More than 100 cats seized from West Side cat shelter

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Animal Protective League continued this evening to confiscate an estimated 150 cats from the Cat Crossing shelter on West 25th Street that humane officers first raided Wednesday afternoon.
Just 13 ill cats were taken Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, when Cat Crossing founder Mary Wawrytko was asked to provide veterinary records for those cats and the others in her care. She and her volunteers were also asked to thoroughly clean the shelter, a former apartment and warehouse.
"Lack of cooperation led us to begin seizing all of the cats today," APL director Sharon Harvey said. "And blood tests revealed that some of the cats have highly contagious and often-fatal diseases, yet they were co-mingling with cats that may have been healthy when they arrived at the shelter."  
The lack of sanitation and high probability of disease transmission led the APL to begin removing all of the cats, Harvey said.
"We embrace rescue groups that provide good, safe care for cats, but the cats we found living at Cat Crossing needed our help."
Wawrytko and her supporters say the APL is being the "rich bully on the block," by expecting conditions at a grassroots, low-budget shelter to rival the APL's well-funded facility not far away.
Cat Crossing took in the most desperate and untamed cats plucked from Cleveland's Tremont and Flats neighborhoods.
"All of them were vaccinated and neutered," Wawrytko said. "But it is true that we lack a quarantine area for ill cats."
The APL raid, based on a search warrant obtained when someone reported unsanitary conditions and ill cats, was ongoing at 9 p.m. today at the make-shift sanctuary founded in 2012.

Wawrytko then rented the West 25th site and continued to focus on the stray and feral cats living in the city's Tremont neighborhood and the Flats district along the Cuyahoga River. Many of the cats weren't socialized, so the shelter quickly filled, while she and other volunteer caregivers relied on donations to provide food and veterinary care.Wawrytko founded the Cat Crossing group after she faced the same complaints she's confronting now. Her former home in the Flats was over-run with cats, and the complaints were mounting. Fellow cat rescuers formed a new group, Tails from the City, which took in 106 of the cats Wawrytko was feeding in and around her home in 2011.
Wawrytko has refused to sign ownership of the seized cats over to the APL, so a hearing has been set for Feb. 6 in Cleveland Municipal Court. She faces multiple misdemeanor counts of animal neglect, but charges have not yet been filed.
Today, the APL, after receiving criticism from other cat rescuers, released photos of a few of the cats that were confiscated Wednesday. The images show oozing eye infections, a litter box that hadn't been cleaned for days and a concrete floor covered with feces.
One kitten had to be euthanized after a veterinarian determined it was suffering from Feline Infectious Peritonitis, a painful, contagious and deadly disease.
Wawrytko has hired an attorney who advised her today to "stay calm," she said. "But this all boils down to a difference in philosophy between those of us struggling to help cats and the rich APL."