A French couple who lived in their apartment with nearly 160 cats and seven dogs have been given a one-year suspended prison sentence and a permanent ban on keeping pets. The Nice Criminal Court ruled that the man and woman "were guilty of the crime of abandonment, given the very poor state of health" of the animals. It also ordered the couple to pay more than €150,000 in compensation to animal welfare associations, AFP reports.
The couple lived with a total of 159 cats and seven dogs in an 80 square meter apartment in Nice. In 2023, police officers responding to a neighbor dispute found dozens of dehydrated, malnourished animals covered in parasites and lesions in every room in the couple's home. Investigators also found the bodies of at least two cats and two puppies in one bathroom.
At the end of the trial, the animals' owner, a 68-year-old woman, said she had no intention of "giving up." "Who wouldn't appeal such injustice?" she said. "It's like telling a woman she won't have any more children," she added. "They were the love of my life, but things didn't work out," the owner said. She said the deplorable state of her apartment and the condition of her animals were temporary. She said she was looking for solutions but found herself helpless due to an infection that affected the cats and the heat wave that made her sick.
A psychiatric evaluation identified a condition known as "Noah's syndrome," or hoarding, characterized by a desire to keep a larger than usual number of animals without the ability to properly care for them. The woman and her 52-year-old partner were facing eviction proceedings and an €8,000 rent debt.
In 2014, the couple had already been the subject of an investigation when they lived with 13 cats and a dog in an 18-square-metre studio flat. A few years later, the woman took in about 30 cats found in an abandoned building because there was a danger they would be poisoned. Then the animals multiplied. / BGNES
