Ken Palmer

Lansing State Journal

WOODHULL TWP. — Even now, months after animal control officers raided her cat sanctuary near Perry and seized every cat they could find, Nancy Bischof is haunted by the ordeal.

“I have pretty serious PTSD,” the veterinarian said last month, standing inside the house in rural Shiawassee County where many of the cats were kept. "They weren’t just my cats, they were my patients. Everyone had names. They are like my family.”

More than 120 cats — many of them older or otherwise poorly suited for adoption — once lived on the site of Bischof's cat rescue and sanctuary along West Winegar Road in Woodhull Township, between Perry and Laingsburg.

These days, there are none. They were taken in the course of an animal cruelty investigation that yielded only misdemeanor-level administrative charges. Bischof needed a kennel license and didn't have one.

There were no charges of cruelty or neglect, but the cats are still gone. A few were euthanized. Most were adopted by other families. Bischof is still fighting to repair her reputation and to persuade the courts to reverse an order that she forfeit the animals, even though it's doubtful she'd ever get them back.

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The massive seizure left at least two local animal shelters overcrowded for months. Those shelters never billed the county for the cost of housing and medical care, but the cost of medical care alone was easily in the tens of thousands of dollars, one shelter manager said.

Bischof contends the seizure was unnecessary. Many of the felines had been with her for more than 10 years. They had a stable home and were being cared for, she said. Some had special needs and were traumatized by being moved, she said.

What the county did "was not good,” Bischof said. “It wasn’t humane. It was cruel. They suffered a lot. They lost their names.”

Others involved in the long-running drama disagree. Both a former employee at the sanctuary and an animal welfare worker who helped relocate the cats said the county did the right thing by stepping in.

"It just got to where there were too many (cats)," said Michele Pursley, the former employee, who encouraged Shiawassee County animal control to intervene. "(Bischof) wasn’t there, she had no funding, and she wouldn’t let anybody else help her. In her mind, she thought she was the only one who could care for them."

Chief Assistant Shiawassee County Prosecutor Daniel Nees said the case demonstrates why there are regulations governing such operations. And he noted that there doesn't need to be criminal neglect or cruelty charges for the county to seek forfeiture.

"Those animals were not being held in a safe or sanitary environment," he said. "Ultimately, what was right for those animals is what happened. All are in a safe, secure place."

Taking the cats

Bischof, 53, founded The Cat Project about 16 years ago and, for years, paid the bulk of its costs. It wasn’t until 2015 that donations exceeded the amount of money she put into the operation, she said.

The non-profit began as a no-kill rescue shelter but morphed into a sanctuary, Bischof said. The vast majority of the cats were older, feral or had chronic illnesses that made them poor candidates for adoption, she said. She came to believe they would be happier if they were allowed to live out their lives at the sanctuary, she said.

“For a lot of cats, there really aren’t good homes,” she said. “I did not want my cats to take up a good home that another cat needed. There are just too many cats and not enough homes. These cats had what I considered to be a good, stable home.”

The crisis at the sanctuary began last summer, while Bischof was working at a veterinary clinic near Phoenix, Arizona. She'd worked in Arizona on and off because she couldn't find work here, she said. Staff members cared for the cats while she was away.

Bischof said her job allowed her to come back to the sanctuary for one week each month. But after asking for a transfer to Michigan last summer, she was unable to visit the sanctuary for about six weeks. During that time, someone called the sheriff’s department to make a complaint, she said.

Shiawassee County Animal Control Deputy Kirt Stechschulte visited the property in late July.

Stechschulte had been there before, he testified during an Oct. 25 forfeiture hearing, and didn’t have a problem with how the cats were being cared for.

“I didn’t have a problem until the workers there began to tell me what was actually going on … and then I began to do a little more investigation,” he said. “That’s when I discovered that Nancy needed to have a kennel permit out there.”

