In the weeks that followed, all but one of the cats had to be euthanized, they were so ill.
Now, eight months later, Carle, a 64-year-old school bus driver, sits in jail facing 103 charges of animal cruelty — each charge related to a specific cat found on the property, said Lt. Misti Scaggs, the head of Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control’s Special Investigations Unit.
The case is the largest in terms of the number of charges against any one person that Scaggs can remember during her 13 years with the division.
The cats — as well as one dog, one pigeon and a box turtle — were confiscated Dec. 19, 2012.
But Scaggs and her colleagues had been to Carle’s home more than a dozen times in the three years prior.
And it’s Carle’s apparent awareness of the condition of her cats and her failure to act despite opportunities to do so that led the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s office to prosecute, said Sam Miller, the office’s animal cruelty prosecutor.
“What I look at is how long has this been going on, have they been given the opportunity to correct it, are they aware of the condition their animals are in?” Miller said.
According to her arrest report, more than once Carle confirmed to authorities that she had too many cats and agreed to whittle their numbers. But they would multiply by the next visit. She told officers dispatched to her home that she was keeping sick cats and kittens within and more often than not refused to let them examine them. She ventured to her veterinarian to get medicines for some of the sick cats, yet many went untreated.
“She’d go to the vet to get medicine, but she’d just get them for five kittens when she needed them for 40,” Miller said Wednesday. “Wait ‘til you see the pictures that come out of there. There were cats with eyeballs missing, tails cut in half.”
Miller, who specializes in these cases in addition to other duties, said the office has in the past declined to prosecute some animal neglect and cruelty suspects in favor of getting the person mental health help — and that may still be in the cards for Carle — but her history led to the prosecution.
“I think she’s just selfish, wanted the cats for herself. She had cats who were literally dying beneath her feet and she did nothing,” Miller said.
In December 2009, an anonymous tipster called authorities to complain that more than 200 cats were living in the home in feces and urine.
When animal control officers knocked on Carle’s door, they said she wouldn’t let them in. They issued a violation notice ordering her to get the animals vaccinated and reduce the brood to 10 cats tops, according to Carle’s arrest report.
Several more visits ensued, but officers did not get into the home until January 2010, when they counted up to 60 cats, some of them sick. The house smelled of ammonia from the urine, the arrest report details. Another violation notice was issued.
By June, the number of cats had been whittled to 36 and the officers reported the place was looking cleaner.
But they made multiple return visits in the spring and summer of 2011, never managing to make contact with Carle.
In May 2012, a new complaint that the house smelled and the cats were crated inhumanely on the front porch comes to authorities. Officers visited the home and issue a citation.
Several visits later, the officers reached Carle again and, according to the arrest report, she admitted to having more than 80 cats inside and admitted that the cats kept inside the home – including 35 kittens – were all sick.
Officers visited two more times and talked to Carle’s veterinarian, who said he had given her antibiotics for the cats, though he had not examined all of them.
By Dec. 19, 2012 officers had warrant in hand. They donned protective clothing and respirator masks and entered through an unlocked back door when no one answered.
Among their reported findings: six dead kittens kept in black garbage bags in a freezer.
Carle arrived two hours later and ceded ownership of the animals to the county.
Scaggs recalls having mixed emotions of sadness and anger witnessing the conditions in the home and the animals living there.
“Ultimately, the animals are the ones to suffer,” Scaggs said Wednesday. “It was a hoarding type situation that we see on the rise these days.”
Miller said any punishment or plea deal that is fashioned by him and the state attorney’s office will have some sort of mental health component “whether it involves incarceration or not — we want to rehabilitate her. I don’t know if it’s possible.”
(Palm Beach Post - Aug 7, 2013)
