SCOTTS VALLEY – The cats and dogs still carry the stench of urine and feces a day after county Animal Services officers and sheriff’s deputies rescued them from a filthy Ben Lomond house.

“Imagine 83 cats living in a house with no litter boxes for two years, and you get the general idea,” said Todd Stosuy, supervising field ranger for the county Animal Services Authority.

All together, Stosuy found 88 pets – the cats, three dogs and two iguanas – in the house Tuesday afternoon, an incident Animal Services officials have called one of the largest animal hoarding cases in recent memory.

“This is the most animals we’ve taken in a hoarding situation,” said Animal Services spokeswoman Tricia Geisreiter as she surveyed some of the cats they’ve relocated to the animal shelter in Scotts Valley.

Sheriff’s deputies were tipped off to the potential problem Tuesday afternoon when someone called and asked that a deputy check on the welfare of the pets and their owner, a woman in her 40s.

Deputy Doug Smith found dozens of cats living throughout the small three-bedroom home on Glen Arbor Road.

“He described the conditions as `deplorable,'” sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Campos said Wednesday.

The pets lived in two of the bedrooms, the kitchen, bathroom and communal areas the house. The woman had let the animals basically have run of the home and, in some places, the animal feces was piled 4-feet deep, according to Animal Services officials.

“It covered the TV. It covered the sink, the toilet in the bathroom,” Geisreiter said. “Every surface in the house was covered with feces and urine.”

Stosuy said he threw away his clothes after spending four hours in the house Tuesday afternoon confiscating 33 cats, two of the dogs and the iguanas.

“Today when I pulled up to the residence, I could still smell it from the road,” he said, adding the woman is still living at the house and the building has not been red-tagged.

Fifty cats remain at the house or on the property, and Animal Services officers have set live traps to catch the animals and bring them to the shelter, Geisreiter said. A family friend also took one of the dogs home.

The animals brought to the shelter were, for the most part, healthy and well-fed, officials said. The woman told Stosuy she obtained the cats through her work with local animal rescue groups and that all the felines were spayed or neutered.

“She was very well-intentioned. These cats are not in poor, poor condition,” Stosuy said.

The woman had not adopted any of the cats from the Scotts Valley shelter, officials said. They described her as an “animal hoarder,” someone who has a mental illness or compulsion to collect pets.

“The mind-set of collectors is they’re the only ones who can care for the animals,” Stosuy said.

Animal Control officials will keep the pets at the Scotts Valley shelter until their investigation is complete and are coordinating with the Watsonville shelter and the Santa Cruz SPCA to house all of the animals.

The woman could face misdemeanor animal neglect charges but had not been cited Wednesday afternoon, Stosuy said.

Contact Jennifer Squires at (jsquires@santacruzsentinel.com.