Howard County is not doing enough to ensure a Columbia house that more than 100 diseased and dead cats were removed from has been cleaned, neighbors said.
“We just want to be able to enjoy our home without having to walk out with the place smelling like a barn,” said Joe Wasserman, who lives on Swan Point Way next door to Ayten Icgoren and Nese Enetulla Icgoren, both of whom were charged in September with 225 counts of animal cruelty for hoarding the cats.
After the Icgorens had the floors replaced and walls painted, a health inspector determined the house had been thoroughly cleaned, said Bob Weber, director of environmental health at the Howard County Health Department.
“We are satisfied that the odors are under control,” Weber said. “We have been out there several times based on those concerns and not found the problem to reach the level of a nuisance.”
However, Wasserman, his wife Nadia and neighbor Brenda Winfield criticized health officials? response to the fetid town house in a Nov. 20 letter to the Health Department.
“There were no standards, guidelines or criteria set by your department for the quality of the cleaning,” they wrote, adding no air quality tests were done.
Wasserman and Winfield said the Icgorens did not allow Health Department inspectors into the basement or attic. The basement had been covered in cat feces and urine, insects and several dead cats, according to charging documents.
“I don?t understand how they can have [Icgoren] tell them where they can or can?t go,” Winfield said.
Removing odors is subjective, and health standards do not exist for clearing out the stench, Weber said.
No evidence has surfaced that the residents are hoarding cats again, he said. “We will wait for the neighbors to let us know if it has risen to a situation where they find it?s a health nuisance again,” he said.
