Fox29 WFLX TV, West Palm Beach, Florida-Police rescue 35 cats from Lake Worth home

Police rescue 35 cats from Lake Worth home

By John Bachman - bio | email
Posted by Rachel Leigh - email

LAKE WORTH, FL (WFLX) -  Filth, trash and urine: Those are the words used by Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control officers to describe a local house that was full of cats.

Officers took 35 cats from that house, but this is not the first time this homeowner has been found living with dozens of cats in squalor. Four years ago, officers found 46 cats dead inside the same woman's home after a fire at her old house

Now, her neighbor wants to make sure it doesn't happen again. "I noticed a problem about three months ago when her air conditioning unit broke," said next door neighbor Leigh Ann Fischer.

Fischer said she knew something odd was going at her next door neighbors house. So she decided to take a closer look and went to talk to the woman who lives there, Dianne Gennekin. And when she came to the door, "It was just massive smell of filth and dirt. I just couldn't believe what was going on."

She called Animal Care and Control and the sheriff's office after, she said, she threw up several times from the smell of urine.

Officers eventually took 35 cats from the property. They also say the home was over run by trash, debris and urine all over the floors. The cats did not have clean water to drink.

Gennekin has a troubled history with cats. Four years ago, after a fire at her old house in Delray Beach, officers found 65 cats, most of them dead -- some even decomposing.

Gennekin's current home has been deemed unlivable until it can be sanitized. She does not face any criminal charges.

But Leigh Ann Fischer worries without stiffer penalties, Gennekin will get more cats and the problems will continue. "You just can't believe, you can't believe, that something like that is happening right next door to you."

The Palm Beach County Health Department is also checking to see if there's a health risk to neighbors. According to reports from Animal Care and Control, all but one of the cats were strays. Most will be put down.

We did talk to Gennekin on the phone Tuesday; she told us she did not want to comment about this.