INDIANAPOLIS —You can call her a crazy cat lady and she doesn’t bat an eye.

Barbara Wills admits she is crazy for cats. She better be. At last count, she had 102 all under one roof.

Wills runs Cat Haven, a sanctuary/shelter on North College. It’s located in a three-story wood-frame house; the one with the “cats welcome” sign out front.

When you pull up, chances are you’ll be met by a friendly feline or two. But you don’t get the full feel of the place until you step through the front door and see cats, dozens of them.

They’re sprawled on couches, snoozing in cat beds, sitting in window sills and perched atop kitty condos.

Wills knows each and every one of them very well.

“Sampson was found frozen to a porch last year with all that bad weather. Stewey Parker, he’s neurotic. He has a really bad habit of plucking his fur out,”  Wills said. “And Princess Leah was dropped at Animal Care and Control for being old and grumpy.”

Most of the cats who reside at Cat Haven are special needs, like Biscuit, who Wills describes as “three-legged, deaf, blind and always looking for fairies.”

But perhaps the best known resident is Charlie Mouse, “the head of fundraising.”

He has cerebellar hypoplasia, a condition that causes tremors and jerky movements. Despite that, Charlie Mouse has learned to climb the stairs by leaning against the wall.

“He fell four times before he figured it out. He’s just determined,” Wills said.

Charlie Mouse and the others are at Cat Haven because they have no place else to go.

“Some are adoptable, but it takes a special person. The majority would have been euthanized. I couldn’t let them die,” she said.

Because Cat Haven is considered a “sanctuary,” she said it doesn’t qualify for many grants. Instead she relies mostly on donations to cover the cats’ food and care, with medical expenses the largest part of that.

Source: WTHR