City Critters is a New York State charitable organization licensed to operate in the City of New York for the rescue and placement of stray and abandoned animals.
City Critters is a member of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals.
Donations made to City Critters, or paid on our behalf, are tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code; financial statements and current IRS Determination Letter are available for review upon request.
Support our rescue work with a donation:
Make a donation using a credit card through Network for Good:
Mail contributions to:
- City Critters Inc.
- P.O. Box 1345
- Canal Street Station
- New York NY 10013
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The Corona Collector
Over 100 cats shared a festering, feces-covered four-story house in Corona with the building's owner, an 82-year-old woman. 36 cats that were removed by local animal activists in September had to be euthanized. In March, the elderly owner was taken to a local hospital for psychiatric evaluation, and in her absence, activists removed the bodies of cats and kittens that had died in the building. But many more continued to roam the building, some of them living inside the walls and ceilings.
The elderly Corona woman had lived in isolation for years, with an ever-growing population of cats. She claimed to have brought them indoors from her backyard feeding station after neighbors threatened them harm. She did not provide veterinary care for the cats, who were all intact and bred efficiently. She was reported on a number of occasions to the ASPCA's Humane Law Enforcement Division, the NYC Department of Health, the Housing Department, and the Center for Animal Care and Control, to no avail.
Over the course of a year, a couple of local independent rescuers had tried to alleviate the situation by removing kittens and placing as many as they could save (many died), by spaying, neutering and returning some of the adults, and by having sick, elderly cats euthanized at a local veterinary practice. But they had limited resources, and the cats reproduced faster than rescuers could control the situation. Also, the owner did not always permit the cats to leave, probably fearing they were being euthanized. The rescuers were on the verge of a nervous breakdown; no amount of pushing NYC agencies to resolve the situation seemed to work.
Finally, one of the rescuers called to tell us that the relevant city agencies were going to converge upon the owner, remove her to a hospital for evaluation, and take as many of the cats as possible to CACC, presumably to be destroyed (a conclusion everyone seemed to feel was inevitable). About 18 cats were seized and taken to CACC, where they were eventually euthanized. Among the cats who died were some of the ones the rescuers had spayed, neutered and returned months before.
City Critters went with a local rescuer to look at the house while the owner was first at Elmhurst Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. The interior was virtually destroyed. Furniture, walls, floors, stairs, windows, were all laminated in filth. The place reeked of urine and feces; there was an inch deep carpet of compacted fecal material on the floors of each of the five rooms in the upstairs apartment, where some 20 to 30 cats still resided. There were dead kittens on the floor and behind the kitchen appliances. In the basement, another 15 to 20 cats were living in the ceiling and had not seen daylight for two years. This colony of unneutered animals had been left in the basement "for the weekend" a couple of years before by an irresponsible neighbor, who had never returned to claim them, but stopped by every so often to leave $20 for cat food.
On our first visit we left with one cat from the basement, whom we named Madison, got him to the vet and put him up for adoption. Our local contact brought us two more of the cats. At this point the owner was released from Elmhurst and allowed to return home. She ceased communicating with the local rescuers, furious because they had gone to her home in her absence with a Channel 11 film crew and local press in order to try to shame the appropriate agencies into taking action. To keep communications open, we contacted the owner and offered to give her some donated cat food. She accepted the donation and when we delivered it, told us we were welcome to take whatever cats we wanted as long as we could assure her that we would try to place them in homes.
When we heard that the authorities were going to take her back to Elmhurst and remove and destroy all the remaining cats, we offered to attend in order to try to help capture the cats more humanely and take some for adoption.
On Good Friday the CACC captured 14 cats, of which we later took six. City Critters volunteers captured 22 of the cats, and over the following days, we accepted all the remaining animals. The elderly owner signed over her animals to City Critters with the understanding that we would get as many out alive as possible. The local rescuers continued to go to her house every other day to set traps and catch cats with nets, transporting them to veterinary practices in Manhattan with whom we work.
We were very fortunate to find a sanctuary willing to take some of the wildest of the animals, and two local rescue groups willing to help with several animals after we provided them with vet care. A veterinarian in Pennsylvania who saw the news coverage on television kindly volunteered to adopt and provide vet care to four of the cats who needed special TLC, and made two trips to New York City to pick up the adoptees.
A litter of kittens on the floor of a bedroom in the Corona house. They were very ill when rescued, but survived and were adopted.