Mystery cat woman is on mission; what is it?

By Abigail Goldman

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

They called it Project Kitty Litter. Crouched outside his house, hiding in the dark of downtown Vegas’ residential streets sometime after 9 o’clock, Tim Newbry was poised to pounce.

The plan was to wait in the shadows until she showed up. And when she did — as she did every night that week, that month, that year, maybe — when she pulled up, parked her BMW, got out and started to scale the fence, Newbry was ready: He rang his own doorbell, signaling a roommate inside to jump out with a camera and — snap!— catch evidence of the crime: illegal trespassing with the intent to feed cats.

It’s almost too easy an accusation: The Crazy Cat Lady. But the woman making nightly stops in the Beverly Green neighborhood off Las Vegas Boulevard and St. Louis Avenue has been engaging in behavior worthy of that mythologized suburban paradigm, not only feeding slews of cats (strays and pets) but, some allege, stealing them.

The Cat Lady, known only as Adrienne, admitted to the Sun that she did take one cat, a white cat, from a college-age kid. But she felt bad about it and fessed up: She told owner Erica Gomez the cat had been given to a nice couple in Henderson. Apparently Adrienne thought the couple would be better pet owners. But she couldn’t track them down when Gomez asked for her cat back.

In the Project Kitty Litter photo, Adrienne has just jumped Newbry’s fence and is standing in his yard in pink shorts and sneakers, looking like a spooked 30-something — hands clasped over her chest, head turned, acrylic nails out like the claws of the cats she swears she’s saving.

Adrienne says she jumped the fence to collect the instruments of her obsession, the plastic containers she fills with cat foods — wet, dry and mixed.

She had been using Newbry’s lawn as a cat feeding way station since at least 2004, when he bought the house. Adrienne says it’s just one stop on a nightly three-hour feeding run through the streets of Las Vegas, a route that is slowly bankrupting her in $150 installments, what she claims she spends on cat food every day. (That BMW she drives? It’s her parents’.)

Newbry, like most residents of Beverly Green, tolerated the feeding, which seems to fatten neighborhood rats and roaches as much as cats. He didn’t mind the plates and bowls of food on his lawn, until his own cat disappeared.

Adrienne says she warned Newbry to keep his cat inside — or something bad would happen. Newbry’s cat was an outdoor animal, however, and wailed when she was locked inside. So six months ago, when Abbey the cat vanished, Newbry had one person in mind. That person, however, denies all involvement.

Twice, and nicely, Newbry says, he told Adrienne to stop using his yard. When that didn’t work, he set up the sting. He got her photo and dressed her down something fierce. This was roughly one month ago, and since then, the plates and bowls of cat food have been bouncing around the neighborhood, in one yard and then another, on the sidewalk outside Newbry’s house, then on the grass across the street.

But Adrienne is not the only person worried about the valley’s estimated 200,000 stray cats, a number reportedly growing because of foreclosure abandonments. The problem is that people who feed cats are in a bind: They can’t afford to sterilize all of them and are afraid to report the felines to animal control, because capture often results in euthanasia. Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani is proposing an ordinance that would “legalize” feral cats and help people like Adrienne get them vaccinated and sterilized. Giunchigliani is banking on private money to fund the proposal, which is slated for a public hearing at today’s commission meeting.

Adrienne says her work is “very controversial,” but that it’s better to feed the city’s strays and pets than to let them die of hunger. Since she started feeding the cats, she has saved at least 300, she says. It is not clear what she means by “saved,” however.

Adrienne has stopped returning the Sun’s calls. Abbey the cat has not come back.

Abigail Goldman can be reached at 259-8806 or at [email protected].