Woman Who Built a House for Her Cats Dies

Francine Katzenbogen, the cat-loving lottery millionaire who fought with her neighbors over construction of a $100,000, six-room guest house for a score of felines on her estate, has died.

Katzenbogen, 51, died at her Studio City home Oct. 30, apparently of an asthma attack, said her aunt, Lorraine Katzenbogen.

Though she worked tirelessly to raise money and place abandoned cats in homes, Francine Katzenbogen was fiercely allergic to the animals, her friends said.

“She sneezed; it was hard for her to breathe,” said Gina Rubinstein, coordinator of Cat Faire, a nonprofit organization that places abandoned cats.

“She gave her life for those cats,” Lorraine Katzenbogen said of her niece.

Friends who worked with Katzenbogen at a fund-raiser for animals in September said she had not been well. However, Katzenbogen believed in homeopathic medicine and did not patronize medical doctors, they said. An autopsy has been scheduled to determine the exact cause of death.

At a memorial service Wednesday night at Praiswater Meyer-Mitchell Mortuary in Van Nuys, fellow animal lovers paid tribute to the dead woman.

Katzenbogen, who won $7 million in the New York state lottery in 1988, bought a 14-room, 5,894-square-foot mansion in Studio City the next year and spent $100,000 converting a two-story garage into the cat residence.

The structure--known to disapproving neighbors as “the cathouse,” had six air-conditioned rooms, tiled floors, scratching posts, skylights and small windows with shelves where the cats could sun themselves and contemplate the outside world.

Before Katzenbogen could bring the cats to California from New York, about 50 neighbors signed a petition opposing the cat residence. Katzenbogen needed a special permit to exempt her from the city’s three-cat-per-residence limit, and the neighbors fought the permit. .

“You’d think I have lions and tigers,” Katzenbogen complained.

Neighbors argued that her feline palace would lower property values in the area, lure coyotes to the neighborhood and cause traffic problems if the animals scampered into the street. Some said it would give them the willies to have legions of cats staring at them from the windows of their cat castle.

The hearing officer ruled in Katzenbogen’s favor, saying it would be a hardship to forbid her to have the cats after she had gone to such expense.

However, he added restrictions requiring her to obtain a kennel license, limit the number of cats to 20, keep them inside, dispose of cat litter daily and provide proof that all the animals had been spayed or neutered. The special permit was to expire with the death of the last of the 20 cats.

Friends at the memorial service described Katzenbogen as “vibrant” and “a dynamo.” Although she loved to shop and enjoyed fine food, her volunteer work placing abandoned cats came first, they said.

“She did the dirty work; she could’ve just written a check,” Rubinstein said. “It’s real easy to write a check.”

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Friends vowed that Katzenbogen’s “fur babies” would not go to a shelter. About 15 of them have already been placed, said friend Mary Zupan.

The friends think Katzenbogen probably made arrangements for her animals in her will, which has yet to be probated.