HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP (KDKA) — Down Possum Hollow Road in the Silver Dolphin Trailer Park in Hempfield Township lives the “cat lady.”

For the first two of the past six years, Janine footed all the bills herself. Since then, she’s gotten help.

“I get shelters and agencies to help me get them fixed – the trap, spay and released program – and bring them home and take care of them,” she said.

Some neighbors, like Richard Miller, support her mission.

“Once they get fixed and everything – they’re perfectly fine,” Miller said. “They actually help you out. Like I was saying, they bring in dead mice and keep them out of your home.”

Janine believes in controlling the wild cat population, but lately she’s learned that some of her neighbors are being just plain cruel.

“People around here are poisoning them, shooting them with BB guns,” she said.

Janine has more than 19 cats now and admits that there have been complaints and she understands them.

“That they were tired of them being in their yard, digging up and going under their trailers,” she said.

Yesterday she called state police. “We’re working on that now – I don’t know if I should say too much.”

Janine says this is not a problem she created.

“These people threw out all their cats when they leave,” she said. “That one lady on the hill threw out 12 cats.”

An officer at the Westmoreland County Humane Society says that she prefers not to get in the middle of this and to let the police handle it. In the meantime Janine says she won’t back down.

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