Investigation Of Neighborhood Stench From Boarded Up Bank Foreclosure Reveals Remains Of 50 Cats

In New Haven, Connecticut, the New Haven Independent reports:

• As the skeletal remains of 50 abandoned felines were removed from a foreclosed-upon Quinnipiac Avenue house Thursday, City Hall’s Andy Rizzo vowed that his anti-blight agency will take lessons from the episode as it confronts a new wave of abandoned homes. Rizzo, director of New Haven’s Liveable City Initiative (LCI), spoke at a press conference one day after neighbors alerted TV stations to an overpowering stench that led to the mound of cat remains in a basement apartment of the boarded-up house at 467 Quinnipiac Ave. The bank that foreclosed upon the house earlier this year sent a cleaning crew to remove the remains Thursday, Rizzo said. LCI had received repeated calls and emails from neighbors about the stink coming from the house, beginning last fall.

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• This isn’t the first cat-overrun hovel [police department’s animal control officer Stephani] Johnson has encountered. In the summer of 2007, for instance, she was called to a Girard Avenue home where 94 cats were living. She had them removed.

For more, see LCI: We’ll Learn From Cat-House Disaster.

For more on "foreclosure pets", go here and go here. petsII and foreclosures