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REIDSVILLE — Grady Road resident Carolyn Johnson knew that her 150-plus cats strained the limits of her ability to feed and care for them.

That’s why she called the Humane Society of the United States earlier this month seeking help with the brood at her impromptu shelter on the city’s rural fringe.

The response? A raid Monday morning and the seizure of all but two of Johnson’s felines and one of her six dogs, plus the looming possibility of animal cruelty charges.

Johnson said the raid and its resulting furor were completely unnecessary and at odds with the reality at her ad-hoc shelter. Animal-welfare experts counter that Johnson is a pet “hoarder,” suffering from a borderline mental disorder that left her unable to see the daily agony her little charges experienced.

“It’s characteristic of a hoarder — they don’t see the forest for the trees,” said Kimberly Alboum, state director for the Humane Society. “It’s so hard to look at these cats with sores, infections and disease that could have been treated. It’s so painful to realize the amount of suffering that they have been through.”

Many cats, few homes

Even in such a contentious situation, there’s one thing nobody disputes: Johnson’s case shows the price North Carolina exacts from blameless creatures by failing to field an effective spay and neuter program to end or at least sharply reduce pet overpopulation.

Johnson said she amassed so many animals partly because she knew her ragtag band of strays and abandoned pets faced almost certain death if they ever landed in a shelter. Indeed, shelters in North Carolina euthanize as many as eight of every 10 cats they encounter because homes can’t be found for them, Alboum acknowledged.

So Johnson believes she gave her animals a shot at life in a setting where they were loved and at least got a minimal level of daily care.

“They call it hoarding,” she said. “But to me, a hoarder is someone who is careless, who just lets them breed and doesn’t take them to the vet.”

By contrast, all her pets had been spayed or neutered, all had their shots and those with medical problems were taken to a veterinarian when possible, Johnson said in an interview last week. All 150-plus cats had names, and she kept records of their health histories, she added.

The picture she paints doesn’t square with accounts of Monday’s action by officials from the Humane Society, the state Department of Agriculture, N.C. State, Rockingham County Sheriff’s Department and numerous animal rescue groups.

Reports described animals living in “unsanitary and inhumane conditions.” Mainly cats, they suffered from infected eyes, ears and wounds. Some were “covered in parasites,” others emaciated by sickness or by an inability to eat stemming from severe dental issues or age, Alboum said.

Raid’s aftermath

Responders who collected the animals needed chemical suits and respirators because Johnson’s house was rife with excrement. The air was so thick with ammonia from cat urine in unclean litter boxes and elsewhere that “it burned the eyes. It permeated everything you were wearing,” Alboum said.

Alboum, the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Department and officials at the county animal shelter decline to say exactly how many of the animals were so sick they could not be saved because Johnson ultimately could face charges linked to the deaths.

But “a lot of them were really sick and had to be euthanized,” said Kevin Baughn, director of the Rockingham County Animal Shelter, which is working to find homes for many of the pets. “It’s a sad thing because she really was trying to help them.”

Responders set up a makeshift “little hospital” at the Rockingham shelter, where six vets separated the animals that were too sick from those that could be treated and placed with new owners, Baughn said.

Earlier hoarding case

Johnson has a history with animal-welfare agencies. She surrendered about 100 cats four years ago in a similar situation, said Amber Alsobrooks, former president of the Bayou Rescue group that helped in that case.

The nonprofit limits its work with pets to helping in such disasters as hurricanes and floods, but it made an exception in Johnson’s case.

“The animals were visibly sick,” Alsobrooks said of the earlier rescue. “You could look at them and even if you didn’t know a thing about veterinary medicine, it would be clear to you.”

As part of that first rescue, Johnson signed a contract to keep no more than a few animals in her home and to allow the Humane Society to inspect her property periodically. That contract apparently set the stage for Monday’s action.

Taking a reporter on a tour of her property Thursday, Johnson displayed two fenced porches with pet doors to the house, so cats could roam in and out.

The tour also included a rebuilt tobacco barn for other cats, equipped with heat, air conditioning and running water. Another fenced area nearby held the dogs with a roomy hut for each.

“I knew some of them were sick, but they seemed happy,” Johnson said. “I think they could have probably all went to other homes.”

Pets like children

Her immediate next-door neighbor and aunt, Becky Johnson, said the cats were like children to Carolyn Johnson and her husband, construction worker Steve Durham.

“That’s where all their money went,” Becky Johnson said. “They let themselves go (to provide for the animals). Every Friday, he came home from work and they went out and bought cat food.”

Becky Johnson said she doubts authorities’ assertions that they got complaints about Carolyn Johnson from her neighbors, noting that the Johnson-Durham house is surrounded by homes occupied by their relatives.

Carolyn Johnson estimated that every week, she went through 25 large bags of cat litter and hundreds of pounds of pet food.

The problem wasn’t that the property lacked facilities for a reasonable number of cats. But a hoarder’s population of pets reaches a tipping point where the expense of providing for the increasing number leads to lapses in spaying and neutering, Alsobrooks said.

That ultimately results in more animals that put more stress on the budget, creating unsanitary conditions where the animals contract diseases and infections that the pet owner doesn’t have the resources to treat properly, she said.

Carolyn Johnson disagrees that is what happened in her case. Everything was going reasonably well at the compound, though maybe a little crowded, she said.

The place would not have been in such disarray Monday when the authorities arrived, if she had not gone out that morning to help an elderly friend, who also provides a home to stray cats, Johnson said.

That’s the only reason she did not do her normal morning cleanup that day, she said.

But Alboum said no place reaches a point that quickly where rescue workers can’t enter without protective suits and breathing masks.

In the Reidsville case, Alboum would like to see court-imposed sanctions preventing Carolyn Johnson from ever again hoarding animals. On a statewide level, she believes more aggressive spay and neuter programs are needed to eliminate conditions that encourage and enable hoarders.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com