Craig Grant bought 30 acres in Lee, Fla. where he has taken in hundreds of cats at a place called Caboodle Ranch. He's created a cat village with a town hall, church, cafe and even a Walmart. But he is also plagued by accusations of hoarding and mistreatment of the animals. "They make me love me life," he says. "I never feel alone."Grant is 62. All his life, until about a decade ago, he disliked cats. Today he lives outside a tiny town called Lee, population 355, with hundreds of them.
Here on 30 acres, Grant will take your cat for life. Even if it has leukemia. Even if it's feral. Even if it's old. He promises he won't kill it, he won't even adopt it out, he'll just love it.
Grant believes his place in the world is to provide cat-topia. He talks about one day having 1,000 cats, maybe even 3,000 cats.
Critics, among them a Tampa woman, Carolyn Camp Logan, who had volunteered there, became disgusted and started a website "in memory of the lost Caboodle cats." Coyotes were snacking on the cats, she wrote. Lots of house cats, unaccustomed to the diseases circulating at Caboodle Ranch, got sick or disappeared.
"The man's an ignorant hillbilly," she said. "He's out there trying but he doesn't know what he's doing. He's a hoarder. He thinks no one can do it better than he can."
Gary Conley said his visit to Caboodle Ranch "changed his life."
"Since I've come back, I've not been able to go to sleep at night," he said, "because I know what's happening up there in the darkness."
Source
AP Photo/St. Petersburg Times, Lara Cerri
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