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Owner Disputes 44-Pound Cat Was Abandoned Last Edited: Thursday, 31 Jul 2008, 2:31 PM CDT Created: Thursday, 31 Jul 2008, 2:31 PM CDT

The owner of the 44-pound cat says she had to put her up for adoption after she foreclosed on her house.

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Related Items Stories A 44-Pound Cat Needs New Home in New Jersey Links Photos: 44-Pound Cat or just enabling jstl so that we can just write ${bean.property} and jsp takes care of the new lines. -->From MyFoxPhilly Reports

The real owner of a 44-pound New Jersey cat tells Fox 29 in Philly that media reports about how her gigantic cat wound up at a local shelter are only partially true.

The owner, Donna Oklatner, spoke with Fox 29 about how her hefty pet, Powder, made it to the Camden County animal shelter in Blackwood, and then into the national headlines.

The 68-year-old woman says she put Powder up for adoption (video: MyFoxPhilly) and a shelter official picked up the cat, with her permission. (Recent media reports said that the cat was found abandoned and taken to the shelter.)

"It broke my heart to give him up. I could not take care of him. I love him. It broke me heart. I wanted him to have a good home," Oklatner said.

She and her husband had their South Jersey house foreclosed and the husband then had to go to a nursing home.

Because Oklatner is staying with friends, she had to make the decision for Powder to go to the shelter for adoption.

"Nobody would take him," Oklatner said. "And then one of the neighbors -- I'm not going to say where, but a friend of mine -- said, 'Listen. We know you can't afford to have Powder.' And it's not because he ate too much. It was because of the foreclosure and my not having a home, a place to go. So, they said they would take him and put him in a shelter."

A shelter official contacted by Fox 29 confirmed on Wednesday night that the cat was picked up for adoption, and not abandoned.

The official said the cat is 11 years old and a male.

When asked about how the cat got so big, the former owner replied, "I guess he ate a lot of food."

Initial reports indicted that the cat, nicknamed by the shelter Princess Chuck, was found wondering the streets of Vorhees.

Officials at the Camden County Animal Shelter in Blackwood said they received the cat Saturday from Animal Control after the cat was found outdoors, without a collar, in Voorhees.

That directly contradicts the woman's story about how the cat came to the center for adoption.

The Shelter's newest resident quickly became an Internet sensation when it became known that he was almost as big as the world's biggest known house cat.

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