Neighbors of a Long Island cat sanctuary that burned in a suspicious fire tearfully remembered its owner, Chris Arsenault, who died trying to rescue his beloved felines from the blaze.
“I’m deeply saddened by it,” said neighbor Cheryl Whitmore, who lived next door to Arsenault and his Happy Cat Sanctuary in Medford for more than 20 years.
“He was a good guy … I’m glad that he was able to take in the cats to get them into a safe environment,” she told The Post.
Arsenault, 65, was killed along with more than 100 cats when a fire mysteriously started at the sanctuary Monday morning, which a source close to the investigation said police are probing as an arson and homicide.
The retired NJ Transit conductor started the cat sanctuary in 2006 after he lost his 24-year-old son, Eric, in a motorcycle accident, and was in desperate need of solace from his pain.
He happened upon a colony of 30 sickly cats and kittens by the train tracks near his home — changing his life forever, as well as the lives of hundreds of cats over the years to come.
Arsenault took the strays in and nursed them back to health, which to his surprise, helped him slowly begin to heal after the lowest point of his life.
“After my son died, those cats gave me something to do,” Arsenault told the Daily Mail in 2018.
Eventually, he transformed his entire home and yard into what would later become Happy Cat Sanctuary, keeping only his eight-by-12-foot bedroom for himself — where he both ate and slept.
He purchased additional property in 2007 as the operation expanded, where he provided everything a wayward kitty could ever need, from heated perches to hammocks.
Arsenault spayed and neutered the lucky felines that he took in and served up roast chicken dinners to his whiskered companions, who basked in safety and comfort with tummies full night after night.
“He was the most genuine and sweetest person ever — a humanitarian and a great person,” neighbor Nelly Mendoza, who called 911 to report the fire, told The Post.
Mendoza woke up in the middle of the night “with an eerie feeling.” Around 7 a.m., she woke up again after hearing “an explosion,” and peered out her window to see her neighbor’s house engulfed in flames.
After calling the fire department, Mendoza said she frantically grabbed her garden hose in a vain attempt to douse the fire herself.
Firefighters eventually showed up, and brought the fire under control by 8:35 a.m., but not before the sanctuary had burned to rubble, claiming the lives of more than 100 cats and killing Arsenault himself, who was overcome as he desperately tired to bring as many of the animals to safety as he could.
“Chris came outside and tried to put the fire out. When he realized he couldn’t, he went back in the house for the cats and came back out again. The second time he went in, he didn’t come out,” animal rescuer and Happy Cats Sanctuary board member Lisa Jaeger told The Post
“Chris would have died for cats, and he ended up dying for cats — that’s something we’ve always known about Chris,” said Frankie Floridia, a Happy Cat Sanctuary volunteer.
“He loved saving animals. And for me, helping his animals is an absolute honor.”
Floridia said although the aftermath of the fire is “grim,” most of the nearly 300 cats that were housed on the premises “are in good shape.”
Starting Thursday, a warehouse donated by a Good Samaritan will be used as a temporary shelter for the nearly 200 surviving cats, Jaeger said.
Over the next two weeks, a team of volunteers will collect the cats from Arsenault’s property, move them to the temporary shelter and give them the medical attention they need until they’re healthy enough to be adopted.
Until then, cats are being taken to another sanctuary or treated on-site by Paws of War, a nonprofit dedicated to animal rescue.
The well-oiled rescue effort — which Jaeger conceded is the largest and most chaotic she’s ever been a part of — costs about $400 per cat, every penny coming from donations and volunteers.
Despite the glowing recollections of Arsenault shared by neighbors, not everyone was a fan of his efforts, leading some to wonder whether the inferno that consumed his home was set on purpose.
“I think there was foul play. It just doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Whitmore said.
“There were a lot of complaints about him with the cats. He had propane tanks in the front yard for how long, and all of a sudden now this happens? I just feel in my heart and in my gut that there was foul play. He must have rubbed somebody the wrong way.”
Whitmore said that some neighbors would complain about the sanctuary in the neighborhood, “especially during the summer, because of the smell.”
Martinez said she never heard anyone complain about the sanctuary, but said Arsenault was “being harassed online,” and had even planned to move upstate because of it.
Friend and animal activist John DeBacker told The Post that Arsenault was the target of several accusations and coordinated harassment campaigns claiming he kept cats in unsafe conditions, “but none of the evidence provided were found to be true.”
“He was doing the best that he could and getting a lot of hate for it — cats that no one else wanted,” DeBacker said.
“I’ve personally been there, and the place wasn’t as bad as these groups were claiming it to be.”
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