The Fur Will Fly in Court Over Cat's Eviction Notice

By BEVERLY BEYETTE

June 16, 1986 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

As for celebrity, well, on the whole, Prince Rupert prefers catnip.

Rupert, a large domestic shorthair with gray stripes, white paws and questionable lineage, has become something of a cause celebre, the focus of a lawsuit filed with intention of evicting him and his owner, Charlotte Bohnen, 77, from their downtown apartment.

The cat, a world-class sleeper, isn’t letting this flap interfere with his snoozing. But Bohnen, who pays $114 a month, about 25% of her total income, to live at the Angelus Plaza, a federally subsidized high-rise housing complex for seniors, is lying awake nights. She asks, “Do they want me to be a bag lady?”

‘Big Hullabaloo’

The case--RHF Bunker Hill Corp. vs. Charlotte Bohnen--has been continued twice and is now on the Municipal Court docket for 10 a.m. Thursday. To Bohnen, it’s “a big hullabaloo over a little cat.” To Angelus Plaza administrator Cliff Peightal, who insists he loves cats, it’s “the principle and the rights of the other 1,400 tenants.”

So, it will be up to the judge to decide: Is Rupert a menace, an attack cat that, as one tenant claimed, dug his claws into her dress, a nuisance that has cut slashes in the naugahyde furniture? Or is he the sweet, docile, shy companion described by Bohnen?

On one thing, both sides agree: Bohnen, a tenant at Angelus Plaza since February, 1982, is no troublemaker. A slight, soft-spoken, genteel woman with white hair caught in a bun at the nape of the neck, she is described by Peightal as “a nice lady and a good tenant.”

And when it comes to Prince Rupert, the stray she plucked from behind a hedge outside the 220 S. Olive St. building on a September night in 1984, she is a real softie. In Bohnen’s view, cats aren’t meant to be tethered, never mind that the Angelus Plaza has a leash law. And cats are not meant to be declawed, either, rules or no rules.

To her, cats are first-class citizens. Prince Rupert’s name is posted above hers on the door of her 11th-floor apartment. Theirs is a special relationship. “I love him. I really love him,” she said, adding, “and he tolerates me.”

So, if Rupert occasionally slips leashless into the public corridors, Bohnen doesn’t perceive that as a crime. Rather, she tends to view these transgressions as perfectly natural and rather endearing. It doesn’t happen often, she said, and he’s never bothered a soul--”He’s afraid of people.”

Cat ‘Runs Free’

But Peightal said, “She props her door open and the pet runs free. It has frightened several of our residents. Some of our residents are rather feeble. In at least one instance someone almost fell (as a result of) being startled by this cat.”

He said perhaps eight other cats and eight dogs live in the five-tower complex and “we haven’t had any complaints” about them. This complaint, filed in behalf of RHF Bunker Hill Corp. by attorney Jack Levy, lists four occasions on which Rupert allegedly violated the building’s pet regulations, and Peightal said he knows of six.

In the four months since he has been administrator, he said, he has had a complaint about only one other animal, a cat, and that was just last week, while he has heard “eight or 10” complaints about Rupert. He said that for two years she has let the cat roam free but “for some reason, previous administrators have sent her warnings and then just not done anything about it.

“I’m the bad guy.”

But Bohnen said, “The tenants love Rupert” and, indeed, several, who asked for anonymity, did have nice things to say about the cat.

No Safety Net

And if Rupert has to go, Bohnen said, “I think I’ll have to leave. But I don’t have any safety net.”

Bohnen’s pro bono attorney, Anna Burns of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, said that “to evict this tenant would violate the policy behind HUD housing--to provide low-income housing for the elderly.”

The central issue is whether Rupert did indeed violate the pet policy which stipulates that all pets (“except fish”) must submit to a pre-admission “interview” and that “overly aggressive, rambunctious, unfriendly animals will not be accepted.”

The policy provides, among other things, that dogs and cats must be on a leash whenever outside of the owner’s apartment.

“Rupert never had an interview because everybody knew he was here,” Bohnen said. “I was very open about him. I would take him out in the evening to get his feet on the grass.” She has had him neutered and inoculated, as required, and has put up the mandatory $150 refundable deposit to cover any damage to her apartment and fumigation when she vacates.

And, “under duress,” she signed the policy document, adding a handwritten notation about “unreasonable demands” and “especially cruel restrictions on cats.”

“They wanted to make it tough,” she said, “because most people here don’t have pets. They can’t afford it.”

Bohnen has no family, save for a niece living in San Diego, and, she said, “I’ve never been so bitterly, horribly alone” as at Angelus Plaza. On weekends, when many of the residents leave to visit their families, Bohnen said, “It’s just dead here.”

Goldie Chilton, another resident who recently acquired a cat, was in court last week to support Bohnen. She understood, she said; her pet, Tinker, gives her “somebody to come home to.”

Nevertheless, it is apparent that not all Angelus Plaza’s 1,400 residents are cat lovers. She dismisses the “troublemakers” who tell tales on Rupert, who claim that he has scented the entire 11th floor: “So vicious. You can’t believe it.”

Warning Issued

The showdown between Bohnen and Angelus Plaza management came on March 14 when she was given 10 days’ notice to comply--Rupert had to go--or face eviction. It was a devastating intrusion into a day that had begun, as is customary, with Bohnen doing her yoga exercises at 6:30 a.m. with the Channel 28 instructor. (Yoga has been on hold for three weeks now, ever since Bohnen cracked a rib “at the beginning of a headstand.”)

“I haven’t slept a wink for the last three months,” Bohnen said, agonizing over her dilemma. “People are waiting in line for years to get in here. . . . “

Peightal said he does not want to evict Bohnen: “I told her, ‘After several warnings, we’re going to have to evict your cat.’ She said, ‘Well, if you evict the cat you’re going to have to evict me.’ So we’re going to court. The issue is the cat, not Mrs. Bohnen.”

Peightal said he has found a home for Rupert--if Bohnen is willing to give him up.

He has become the villain, he said, because “my predecessors were not professional housing administrators and rules were not enforced fairly and evenly.”

It was late afternoon and Prince Rupert was catnapping on his favorite chair in Bohnen’s apartment, looking not at all like the creature reported by one building resident to have “humped his back and spit.”

The apartment is spartan, but warmed by large oil paintings signed by Bohnen’s father, Carl Bohnen, a portrait artist who had studios in Chicago and in Paris in ‘20s and ‘30s. On an easel by the window are some of Charlotte Bohnen’s own canvases; in happier days she studied art in Paris.

For a few minutes, she permitted herself the luxury of those memories of Paris: “I met all the big shots in the modern art movement. (Ossip) Zadkine, the sculptor. (Giorgio) de Chirico and his French girlfriend . . .”

But, somewhere along the line, things didn’t quite work out for Charlotte Bohnen, artist. As the only girl in the family, she was called on to help her widowed brother rear his young daughter. When Roman Bohnen, a stage and film actor, moved with the child to Toluca Lake, she came with them to California.

She said she found the Los Angeles art world very competitive and, somehow, never plunged into the competition. Nor did she marry. Looking back, she smiled and said of her life, “I was sort of swallowed up by the male elements of the family. So, the years have gone by . . . “

She glanced over at the napping Rupert. “He sleeps from 9:30 until almost 5 o’clock,” she said. “Who’s he bothering?”