He returned on Aug. 24 with a team of animal welfare workers from several counties. They spent spent a long day placing cats in carriers and loading them into vehicles that would take them to a shelter for evaluation. County officials say they removed 117 cats. Bischof says it was 118. The cats went to three area shelters. Another five had previously turned up missing from the sanctuary and were already at one of the shelters.

The house on the property reeked of urine, Stechschulte said during his testimony. The basement sometimes flooded and the roof was leaking. Cat litter was piled up behind a barn. The house had been red-tagged for safety reasons earlier that month, according to court records.

The deputy said he believed Bischof cared for the cats, but “I believe she’s also in over her head … in taking proper care of these animals.”

Soon after the seizure, officials acknowledged the cats had been cared for but said some were living in poor conditions or were in relatively poor health. The Shiawassee County Prosecutor’s Office eventually authorized eight charges based on ordinance or state agriculture department rule violations against Bischof.

Bischof eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of operating an unregistered kennel. That charge was dismissed in February after she successfully completed the terms of a delayed sentence.

By then, Shiawassee District Judge Ward Clarkson had ordered that the cats be forfeited to the county.

During the hearing in late October, Bischof’s attorney, Andrew Abood, told Clarkson the property hadn’t been maintained because the people Bischof employed to run the sanctuary hadn’t done their jobs.​

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Bischof offered to move the cats to a shelter in Arizona using a certified animal transport service if the cats were returned to her. Clarkson rejected the idea.

“I feel it doesn’t make a lot of sense, nor do I think it’s real feasible, to load up in excess of hundred cats that potentially have all sorts of health issues and take them somewhere else. They’re already in a safe place.”

Bischof appealed to Shiawassee Circuit Court, where Judge Matthew Stewart affirmed the district court's decision in April.

She has since filed an application for leave to appeal with the state Court of Appeals.

'The right thing to do'

All of the seized cats were taken to the Capital Area Humane Society in neighboring Clinton County for evaluation. Most remained there for weeks while the court proceedings were underway. About 40 were kept at the Shiawassee Humane Society shelter on Bennington Road. The remainder initially went to an Eaton County shelter.

Staffers at the shelters in Shiawassee and Clinton counties acknowledged in October they were feeling the strain from housing so many cats. They were forced to turn away other animals because there wasn’t room. But, once the cats were forfeited to the county, the shelters were free to find adoptive homes.

The Capital Area Humane Society was ultimately responsible for the disposition of 103 of the cats, said Julia Willson, the shelter's president and CEO. Of those, eight were euthanized for problems that included terminal cancer, liver failure or severe dental disease, she said.

Many of the cats had treatable health issues such as fleas, ear mites or dental problems, Willson said. Others had more serious problems, such as feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus.

"There's no question that these animals were in poor condition," she said. "I saw it first hand."

In the end, the vast majority were suitable for placement in adoptive homes, Willson said. She disagrees with Bischof's belief that the cats were better off in her sanctuary.

"Everyone is going to have a different perspective about what constitutes cruelty and neglect," Willson said. "I know (Bischof) believes – and believes in her heart – that she was helping these kitties. But there's no reason to keep an animal in a cage just because you think it should not go somewhere else. I guess it's sad if she thinks that's an appropriate environment."

Willson said her shelter provided county officials with estimates of what it cost to board all the cats and care for them medically but never actually billed the county. She pegged the cost of medical treatment alone in "the tens of thousands of dollars."

"None of these cats could be turned around and adopted right away," she said.

All of the cats that ended up at the Shiawassee Humane Society shelter on Bennington Road are also gone, executive director Dave Faulkner said. Some were "somewhat feral" and are living out their lives as barn cats, he said. Faulkner does not believe any were euthanized.

The shelter never billed the county for the cost of caring for the animals, he said.

"We (took in the cats) because it was the right thing to do," Faulkner said.

Bischof said her cats were never caged unless they needed to be quarantined for medical issues. She denies that any had ear mites. She said some had ear infections or dental disease and that two had feline leukemia.

"If my house hadn't been tagged, those things would have been done," she said. "(Those issues) can't be the reason you take someone's life away."

