‘Notorious’ Cat Hoarder Jailed : Animals: Woman convicted of keeping felines in poor conditions is accused of violating probation.

The elegant gray-haired woman in the fake leopard-skin coat sat in a jail cell in the Van Nuys courthouse Wednesday, held without bail and facing possibly seven years in state prison.

Her alleged crime? Owning Bugsy, Vampira and their kittens.

The woman who calls herself Cybelle St. James and says she holds a degree in psychology from Cambridge University in England has been playing cat and mouse with Animal Control officers for 13 years, officials said.

Using about a dozen aliases, St. James kept dozens of cats in unsanitary conditions and fraudulently sold them for hundreds of dollars, Animal Control Lt. Bob Pena said. St. James was finally convicted of animal cruelty and fraud in 1993, sentenced to a year in county jail and barred from owning cats or dogs for five years.

Now she’s in hot water again.

Animal Control officers on Tuesday searched the room St. James rents at a Van Nuys townhouse and, finding it clogged with boxes, cat litter, droppings and eight cats, hauled St. James away on a warrant for violating her probation, Pena said.

“There is a part of her that’s very intelligent,” said her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Leslie Warren. “She just lives her life very differently. . . . She’s not malicious toward the cats. Her life is the cats.”

St. James, who speaks with an English accent and says she is 45, is described by friends as a charming woman who regularly watches the TV game show “Jeopardy!” and can answer all the questions. But Pena said she is “one of the most notorious” cat hoarders in the San Fernando Valley and a wily and elusive foe.

For nearly 10 years, St. James’ Panorama City house was familiar turf for East Valley Animal Control officers, Pena said. Neighbors complained regularly that as many as 30 cats were living under one roof.

But St. James held officers at bay for years, reducing the number of cats she owned and then acquiring more after inspectors left, Pena said. “She was able to snow us for a while,” Pena said. “She’s a con.”

In 1991, however, St. James was evicted from the house, Pena said, and inspectors found a dozen cats inside in unsanitary conditions. They also learned that St. James was taking out ads in newspapers, falsely claiming her cats were pedigrees and selling them for hundreds of dollars, he said.

St. James was convicted of fraud and animal cruelty by a jury and sentenced to a year in Los Angeles County Jail in March 1993. She was also placed on probation for five years and required to attend regular counseling, ordered to repay more than $6,000 to her fraud victims and forbidden to own cats.

She never paid restitution or attended her counseling sessions, Pena said. In February 1994, a warrant was issued for her arrest for probation violation.

At that time, St. James was renting a townhouse on Costello Avenue in Van Nuys, according to neighbors. She regularly left dishes of food out for squirrels and raccoons, said a former neighbor who did not give her name.

But in June, St. James’ home was such a mess she moved in with Debbie Pepper Rubenstein, who lives in another unit, neighbors said.

“She said she had a cat. I said, ‘Oh, I once had a cat,’ ” said Rubenstein, 34. “She said she would keep the place clean downstairs but was a bit of a slob in her room. . . . I never imagined.”

St. James brought over two cats: Bugsy and Vampira, Rubenstein said. In September the pair had kittens and the room St. James rented began to smell, Rubenstein said.

“When she’s dressed in normal clothes she just seems a class act,” said Rubenstein, who prides herself on keeping a neat place. “She’s literate, intelligent. . . . But she needs help. The woman just needs help.”

Rubenstein tried to evict St. James. When that failed, she called Animal Control earlier this month. As officers searched the room Tuesday, they found flyers indicating St. James had been earning a living as a psychic, Pena said.

She was arrested on the warrant and held without bail, standard procedure for a probation violator, authorities said.

On Wednesday, she walked into Superior Court Judge Sandy Kriegler’s courtroom wearing her faux leopard-skin overcoat, hands shackled in cuffs. She waved at a friend in the audience, then sat, whispering to her public defender.

When Kriegler ordered her held without bail until a hearing on Jan. 8, St. James gasped. “Oh dear God,” she said. Her attorney shushed her, and St. James sat quietly until she was led out by a bailiff.