A French couple, who shared their apartment with 159 cats and seven dogs, received Wednesday 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 offence of abandonment, given the very poor state of health” of the animals.
It also ordered the couple to pay more than €150,000 in damages to animal welfare associations.
The couple lived with 159 cats and seven dogs in an 860-square-foot apartment in Nice.
In 2023, police officers responding to a neighbourhood dispute found dozens of dehydrated, malnourished animals covered in parasites and lesions in every room of the couple’s home.
In a bathroom, investigators also found the bodies of at least two cats and two puppies.
At the end of the trial the owner of the animals, a 68-year-old woman, said she had no intention of “giving up.”
“Who wouldn’t appeal against an injustice like this?” she said. “It’s like telling a woman she won’t have any more children.”
“They were the loves of my life, but things have gone off track,” the owner said.
She insisted that the apartment’s state of disrepair and the condition of her animals were temporary.
She said she was looking for solutions but had found herself helpless because of an infection that affected the cats and the heatwave that had made her ill.
A psychiatric assessment revealed a mental condition known as the “Noah syndrome,” or animal hoarding, characterized by an urge to keep a higher-than-usual number of animals without the ability to properly look after them.
The woman and her 52-year-old partner were facing eviction proceedings and an €8,000 rental debt.
In 2014, the couple had already been the subject of an investigation when they lived with 13 cats and a dog in an 195-square-foot studio.
Several years later the woman took in about 30 cats found in an abandoned building, believing they were at risk of being poisoned. Then the animals reproduced.
