Nearly 100 cats were seized from a Vacaville home on Friday following numerous complaints from neighbors regarding the smell from the animals.

Humane Animal Services officers, assisted by Solano County Animal Control, arrived at the house on Vassar Drive Friday morning to serve an inspection and abatement warrant they had obtained. They continued to remove cats from the building throughout the afternoon.

In Vacaville, city law states that residents may only have three cats. Vacaville Police Captain Ian Schmutzler said 94 cats were taken from the home on Friday.

Humane Animal Services Captain Steve Hart said the large number of cats were taken to the Solano Animal Shelter in Fairfield. The homeowner, Kathy Gerrard, kept an unknown number of cats in her home following the service of the warrant, and a neighbor took seven more, said Hart.

The city first became involved last summer, when several neighbors complained to code enforcement of a continuing odor, specifically the smell of cat feces and urine from the backyard of the residence, said Schmutzler.

A nuisance complaint was filed with the city and a nuisance hearing was held in October, he said. After listening to numerous residents at that hearing, the city determined the smell was a nuisance.

Hart said he has been to the residence five to six times last year and three to four times just this year. On Friday, as the warrant was being served and cats were being removed from the home in carriers, he described the living condition inside the house as “horrific.”

The majority of the cats were in the master bedroom and garage of the home, according to Hart.

“The smell, one of my officers had to step out because his chest was burning,” he said.

Officer M. Schwarz said the house was filled with cats and the smell of their waste.

“It was cluttered, very dusty and dirty with a lot of cat hair,” he said.

The smell of ammonia and cat feces affected Schwarz so strongly that he had to wear a respirator while removing the cats.

“We flipped over a bed and there must have been about 20 to 30 cats in there,” under and in the box spring, he said.

Schwarz said none of the animals were hurt, though some were aggressive and one jumped on the back of an officer, giving the officer minor injuries on his ear and neck.

Some of the cats were feral, said Schwarz, but most appeared to have been in a domestic situation for a while.

The cats have been placed in clean kennels at the shelter with food and water and three had to be taken to a veterinarian, he added.

Schwarz said charges have not yet been filed against Gerrard, but she could at least face penalties for violating the permitted number of cats.

He added that there is a “good possibility” that animal services officers would have to return to the home.

In his year-and-a-half working for Humane Animal Services, Schwarz said he has spent six months working on this case.

“We’ve given her (Gerrard) a lot of time to work on this,” he said, including suggestions on relocating the cats and eliminating the smell.

Gerrard claimed she had been planning to send the cats to Nevada, but currently has an $8,000 lien on her house due to disputes with her homeowners’ association that she claimed is preventing her from selling it.

“I didn’t have the money to send them,” she said.

She also claimed that she kept the cats in clean conditions and that all were healthy, except for two that she was planning to take to the vet.

Gerrard spoke at length about how a neighbor’s outdoor cat is responsible for the urine smell, as well as to how she has requested mediation with her homeowners’ association on numerous issues, including her shrubbery, trash cans and the painting of her house. She claims they have refused to mediate with her.

However, next-door neighbor Luke Curry claimed that other than the smell from the cats and the health problems surrounding it, there were no other issues with Gerrard.

Curry called the smell “a horrendous nuisance for many, many years.” He and his family moved to Vassar Drive in 2006.

Curry and other neighbors said they were surprised to hear that there were an estimated 100 cats inside the home on Friday afternoon. None of the neighbors had any idea how many cats were actually inside.

Curry said the nuisance complaint filed with the city was not just him, but a collaboration among neighbors. He said his family and neighbors cannot use their yards or open their windows without smelling cat urine.

He added that although Gerrard might be trying to do the right thing, “They (animal control) wouldn’t be here today if it was legal.”

Gerrard said she has worked against abuse of cats in Vacaville for many years, especially people who she alleges were harming cats.

Gerrard added that she works full-time as a travel consultant.

“I just do this as a service to the community,” she said of feeding cats in the industrial park.

Both Humane Animal Services and Vacaville Police said they have not been able to successfully work with Gerrard on solving the problem in the past six months.

“We worked with code enforcement and Humane Animal Services to try to work with Kathy and working to abate the odor,” said Schmutzler.

After the hearing determined the smell was a nuisance and ordered it to be abated within 30 days, Gerrard was given additional time in hopes that police and animal services officers could work in collaboration with her, said Schmutzler.

However, officers did not receive much cooperation from Gerrard during that abatement process, Schmutzler and Schwarz said.

Jill Childers from the code enforcement division and Assistant City Attorney Melinda Stewart, who were involved in the writing of the complaint according to Schmutzler, could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

The presence of police officers at Gerrard’s home was to maintain the peace, Schmutzler added, and Gerrard was not detained.

Schmutzler added that while the Vacaville Police Department has arrested Gerrard before, it was for minor violations unrelated to animals, including trespassing, a few years ago.