A California woman faces animal cruelty charges after police say she abandoned 134 cats in a U-Haul van without food or water in the sweltering summer heat.
The cats, ranging in age from a week to eight years old, have been removed from the van and the 106 survivors, described as “extremely emaciated,” are receiving veterinary treatment at the Merced County Animal Shelter, according to the Merced County Sheriff’s Office.
A deputy found the van at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday in Santa Nella, a small town about 40 miles south of Modesto. The cats were stuffed in the U-Haul, which was left in a Taco Bell parking lot, and about 20 of them had taken up spots on the dashboard, center console and driver’s seat.
Jeannie Maxon, a 69-year-old woman from Long Beach, Calif., was charged with 93 counts of animal cruelty.
Maxon is the owner of a cat breeding business called Magicattery, which she’s touted on her personal Facebook page and an Instagram page specifically dedicated to the breeding operation. A separate site on its own domain remained up as of Tuesday evening and says the breeding operation specializes in Persian and Himalayan kittens.
Many of the cats and kittens are dressed up, wrapped in pearls and ribbons, and posted with accessories in the photographs Maxon shared on social media. Maxon was active on Facebook and Instagram until late 2024, according to her visible public activity on both sites.
It’s not clear why she abandoned the cats. California does not have a state licensing system for breeders, but individual towns and cities may require breeders to obtain a license.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Maxon had retained an attorney.
Merced County Animal Shelter said in a Facebook post that the cats will be put up for adoption once they’re all stabilized and receive proper veterinary care.
Pain In The Bud 
Sorry, I couldn’t read the Post but thank you for posting.
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All good, it’s not graphic but it is infuriating and a good reminder that breeders are often unscrupulous, with little or no regard for the animals they breed. Personally it bothers me to see cats presented like products as well.
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Can’t like but I’m glad you’re keeping up with this stuff. I don’t like the breeding of any animals either, but it seems especially pointless when the streets of almost everywhere are full of randomly breeding cats who make great pets. (Says the person whose husband saw yet another cat looking in the window tonight. We hope the kitty has a home, but if not, we won’t let a kitty go hungry.)
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You won’t let a kitty go hungry because you and your husband are good people who know cats are sentient and have feelings just like we do.
No worries on liking or not liking.
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Is there something in the water? Or in the air? It has to be something that explains why everyone is going crazy.
Sorry, but I think that this (horrific) project was deliberate. She knew that those cats wouldn’t survive in that truck.
Maybe there’s something in our society that is making people act like this.
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Someone had mentioned that accused didn’t surrender the cats to a shelter because she still saw them as assets and thought she could make money off of them, which has the ring of truth.
This isn’t one of those cases where someone is rescuing cats and the whole effort just gets away from them.
I don’t know why people do things like this, or why they do things like poison strays, as someone just did in Hawaii. The only thing I know is that something’s wrong with their sense of empathy and their humanity.
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But it’s not down to individual cases. This is all over our society. It’s a social problem, not an individual problem.
Chris Hedges has written about how our society is based on violence.
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HOW DID I MISS THIS STORY!?? I know why. I have a crappy phone and really no desire to get an updated one. And this happened in Brooklyn one time with caged ferals in a van. Thank God they were all released after being fixed and released in a colony. Pos got RECORD 7 YEARS IN JAIL. All thanks to a politician who owned cats of his own.
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Horrific story. I signed a petition asking for the maximum punishment for this crime. WTH is wrong with this woman?! Hopefully the surviving cats will be cared for.
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Those poor kitties. They are going to be traumatized for the rest of their lives.
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