Cat lover setting up nonprofit shelter

Saturday, Feb. 10, 2001 | 10:10 a.m.

Muth shares her home east of Carson City with 76 cats. She been caring for unwanted felines for 10 years.

"I got started in 1991 and I was living in Honolulu at the time," Muth said. "I was at a shopping center and I saw this little Japanese lady feeding all these stray cats. I started talking to her. Before that, I never realized there was such a problem with animal overpopulation.

"You come across so many of them that have been mistreated and abused. Once you get started, and you open your eyes to the problem, you can't say, 'I can't do this."'

Muth spends $500 per month on cat food and kitty litter. She cleans 36 cat boxes three times a day.

Muth, an employee at Nevada Job Link in Reno, estimates she has spent more than $60,000 on food and litter in the past 10 years.

"And that's not counting the medical bills, because when they get sick, they go to the vet," Muth said. "They don't just sit and die. I will do anything to keep them healthy."

Muth also has paid to have each cat spayed or neutered and for necessary inoculations.

She's also built up some steep travel bills for her cats. Muth has moved her cats from Honolulu to North Carolina, then to Golden Valley, north of Reno, and now to Mound House, just east of Carson City.

She had 36 cats when she flew them from Honolulu to Asheville, N.C. Air fare was $119 per cat, she said. When she moved to Reno, she couldn't find an airline to fly the felines.

"I ended up buying a used motor home and I got 63 cats in there. It took us four days to get here," she said. Put all the different expenses together and Muth says, "I'm broke."

It's the reason she is establishing a nonprofit organization. As a nonprofit organization, called Home At Last, any donation of food or shelter for the homeless cats would be tax deductible, Muth said.

Muth moved her cats to Mound House last week, in search of a better life with more room for the cats. Lyon County has no ordinances limiting the number of cats per residence. Yet before the move, Muth's cats already led a pretty good life in Golden Valley, said officials from the Nevada Humane Society.

"When I saw them in Golden Valley, they had food, water, clean litter pans and they had beds, everything and anything you think of," said Janet Arobio, director of field services at the Nevada Humane Society.

"They had toys, ways to get out and ways to get away from each other. There was no smell. We had no problem with the situation at all."

Muth has met roadblocks in fixing up housing for the cats in Mound House.

She was set to buy two trailers for the cats. But the trailers were built before 1976 and Lyon County code does not allow trailers that old. She has contacted contractors to build the cats a home but cost estimates are about $32,000.

"I want to set up about three mobile homes or one doublewide so they could have their space and not live in the house with me," Muth said. "If people are trying to get rid of one or sell it to me at a price I can afford, that's what I'd need."