'It gained a life of its own'

Bischof said a staff of three to five typically manned the sanctuary, which had a budget of nearly $50,000 in 2015.

The cats were grouped together in the house, a barn and an insulated garage on the property, based on their needs and how they got along with each other.

“These were just cats that nobody else wanted,” she said. “A lot of them had health problems. A lot of them were elderly. At least three groups of cats came from actual, real-life hoarding situations. Some had been with me for 10, 12 years. Nobody can tell me that where they were going to is going to be better.”

Bischof said problems at the sanctuary escalated in July, about the time her main caretaker – a licensed veterinary technician – left because of an illness in her family. At least one employee began deriding her on Facebook, and others joined in.

Some claimed the animals were going without food and water or that Bischof was ignoring pleas that cats were sick and needed medical attention. Before long, people who had never been to the sanctuary were criticizing her, Bischof said.

“It somehow gained a life of its own,” she said. “The next thing I know, my manager left with no notice. I left my job with no notice so I could come back and take care of the cats.”

Bischof said she and her employees were at odds over various issues, including whether the sanctuary should seek adoptive homes for cats.

“They didn’t tell me they weren’t doing the laundry anymore and that there wasn’t enough food,” she said. “They just didn’t tell me."

"They apparently made it their goal … to destroy the sanctuary. That morphed into destroying me along with the sanctuary.”

People who had donated in the past "just believed the stuff that was on Facebook," Bischof said. "People in the rescue community who have known me and known the good things I've done just walked away."

Pursley worked part time at the sanctuary for nearly five years. She said she had been asking animal control to step in for two.

Staff members couldn't keep up with so many animals, she said. Bischof was kept informed of what was going on and didn't allow the cats to get the medical care they needed, no matter how much staff pleaded with her, she said. In some cases, Pursley said, she used her own money to get food or medical care.

"We did everything we could, but we could only do so much."

The cat population exceeded the manageable limit in March 2016, when the sanctuary took in 20 or more cats from a Livingston County location, Pursley said.

"That was the beginning of the end," she said. "(Bischof) would never say no to any cat that needed help but then would never let them be adopted out."

'I can't give up'

Bischof still has supporters.

Barb Craig, who sat on the nonprofit sanctuary's board, said she met the vet eight or nine years ago while looking for help with a stray cat and quickly came to appreciate her devotion to animals. Craig said she provided some financial support and sometimes fed and watered the cats if a caretaker couldn't get there.

She was horrified by online statements that cats were dying at the sanctuary because of neglect and that Bischof was refusing to give the cats the care they needed.

"Nancy would study these cats," said Craig, 68, of Okemos. "She knew which cats got along with others in a group. If they didn't get along, she'd move them to another room. They were never in cages unless they needed to be checked out. I just don’t understand people who would want to destroy somebody like her, because she wasn't hurting anybody."

Bischof keeps hard-cover binders filled with pictures of all the cats. She said she provided ages, names and health information to the shelters after the cats were seized.

She likes to think about the cats during happier times.

There was Tori, who initially tested positive for feline leukemia but later was negative. She “played with everybody” and just wanted to be part of the group, Bischof said.

There was Rainbow, a mother with kittens that wouldn’t let anyone pet them. Twelve years later, she was still curling up to sleep with one of them.

And, especially, there was Bones. The little female’s back legs had been cut off by a combine. She was within hours of death when she was brought to Bischof and underwent two surgeries.

“Once we woke her up, this cat never looked back,” Bischof said. “She ate like a football player. She gained weight and started moving around on her stumps. She was just determined to survive.”

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Bischof said she's creating a fund that would help anyone who adopted one of her cats cover their veterinary bills. She’d take them back if any of the adoptive families wanted to give them up.

“I know that the cats would never know I didn’t give up, but I can’t give up on them," she said. "The only way to honor their lives is to keep fighting for them.”

Contact Ken Palmer at (517) 377-1032 or kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.