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NOT A MEW BREAKS THE SUNNY AFTERNOON SILENCE in Michael and Judy Sowders' living room. Yet at least 30 cats snooze on couch arms, lounge on stereo speakers and pose like sphinxes on windowsills.

No odor announces them. They're still as statues, content to nap in the sun, until Michael and Judy arrive. A few blink and shift positions. Others stretch. Some rise and quietly pad across the furniture to rub their heads against Michael or jump onto Judy's shoulders and purr.

"Before I got involved with cats, everyone said they were independent, aloof," Michael says as Asa, a dark-striped cat, snuggles against his chest like a baby. "I haven't found that."

Another 70-plus cats roam the comfortable house Michael and Judy built high on a forested hill overlooking Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille. The 102 cats eat $400 worth of high-quality catfood every month and soil $30 of cat litter. They've pushed Michael's debt to local veterinarians past $1,000.

He worries about money, but not as much as he worries about cats. They don't deserve to die because they're homeless, he says. That's why he turned his home into the Life-Time Friends Animal Sanctuary.

"There's a need in the area," says Dr. Bob Stoll, one of the Sandpoint veterinarians who has allowed Michael to accumulate medical bills. "Michael is for real. I walked into his house and there are 90 cats, healthy and happy. It's almost an eerie experience."

Three years ago, Michael and Judy had one cat, Buffy. He was mostly Judy's. She'd discovered the warmth of pets as a teenager when her parents brought home Sandy, a cocker spaniel.

Judy had no pets of her own until 1989. She and Michael had been married eight years. Their neighbor moved and abandoned his cat, Jake. Judy took him in. Michael wasn't interested. He'd never had a pet.

Judy, a speech teacher in the Lake Pend Oreille schools, bonded with Jake. After he died, she adopted another cat, Muffin, from the animal shelter. Muffin ran away, so Judy adopted Buffy. Michael built homes and paid no attention to the cats until 1999 when Buffy returned home bleeding from a night in the woods.

Cats don't complain, so Michael and Judy let Buffy care for himself until he couldn't anymore. Buffy died at the veterinarian's office.

"We hadn't realized the cuts were so bad," Judy says.

Buffy's death haunted Michael. He suddenly understood that Buffy had been alive and that life meant the cat felt hunger, pain and the need to belong.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:14 AM