His cats are gone now, but they will always be his family.
Most are dead, a handful have been adopted, one is missing. But they remain in his heart and mind. At times he will rattle off some of their names - Squirrel, Angel, Shadow. Fifty names for 50 cats.
If Richard Brubaker is guilty of anything, it's not seeing how his love for animals could ever cause harm. There's no statute for that. No law against taking on too much and spreading your love too thin.
There is animal neglect, though, and the city and county are determined to make an example of Brubaker for that. They are piling it on with 204 misdemeanor and 51 civil charges related to animal neglect.
And then there are the fees. For a while, Pima County Animal Care wanted nearly $507,000 in restitution for fees related to impounding and caring for Brubaker's cats - but recently that figure mysteriously dropped to about $158,000 to reflect "actual costs," court documents say.
Does it matter? Whatever the amount, this restitution will break Brubaker, who's burned through his savings fighting his case.
"We are constantly broke all the time now," Brubaker said last week.
Tall, thin and well-dressed, Brubaker looks younger than his 70 years. His words crunch together with a sense of urgency.
Why so many cats?
His answer drifted back to his childhood in Tombstone, how his family raised pet javelinas and skunks; how his father, a lawman, was an amateur vet of sorts; how his family always had numerous cats and dogs. He showed pictures from his own law enforcement career, talked about his family's Amish heritage. He was raised to love animals.
"These are my babies," he said of his cats.
So how did someone who loves animals so much come to this tight place? Squeezed between 255 charges and $158,000 in fees. Fighting an unforgiving government.
The catman's saga began a little more than a year ago with a man named Donald Deal.
No stranger to police, Deal has been arrested roughly 50 times. Pick the offense - drugs, lying to police, assault, domestic violence - it's on Deal's rap sheet. Deal reacquainted himself with the cops last fall when he was arrested for carrying a drug pipe. He then turned around and fingered Brubaker's southeast-side home as a drug house.
Based on this tip, a search warrant for drugs, drug paraphernalia and a Hispanic suspect named "Felix" was drawn up and approved. The SWAT team was called in and police raided Brubaker's home - even throwing a stun grenade called a "flashbang." They stormed in and found β¦ cats.
Fifty of them. Mostly stacked in cages, often sitting in piles of feces with dirty water bowls. The smell nauseated the officers. Some of the pictures of the scene are hard to stomach.
Animal Care officers took a handful of the cats and a dog that night. The next day, after Animal Care determined the cats had a contagious disease, they seized the rest. For the next 292 days the cats lived at Animal Care - while Brubaker fought his case - until 40 of them were euthanized.
None of this should ever have happened, said Bill Risner, Brubaker's attorney.
"Once they determine that there is nothing there, they can't search for anything else," Risner said of the police raid. The police "can tell animal control, and animal control can get a warrant based on what (police) saw," Risner said. But the police "can't act like a maitre d'. They can't just say, 'Oh let me invite you in.' "
So far, the courts haven't agreed with Risner on this point, ruling the seizure was acceptable because the cats were in plain view.
Risner speaks with a certainty about this case that I can't totally accept. He downplays the conditions the cats were living in - just a little cat poop - and he said Brubaker was cleaning the cages the night of the raid. But there is another certainty that's hard to accept as well, and it comes from the Pima Animal Care Center and its desire to hold Brubaker accountable.
"We need to step up and stand up for the animals," said Kim Janes, the center's manager.
Janes stood by the restitution fees and the charges, saying Brubaker made choices to get to this place. He chose to collect cats, and he chose not to care for them properly, Janes said. He chose to fight Animal Control, and those choices have consequences.
"Do we just say, 'Oh never mind, you don't need to be held accountable?' " Janes said.
No, but maybe you act with a little compassion. Brubaker never meant any harm. He just didn't know his love for animals had limits.
Contact Josh Brodesky at 573-4242 or jbrodesky@azstarnet.com.
