The Line Between Cat Fancy and Cat Crazy

Jenny

At 36, Jenny is a successful, fiercely independent sales agent with her own home -- which she just happens to share with 16 cats. It's not that she wouldn't want to find a partner or have children, but the experiences she endured as a child -- emotional trauma caused by a difficult childhood -- have prevented her, she said, from having healthy adult relationships.

"But I'm fine, don't worry," she said. "It's not like I'm on medicine or anything like that ... anymore."

Jenny knows that she's on the cusp of becoming a "crazy cat lady," she said, but she insists she's not there yet.

"Life without my cats wouldn't be life," Jenny said. "OK, maybe not so many."

Jenny talks about having had boyfriends in the past and being open to finding someone new -- though she says the best way to meet guys is usually at the dog park.

"I think I'm a great catch, and it's kind of depressing that I guess no one else has seen that," she said.

"I can't end up having 30 cats," Jenny said. "Then it's completely over. This way I'm still OK, got some hope."

Since the documentary was filmed about a year ago, Jenny has lost one cat but gained three rats. It total she keeps 15 cats, two dogs, three rats, two birds and two rabbits. Everyone lives inside.

Jenny said she has a very strained relationship with her family so she considers her pets her family.

Sigi

Sigi is on a mission to save cats. She has transformed her house into a dormitory for hundreds of cats. Too many cats to count. Sigi is what many mean when they say "crazy cat lady."

"I find it amusing that people call me the 'crazy cat lady,' because I don't look at myself that way," she said. After countless run-ins with the Humane Society, which made her get rid of most of her furniture because it was too unsanitary, she now sleeps in a plastic lawn chair. She is surrounded by angry neighbors who say the stench of the cats is overwhelming.

"I've gotta be honest," said Vargas, "I don't think I could walk into that house. It, it looks filthy."

"Sigi truly is extreme in her devotion saving cats," Callan-Jones said. "There's nothing she won't do for the cats."

Sigi is unapologetic about her efforts to take feral cats off the streets and bring them into her home.

"I'm the Mother Theresa of these cats," she said.

Diane

Diane, 65, spent most of her career as a high-powered banker. But when she was forced into early retirement, this workaholic turned her efforts towards another passion: cats.

A year ago, Diane shared her home with 123 cats. Her goal is to save them from a life on the streets. She feeds them and nurses them back to health and continues to trap feral cats. Diane knows that she's taken on more than she can handle at times.

"This is now too much for me. I'm at risk for the law; I'm at risk for my health; I know I'm doing a good thing but I think it's a little too much now," she said.

Like Sigi, Diane lives in squalid conditions.

"I wish there was a smell-o-meter," said Callan-Jones. "The smell just takes your breath away, because it's, it's the ammonia in the cat urine. I guess it's almost like if you were maybe sticking your head in a litterbox, I mean it's very, very overwhelming. But you get used to it very quickly."

Callan-Jones likens Diane's devotion to cats to an addiction. Even Diane herself says, "I have to stop; I need to solve this, I can't live like this. It saves the cats but it doesn't save me."