PHOENIX, July 29 (UPI) -- An 80-year-old Arizona woman could face felony charges for keeping more than 100 cats in her Phoenix-area house, officials said.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told The Arizona Republic that Lucienne Touboul is "too old and frail to see the inside of a jail cell." She had not been charged but could face felony animal cruelty.
Investigators said they found 104 living cats in her house July 8 along with nine dead kittens stored in refrigerators. The surviving cats were so sick they had to be euthanized.
Three years ago, Touboul was ordered to get rid of most of her cats.
Touboul told the newspaper she moved to France and then to the United States after her husband and children were killed in Morocco in the 1970s. She apparently became an animal hoarder after she bought a house in Wittmann Ariz., in 1999.
In an interview, she blamed authorities for the death of her cats, describing them as "family."
