A man who ran a cat sanctuary on Long Island is dead after trying to save as many cats fast possible from a raging morning fire. NBC New York’s Pei-Sze Cheng reports.
Investigators on Long Island are looking into the cause of an early morning fire at an apparent cat sanctuary that left one man dead and fears that up to 100 cats were claimed in the blaze as well.
Firefighters were called about the fire on Dourland Road in Medford around 7:15 a.m. A photo shared to social media showed large flames and thick black smoke rising high above the property.
Within hours, fire crews managed to get the blaze under control. Police confirmed one man was found dead on the main floor of the home; they later identified him as 65-year-old Christopher Arsenault.
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WATCH HERENeighbors and close friends who rushed to the scene said Arsenault lived on the property and managed Happy Cat Sanctuary.
Witnesses said they heard a loud boom in the early morning come from the property and saw Arsenault run outside to try and put out flames. They believe he went back into the house to try and save some of the cats.
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SIGN UP "[Arsenalt] vowed to take the unwanted, discarded, homeless [cats], the ones that people were going to euthanize, he refused and he took them into his sanctuary, sometimes for no money at all," Lisa Jaeger said.
"He started the sanctuary 15 years ago. This was his life," she said. "He gave his life to save these cats."
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According to Jaeger, who helped Arsenault with the sanctuary and planned to move the cats to an upstate property in a matter of months, a couple hundred of the cats had access to leave the house and were able to make it out. The ones enclosed inside -- the exact number still being counted -- were not able to escape.
"The cats that are still here, a lot of them are feral," she said. "It's where they're gonna go from here, that's what our biggest concern is -- what we're gonna do with them once we secure all of them, that's a couple of days down the road."
Arsenault had been embroiled in a legal battle with the Town of Brookhaven for several years, News 4 learned, involving code violations and the hundreds of cat he cared for. The unfolding legal situation prompted Arsenault to build a new sanctuary upstate that he planned to move to later this year. The fate of that new shelter is now unclear.
