A middle-aged to older adult female in a green long-sleeve shirt with white text and black pants sits relaxed on the couch surrounded by domestic cats of various breeds, including tabby and calico patterns. The scene is indoors, likely her home kitchen area, with furniture like a blue quilted couch and wooden table. 4:12
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She gave her house to a thousand rescue cats

Lynea Lattanzio's father asked her to help him find some new cats. She went to a shelter and came home with fifteen kittens. more

By the end of that year she had rescued and rehomed 96 cats, and she knew she had found her calling. The next year she became a vet tech to keep the medical bills down. For seven years the money came out of her own pocket. "I spent my retirement, I sold my car, I sold my wedding ring," she says.

A middle-aged to older adult female in a green long-sleeve shirt with white text and black pants sits relaxed on the couch surrounded by domestic cats of various breeds, including tabby and calico patterns. The scene is indoors, likely her home kitchen area, with furniture like a blue quilted couch and wooden table. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Lynea Lattanzio's father asked her to help him find some new cats.

All of that grew into The Cat House on the Kings, California's largest no-cage sanctuary for feral and abandoned cats. It holds around 800 grown cats and 300 kittens, and she has taken in 28,000 over the years, which she figures is probably a record. Lynea started it in her own house and kept at it until there was no room left for her. "I ended up with 60-something cats in my bedroom, with dogs, and I just said that's it, and I moved out."

She traded a five-bedroom house with a pool and a river view for a mobile home on the property that looks out at a rusty metal shed. "I've come up in the world," she says. She calls it her cat-free zone, and laughs.

Mornings start early. The staff come in about 4 o'clock, and Teresa, one of the crew, says feeding everyone takes thirty minutes to an hour. Frank Lavers wasn't a cat person when he started, but now the cats wait for him at the gate. In the kitchen, Lynea stands in a green shirt with cats all around her.

A woman in a green shirt stands in a kitchen with several cats around her. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Lynea in the kitchen of the main house, with cats all around her.

The thing people say most after seeing the place is that they didn't expect it to be so clean. The cats look fed and healthy. One white cat with gray patches and green eyes just sits and looks up, calm as anything.

A white cat with gray patches and green eyes sits on a patterned surface and looks upward. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
The house is far cleaner than most people expect, and the cats look well.

Keeping them well costs about 1.6 million dollars a year for food, litter, staff, upkeep and vet bills. The place has its own hospital, an ICU for the sickest cats, a kitten quarantine and one for seniors. Seven vet techs work there, and a vet checks the cats once a week.

A generous donor left Lynea an estate, and the sale paid for the land next door. The grounds now cover twelve acres inside a cat-proof fence, so every cat can roam. Under the trees there are cats all over, with their own feeding station, bedding and heater, and one has picked a spot on the straw.

Lynea isn't trying to keep them. Her aim is to find them new homes, and she says five hundred friendly cats are up for adoption and ready to go. When she sits down on a bed, the cats gather around her anyway.

A woman sits on a bed surrounded by many cats, some resting and others moving around her. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Lynea sits on a bed and the cats gather around her.

Then she sneezes, right in the middle of them. "I must be allergic to cats," she says. Someone says bless you, and she says thank you.

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