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To support 700 cats, you need roughly 1,350lbs of food a week. But that’s just the dry stuff, which isn’t a balanced enough diet for a cat. You also need 1,000 cans of wet food.
Next, 600lbs of litter, because cats, like all living things, need a place to do their business. Sixty rolls of paper towels to clean up the many messes that will occur. Nine gallons of laundry detergent, six gallons of dish detergent, 200 large trash bags, and 400 kitchen trash bags.
Those are numbers Lynea Lattanzio knows by heart. As the owner of California’s largest no-cage, no-kill cat sanctuary, she has helped take care of 44,000 cats in the past 33 years. She even sold her 1973 Mercedes 450SL and two-carat diamond wedding ring for them.
People may think she’s crazy, and she would agree. On paper, Lattanzio is a certified “crazy cat lady”. A self-described masochist, Lattanzio revels in the ridiculous. But crazy is a pull for some – her story is well loved, with people traveling across the globe just to see the sanctuary, which she named The Cat House on the Kings.
This might just be JD Vance’s worst nightmare. Believing the American Democratic party’s downfall is being a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”, Vance fears a country run by crazy cat ladies.
If only. Today, Lattanzio cares for 700 cats and governs them benevolently with good housing, unlimited food and free healthcare.
America could never.
‘I would rather have 700 cats than another man’
Cats have long been associated with women – and with suspicion toward women who fall outside social norms. Centuries ago, cats were linked to witchcraft, becoming symbols of the supposedly dangerous, unruly woman, often unmarried and living alone. The stereotype evolved rather than disappeared.
By the late 19th century, women devoted to cats were increasingly portrayed as eccentric or unstable. Rosalie Goodman, a New Yorker in the 1870s, may have been one of the first documented “crazy cat ladies”. Dubbed “Catty Goodman” by neighborhood children and described by the press as a “cat hoarder”, Goodman was portrayed as deranged. In 1872, the New York Times published an article titled Cats and Craziness, opening with a comparison between cat owners and “lunatics”.
The caricature remains remarkably durable: middle-aged, unmarried, childless, middle class, lonely, eccentric or bitter. Some know her as Eleanor Abernathy, the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons; others encountered versions of her in sitcoms and popular culture long before that.
Lattanzio meets the cliches: she has gray curly hair, and an affinity for cat T-shirts, but no children. She’s outspoken, funny and blunt, and her voice rasps as she spews 10 thoughts a minute. She once said she would rather have hundreds of cats than another man.
How Lattanzio became a cat lady is simple. When she was a child, Lattanzio’s father brought home a rabbit one Easter. It stayed with the family for years, until it began eating plants from the garden. Lattanzio’s mother, without telling her, gave it away to one of her classmates. Desperate for an update, Lattanzio asked her classmate about it. Turns out the family ate the rabbit.
From then on, she knew animal welfare was her calling. Her mother might have been cruel, but she got her revenge.
Later, there was her divorce. A bad one. Bad enough to make her buy a home with 6 acres of land as a single woman and later wonder why the hell she did that. This land is what later turned into The Cat House on the Kings.
“For as long as I was single, I said no man is going to want a woman with 700 cats, I’m safe! I did that on purpose. Divorced, and I said I’ve dated every anal orifice in the tristate area,” Lattanzio joked.
Thus, out of human pettiness, the shelter was created.
When you walk through The Cat House on the Kings, you’re followed by a minimum of 10 cats. You take a seat and two of them have already jumped into your lap, the others lounging near your feet or sitting on the bench with you. Cats are chilling on the walls, on the built-in cat trees. It’s surprisingly quiet, except for the low rumble of collective meows and purrs.
The once six acres has doubled to 12. You would expect there to be a smell. There isn’t.
The property is beautiful: rolling hills of vibrant green grass, treelined walkways, the flowing Kings River, which gives the place its name. Numerous buildings, each with its own purpose: the main house, which houses the fish pond, kitty garden, and wood stove, for when it gets cold. The Sadie Malone senior center, for our older friends. ICU units with on-site veterinarians.
It’s a commitment, but one happily kept. Cats can stay at the sanctuary their whole lives, but the goal is to place them in loving homes. This is vital, as all cats share a common challenge: living in a world that doesn’t understand them.
The dislike of cats is the dislike of female autonomy
Dogs are man’s best friend, they say. The two go way back, everyone knows. But there’s a relationship that’s long been forgotten by the history books.
