How One Woman Created a Home For Old, Blind and Neglected Cats

Michele Hoffman has devoted her life to saving special-needs cats — and it changed the way she thinks about aging

Eric Spitznagel,

AARP

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Published February 10, 2025

Michele Hoffman found her purpose 20 years ago, all thanks to a blind cat.

Hoffman was living with her husband in North Hollywood, working for Apple streaming services by day and fostering cats for local rescue groups in her free time. And then on Valentine’s Day in 2004, she went to pick up a cat from an animal shelter and noticed a beautiful black cat in a cage near the back.

“She was blind, and they told me she was going to be euthanized that night,” says Hoffman, 60. “The poor cat was reaching through the bars at me and crying, and it just broke my heart.”

So Hoffman adopted the cat on the spot and named her Valentine. Saving cats was nothing new for Hoffman — the three-bedroom apartment she shared with Randy, her husband, was already brimming with strays — but something about Valentine got Hoffman thinking about all the special-needs cats who’d never find a home.

Michele Hoffman, the president and co-founder of Milo's Sanctuary, shares an intimate moment with Sir Thomas Trueheart, a stray from the Californian desert whose face was disfigured by acid.

Courtesy Michele Hoffman

“These amazing cats who deserve a life were either being euthanized at vet's offices or at shelters, or they were thrown out on the street,” she says. “And it was always the seniors, the defects, the injured animals that weren’t deemed cute enough or youthful enough to be adopted.”

That same year, she founded the nonprofit Milo’s Sanctuary and Special Needs Cat Rescue — named for a friend’s cat. In the beginning, it was just her apartment. “We didn’t have cages,” Hoffman says. “We still don’t. All of our cats live as family members. We only cage for medical reasons or introductions or if they're eating a special diet. Otherwise, everyone roams free.”

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Michele Hoffman spends some quality time with a few of her feline residents at Milo's Sanctuary.

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Hoffman and her husband soon moved into a house — to get “more space for the cats and ourselves,” she says — and went back to school at Pierce College in Los Angeles, earning a veterinary technician degree in 2014. “I decided if I was going to devote myself to special-needs cats, I better know what the hell I'm doing,” she says.

Over the years, thanks to a lot of volunteers and $20,000 in seed funding donations, Milo’s Sanctuary has grown from a few dozen cats in Hoffman’s living room to a sprawling two-and-a-half-acre facility in Mojave, about a half-hour drive from Hoffman’s home in Palmdale, that can house 100 rescue cats at a time. She also shelters pigs, ducks, chickens and a few peacocks. “When I was a little girl, if anybody asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I always said I wanted to run a farm,” she says. “It took 60 years, but that dream finally came true.”

Michele Hoffman loves all cats equally, but admits a soft spot for calicos. "Because they are very bossy and very direct," she says.

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A lifelong commitment

Her passion for strays began in childhood, much to her mother’s chagrin. At just 6 years old, Hoffman began bringing lost dogs, cats, injured birds, seagulls with fishing hooks stuck in their beaks and any wildlife she could catch back to their small home in Santa Barbara, California.

“My mother was a huge animal lover, except she hated cats,” Hoffman says. (Her father passed away when she was just 4.) “But I loved cats, especially wild cats. I’d go out with a little fox toy attached to a string and a stick, and I’d catch a cat and bring it inside, and hide it upstairs until my mom found it. This went on for my entire life.”

Today, she doesn’t just take in cats from across Southern California, but much of the country and the world. She’s accepted cats from Mexico, Egypt and Turkey. “I like to say that we’ve become the U.N. of cat rescue,” she says, laughing.

Although their facilities were never in danger from the L.A. fires, Hoffman has been committed to helping displaced cats affected by the tragedy, providing them with “food, medical care, medication if necessary, and a loving and peaceful environment to heal,” Hoffman says. “We are also helping coordinate food and litter donations to those rescues most affected. We wish we could do more.” While Hoffman is on a mission to save these cats’ lives, she also wants to prove that those lives are worthwhile. “People have the wrong idea about blind cats,” she says. “They’re fearless. When someone new visits, they’re always shocked at what these cats can do. Blind cats climb trees and jump on counters. They’re actually bigger troublemakers than some of the sighted cats. We have one right now who’s learned how to jump from the kitchen island up to the top of the cabinet to get to the treats. It’s like a stuntman cat.”

The cats welcomed at Milo’s Sanctuary aren’t restricted to the sightless, however. “We have everything from diabetic cats to paralyzed cats to hydrocephalus kittens,” Hoffman says. “It doesn’t matter to us.”

She’s reluctant to pick a favorite, but she admits a special fondness for the senior cats. “Maybe because I’m also a senior now,” she says. “They know their manners. They don't play as much as younger cats, but they still know how to have fun. All they want to do is cuddle and sleep. They’re just like me.”

"Animals have always been my greatest passion," says Michele Hoffman.

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‘Saving lives is not a hobby’

Hoffman has no intention of retiring anytime soon, if at all, and says she fully expects to be a den mother for special-needs cats for as long as she still has all her faculties. “I hate it when people say, ‘Oh, rescuing cats is a hobby,’” she says. “No, it's not a hobby. Collecting stamps is a hobby. Saving lives is not a hobby.”

But looking back on her career running Milo’s Sanctuary, she says it’s taught her more than just the value of every living thing. “Cats don’t know they’re special needs,” Hoffman says. “They just know they’re cats. I’ve learned so much from them about not judging someone by their physical appearance.”