9a. A Non-Comprehensive List of Things I Tried, Part One

Thing I Tried: Reported my mother as an endangered senior citizen to Adult Protective Services of New York, the state agency in charge of ensuring the welfare and safety of elderly and otherwise vulnerable adults.

Report: The lady who answered the phone at APS was kind. I had several questions about the reporting process, and what would happen next, but she encouraged me not to worry.

Phone Lady: I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision for you to involve us, but you’re doing the right thing.

This was helpful. I’d agonized over calling APS. I was leery of getting my mom into the social services system. I’d been in the system briefly, back in high school, and I knew firsthand how often it punished the people it purported to help.

The caseworker they assigned to my mother was unkind. I was there at the house that morning, helping Husband Five clean up before the caseworker’s scheduled visit, and she was enraged from the minute she stepped out of her car. She shook her head as she came up the porch—no greeting, no eye contact—then she stepped past us into the doorway of the house and stopped dead.

Caseworker: No, mm-mm. No. (Turns and goes down the porch steps to the driveway.)

Me (scampering behind her, yipping with panic): Excuse me? I’m sorry?

Caseworker: I’m not going in there, that’s unhealthy in there. (Yanks her car door open, throws herself inside.) I’m calling the ASPCA.

I had already called the ASPCA. I called the ASPCA before I called APS, because I felt worse for the cats than I did for the humans.

Me: What about my mother and her husband? Are they going to get any kind of help?

Caseworker: They’ll be lucky if they don’t get arrested for all these cats.

Upshot: Case closed by APS, referred to ASPCA

Thing I Tried: Cooperating with the ASPCA

Report: As noted, I called the ASPCA the week before I called APS. This too was an agonizing decision. I didn’t want my mother’s cats seized and taken to a shelter where they’d risk being euthanized. I just wanted someone to go my mother’s house and yell at her and Husband Five, threaten them with jail time, and scare them into cleaning up the mess.

I got a call back from a detective, who ran me through a checklist of questions: Was there adequate food, water, and litter boxes? Yes, yes, no. Did any of the cats display signs of illness? Not evidently. Were they vaccinated? Unclear. Did I believe they were being harmed? No. Did I believe they were endangered? Yes. Were there deceased animals in the home? No.

Me: So what’s going to happen now?

Detective: Depends on how bad it is. If the animals are healthy, there’s not much we can do. There’s no laws against having that many cats. At the worst, they could be arrested for animal endangerment, and they’d have to pay some fines.

Me: Okay. Can you let me know when you’re going over there, so I be there to help?

Detective (who has urgent cases of sickening animal cruelty to deal with, while my situation is much smaller potatoes): I can’t guarantee that.

Upshot: The ASPCA went by the house a week later. Nobody was home. They put a sticker on their door to inform my mother and Husband Five of an upcoming inspection. When they came back for the inspection, Husband Five denied them entry, and they went away.

After my mother died, all of the cats were safely recovered from the property. No carcasses were found, amen.