“Cats and women share a place in history,” said Irina Frasin, an anthrozoology researcher at Romanian Academy in Bucharest, Romania. “They’re not completely domesticated. They’re more independent than dogs, and that unruliness and unsubmission to human rule, it’s what ties the history of cats and women together. Because women were also perceived as beings to be tamed and kept under control.”
In ancient civilizations, cats were sacred. Chinese mythology placed cats in charge of the world and Li Shou, a fertility cat goddess, as their leader. The well-known Japanese maneki-neko figure of the cat with the raised paw, the Beckoning Cat, represents the goddess of mercy. Ancient Egyptians had Bastet, a half-cat, half-human goddess who served for domesticity, fertility and childbirth, and Sekhmet, the lion goddess of war, destruction and healing.
“The Egyptian religion is full of this dualism – you have the motherly soft nature of women embodied in Bastet, and the protective and territorial nature embodied by Sekhmet,” Frasin said.
Felines equaled feminine power. They were creatures intrinsically connected to womanhood, which was something once highly praised.
But this gets completely reworked in the middle ages. Amid the ongoing hysteria of witchcraft, Christian Europeans crucified anyone suspected as antagonists of the church. Those targeted: “disobedient” women and their cat “familiars”. A smidge of socially unacceptable behavior, and they were burned at the stake.
“You have all these characteristics of women embodied in cats that were once worshipped by ancient societies become flaws under patriarchy,” Frasin said. “Because strong women were to be suppressed in that time.”
Animal behavior specialist Steve Dale named a myth that dates back centuries: cats sucking the breath out of babies. In 16th-century Plymouth, it was believed children were killed because the smell of milk on their breath drew the cat in for the kill.
These conspiracies only grew as time went on. Black cats have undoubtedly been the biggest target of cat haters. For centuries they’ve been associated with witchcraft, bad luck and evil spirits. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued the Vox in Rama that claimed black cats were the reincarnation of Satan, leading to their mass extermination, quite the opposite of their previous deity status. This stereotype still affects them today – black cats have the lowest number of adoption rates and the highest rates of euthanasia out of any cat.
It’s obvious: crazy cat lady is simply a quirky repackaging of misogyny. The dislike of cats, Frasin said, is the dislike of an idea: female autonomy.
‘I have three cats, and they’ll unmatch with me’
Liz Richter often finds herself giving her dates an ultimatum: me and my cats or nothing.
With blue eyes, blond hair and an extroverted personality that makes you feel like you’ve known her for years, she’s a gem. You would be surprised to hear she’s single.
Her lack of dating success doesn’t just come from the fact that she lives in the country’s worst dating scene – a barrier in her dating life is her cats. Many men do not take Richter up on her package deal.
“There’ve been plenty of men on dating apps who ask questions and I’m like ‘Yeah, I have three cats,’ and they’ll unmatch with me,” Richter said. “It’s the whole cat lady stigma. Like, ‘Oh, she’s a crazy cat lady.’”
She attributes the weird reactions about a woman owning cats to immaturity. “I think the idea of being independent as a woman is scary for men,” Richter said.
Richter recently went through a divorce from her husband of 10 years. Her three cats – Stevie, Joplin and Millie – got her through the separation. Sisters from the same litter, they’re a divine trio. Milky white fur, green eyes, baby pink noses and paws. Probably the most photogenic cats to exist.
Cats have always been a huge part of Richter’s life. She grew up with them always in the family. The first thing her dad asks after Richter goes on a date: “Does he like cats?” They’ve been there for her in ways humans haven’t.
“When I was going through divorce, I obviously had amazing support from friends and family. But at the end of the day, I go home to my cats,” Richter said.
The connection between Richter and her cats isn’t a standalone. Dennis Turner, an animal behaviorist at the University of Zurich Irchel in Switzerland, has spent more than 40 years studying human-cat relationships.
“Cat owners are quite often less depressed, less fearful, and more extroverted,” Turner said. “Both the presence of a cat and the interaction with a cat reduced negative moods significantly.”
And it’s an effect particularly strong on women: “We found that a cat has the same positive effects on women as a male partner. But for men, a female partner has a stronger positive effect on their moods than a cat,” Turner said.
It plays out: Richter loves her cats. It’s been almost a year and a half since her divorce and Richter is now in her mid-30s. She’s been getting a taste of her new path of singleness, her cats alongside.
“There’s something about the calmness of my cats that is just really relaxing,” Richter said. “Especially through hard times, it’s consistent. Cats protect our emotional state.”
The rise of the cat guys
In one of Turner’s studies, cats were released into a room of people. Without intervention, cats showed no preference for gender. But when the humans were asked to interact with the cats, the animals reacted differently.
