Houston takes in starving cats, worries about the cost

HOUSTON — The number of cats taken in by the Houston animal shelter has swelled to two dozen and the city is wondering how long it can care for the animals captured in and around a home in the Enchanted Forest subdivision since Sunday.

Houston city code requires that animals be held for at least three days. Mayor Virgie Thompson, who was at the shelter Tuesday afternoon giving the cats antibiotics, said she was considering extending that for a week.

“We need to give them a chance to become more adoptable,” the mayor said.

But how long the cats can stay, she said, depends on how long the city can afford to care for them. Cash donations to aid the cats should be made to the two cat rescue groups involved — Clear Creek Cat Rescue and Mat Valley Kitty Rescue. The city is asking that any cash donations go through those two groups.

Unlike Palmer and Wasilla, Houston handles its own animal control issues. The city shelter is small and not used much over the course of the year. Thompson said maybe a dozen cats are sheltered at the facility in an average year.

“We took in more than a year’s worth of cats in a day,” said city firefighter and spokesman Christian Hartley.

The task of corralling the cats and bringing them to the shelter has fallen to the rescue groups and to the Houston Fire Department. The cats have been arriving in spurts as they are captured in traps set around the property. The 24 in the shelter as of Tuesday afternoon are likely not the last of them. Volunteers checking the traps reported seeing a handful of other cats in the area.

Fire Chief Tom Hood suffered a pretty serious bite to his hand during the cat roundup, and he wasn’t the only person bitten or scratched. He said his doctor instructed him sit out the next couple days’ of the effort. Cat bites often get infected. People have lost hands.

“The doctor basically gave me two days off work and told me to come back tomorrow,” Hood said Tuesday. “My hand’s still swollen. The redness has gone away so that’s a good sign.”

“Well-behaved” is not how the cats reacted when firefighters arrived, Hood said. Rather, the cats were climbing the walls and running wild, he said.

“Once they’ve been down at the animal shelter and we’ve been feeding them they seem to have mellowed out quite a bit,” Hood said. He said that seems like a positive sign that the cats will able to be rehabilitated.

The home where the cats were found is on Leprechaun Drive. Hood said he’s heard stories about the place for years. The city has been trying to get the owner to take care of the cats and clean up the massive piles of trash outside for about a year, Hood said.

“I never imagined it was as bad [as] we found it,” he said.

Thompson said that the city sent notices to Fred Hallamek, informing him that if he didn’t clean up the trash the city would do it for him and bill him for the work. Hallamek had been granted a 10-day extension to the deadline when Wells Fargo Bank foreclosed and took possession of the property Friday, July 15.

Thompson said Tuesday she doesn’t know where Hallamek is. But a Facebook page for a Fred Hallamek that appears to be the man in question contains updates on a move from Alaska to Minnesota beginning in July 13.

Hood said that Frank and Debra Hallamek – Debra’s name is listed in Mat-Su Borough records as the owner of the home — once worked for the Houston Fire Department under a previous fire chief. Frank Hallamek was actually the department’s deputy chief.

Asked whether Alaska State Troopers were investigating, trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said she would look into it.

“In the meantime, look up the animal cruelty statute. We are bound by statutes and evidence has to support a charge,” Peters wrote in an e-mail.

The relevant state statute says cruelty has been committed if a person fails to provide adequate care for an animal and the animal dies or suffers for a prolonged period of time.

The charge is a class A misdemeanor meaning that it carries a sentence of less than a year in jail and a fine. A judge can also order that a person found guilty of the crime give up the animals in question, pay for their care and not own animals for up to 10 years.

Rescue group volunteers on scene Monday said they didn’t believe the cats could get as skinny as they had if the starvation hadn’t been going on for weeks or months. Hood said Monday that a handful of dead cats were found on the property, though it is unclear when or how they died.