California estate, complete with gym, tennis court and maid’s quarters.

To that end, she has spent more than $100,000 renovating the garage into an airy 1,200-square-foot house with six rooms for her cats, said Moe Taheri, the contractor who is living in the estate’s main house while he finishes the remodeling.

The walls have been painted a chic dove gray and the floors will be covered with speckled gray tile. The rooms will be equipped with cat play towers, which have scratching surfaces and lounging platforms on different levels. Katzenbogen had multi-paned French windows installed to match the house decor and put in heating and air conditioning.

She also put in skylights so the cats “wouldn’t be bored” and shades that can be drawn to shut out the sky so “the cats wouldn’t be scared,” by lightning storms, Taheri said.

The cats, ranging in age from 2 to 13, will use the rooms for their toys and food, but will probably have full run of the house when she doesn’t have human guests, Katzenbogen said.

And she will empty the 16 litter boxes, she said.

“They’re really like little people,” said Katzenbogen, who waxes eloquent about Joshua, a half-Persian with a white lip, and Gloria, a homeless kitten who came to her during a hurricane.

Katzenbogen said, however, that she never lets her cats, which have all been spayed or neutered, outside the house. That’s why, she said, she figured getting the variance that she applied for in January would be no problem.

“I would never have bought the house and put my name on a loan from the bank for $1 million if I had known,” Katzenbogen said. “I had no inkling this was going to be a big deal.”

For some, it is not. Zoning Investigator Herminigildo Agustin said this was the first such request he had fielded, but he recommended granting the variance with a clause providing that the cats remain in their chateau and never be let loose in the yard. The variance would expire when the last cat dies.

Agustin dismissed fears of a catastrophe, saying, “I don’t think their presence in the house would be adversely impacting the neighborhood.”

Evelyn Cohen, who lives across the street, agreed. “Those cats wouldn’t bother anyone,” she said. Taheri and Katzenbogen said they circulated a petition in Katzenbogen’s favor that neighbors from four households signed.

But a variety of reasons for opposing the project have surfaced since February, when neighbors within a 500-foot radius of Katzenbogen’s house received notice of the public hearing.

Sidney and Rose Dicker, who have lived in the neighborhood since 1957, said that if the cats escaped, they could attract coyotes from the hills who might prey on other neighborhood pets. Plus, they said, there was Ruth Wiseman’s emphysema. After all, cats have dander, Rose Dicker said, and there’s the contents of those 16 litter boxes.

“We’re worried about a lot of things,” she said.

Down the street, Ruth Barr contended that allowing one variance could set a precedent for others, perhaps even leading to a neighborhood full of “those cute little pigs.”

She said she also objects to the cats because she is afraid they might escape their confines and be killed in traffic.

Others in the neighborhood have street concerns of a different sort.

“In addition to the nuisance of cats straying in the neighborhood, there is a possibility of a hazard to traffic on a very busy thoroughfare,” Mr. and Mrs. Robert Zussman wrote in a Feb. 22 letter to the city.

“Cats do not have the same alertness to traffic as do dogs and Laurel Canyon has enough problems.”

Katzenbogen disagrees. “I can’t believe this ridiculous thing,” she said. “You would think I have tigers and lions.”