“Men tend to interact with cats sitting on a sofa or in a chair,” Turner said. “Women go down on the floor and interact with the cats on their level. That’s a significant difference and cats like that.”
Turner also explained the behavior of women to vocalize more frequently with their cats than men do. In return, the cats vocalize with women more often than they do with men.
Cats, in addition, have a very matriarchal society, Frasin explained. Male cats typically do not have a role in raising the kittens; instead, it’s a network of the mother, aunts and grandmas. Nurture is in the nature of cats.
Behavioral similarities help explain the bond between cats and women. Unlike dogs, which easily show affection to owners, cats are naturally more independent and require more time to develop trust. Women often resonate with the behavior of cats more, while men associate themselves more with dogs.
In a study comparing moods between dog and cat owners, “dog people scored higher on warmth, liveliness, rule consciousness and social boldness compared to cat people. Cat people scored higher on general intelligence, abstraction and self-reliance,” Turner said.
The “crazy cat guy” has taken off in the past decade, one of the first being Cat Man Chris, YouTuber, social media personality, and father of Cole and Marmalade.
Do real men love cats? If you ask Cat Man Chris, whose real name is Chris Poole, he’ll say yes. Poole has been uploading cat content on the internet since 2013. He calls himself the “human servant” to his felines. His profile picture shows him and Marmalade, each wearing matching blue-knit scarves.
Content isn’t his first priority, however. The thing that really matters to him: saving cats. His morning routine is to wake up, feed his six cats, then the two outside ones, then load up his car and drive around local areas to feed the feral colonies. On average, he feeds 40-50 cats a day.
“To save them and bring them to a safe place and earn their trust and get them healthy and eventually find them home, that’s a pretty cool feeling,” Poole said.
Poole hasn’t seen a difference in the way people treat a man with cats versus a woman. If they did, he paid no attention to it. He also doesn’t remember if he’s ever received weird comments on his posts. “For me, to be a cat guy and put it all over the internet is fun. My friends and family were just totally cool with it,” Poole said.
The lack of hate he’s gotten is telling, as women in similar positions have received plenty of it. Liz Richter, who was featured in Girls and Their Cats, got several strange comments: “Chick seems like she has a lot of personal problems, some people use cats as a crutch when they have socialization issues.” (Thank you, derricklangford4725, for the comment).
The difference is that “crazy cat lady” is a systemic perception of women. Women and cats share more than history – they share oppression. Centuries of mistreatment and the villainization of their non-conformity. Both are independent beings, but that stands no chance in a world that’s desperate for cultural order.
A man and a love story, after all
Here’s the kicker: despite the stereotype, Lattanzio is in a relationship with a man called David Anderson.
They were on the same dive team as teenagers and roomed together in college. Both married other people, but life happened, and they eventually found their way to each other.
During our interview, Anderson sat quietly in the background of the Zoom video frame, listening to every word Lattanzio said. When asked about why she does the tedious work of taking care of hundreds of cats, Anderson answered for her: “Lynea loves cats. She loves everything about them. Her favorite thing is to see a cat run across a lawn and climb a tree.”
“It’s just something that’s important to me and makes me smile,” Lattanzio said, her eyes softly sparkling. “When you take a cat that’s almost dead and you bring it back to full health and help get it adopted, that really warms your heart. It’s fulfilling.”
The two live in a house across the street from the sanctuary. In the back yard is a Japanese botanical garden they built together. With them live their three personal cats: two of them Anderson’s, one Lattanzio’s, a Bengal that “hates the world”. Lattanzio took him in because he wouldn’t have survived in his previous home. A “jerk” to her and the other cats, but deserving of a life.
At the edge of the Kings River, there is a bench Lattanzio calls her favorite spot. A plaque on the bench reads: “In Memory of Poppy Burger / Our Friend, Our Guardian Angel / 2013.” Burger was a close friend of Lattanzio’s, and an important part of the creation of the Cat House. Buried at the foot of the bench is Poppy’s 15-year-old-cat, who passed after her.
Lattanzio sits here as the sun sets. Behind her, cats run through the hills. They climb trees, nap in the branches. They perch on roofs. They play and they fight.
Alive, breathing in the air of the pocket she carved, Lattanzio listens. To the sounds of the scampering legs, the running river water, and to the walls that have seen it all. To the world that weighs on her because of who she is. To the decades of her mother’s disapproving voice. On this bench, Lattanzio hears everything and feels all that she has created.
