Activists Fight Like Cats and Dogs

The claws were out and the fur was flying Sunday as animal rights activists picketed the Canoga Park shelter of a fellow rescuer, saying she confines sick cats in cramped, filthy cages.

As police and off-duty officers looked on, about 30 dueling activists accused each other of a litter of crimes and videotaped everybody for protection, they said, as a group supporting the shelter responded by bringing out competing signs. There were no arrests.

At the center of the dispute is Marge Weems, who runs Angel Puss & Pooch Rescue shelters in Canoga Park and Eagle Rock. Weems has pleaded innocent to animal abuse charges of keeping too many cats at her West Hills home.

Her husband and two other men face battery charges for a scuffle during a protest at the Canoga Park shelter in October. Because of that fracas, the protesters and Weems’ supporters kept at least six video cameras trained on each other Sunday afternoon.

Weems has operated Angel Puss since 1992 and says she finds new homes for as many as 4,000 cats and dogs a year--animals she says would be euthanized at other shelters “if they blinked, looked wrong or had a cold.” Weems maintains she’s being targeted by other animal rescuers and animal control officials because she has filed a federal lawsuit accusing them of colluding to put her nonprofit humane society out of business.

Some of the protesters outside Weems’ shelter Sunday acknowledged they want to shut it down--but only to rescue the hundreds of cats inside.

“It’s not collusion,” protest organizer Jim Cross said. “We are united out here against animal abuse, and that’s all we have in common.”

Some said they had volunteered at the shelter over the years and witnessed sickly cats wasting away in tiny cages stacked like shoe boxes.

“The conditions were just so depressing and appalling,” said a woman who gave her name only as Dawn.

On Sunday, Weems and several volunteers offered tours of the 3,200-square-foot Canoga Park shelter, where she says she keeps about 300 cats and a few dogs.

Inside, cats were sleeping in car carriers, clawing multitiered posts, lounging in baskets and hissing at each other over bowls of food.

Outside, as picketers held signs saying “The Abuse Must Stop” and “Save the Cats,” Angel Puss volunteer Greg Raffetto said he has never seen the poor conditions described by the protesters. He said animals often arrive at shelters because they are sick, and “most of them can be nursed back to health and found good homes.”

The longtime bickering among Weems and other rescuers “results in all this extra time and energy being spent away from the animals, and it hurts the animals,” said Raffetto, whose sweatpants were covered in cat fur.

Another of Weems’ supporters, Bill Girolamo, credited her operation for nursing his cat Spikey back to health.

“Any other shelter probably would have put him to sleep.... I think these people are saints,” said the Venice geologist. His T-shirt proclaimed, “All I Need to Know I Learned From My Cat.”