Persian cats under contract to sell South Tampa home
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Sep 22, 2023

A South Tampa home that a woman willed to her seven Persian cats will soon have a new owner.

The 4,000-square-foot home at 2215 S. Occident St. in Tampa’s Sunset Park neighborhood is under contract to be sold, according to Smith and Associates Real Estate, which listed the property for sale. The home is listed for sale at $2.75 million.

The property went under contract after one day on the market, Smith said. Nicholas Buchanan, Mary Beth Byrd and Leslie Minder of Smith were the listing agents.

Nancy Sauer, who died in 2022, bought the home in 2012 for $330,000, according to Hillsborough County property records. Sauer, whose husband and son preceded her in death, willed the estate to her seven cats, the Tampa Bay Times reported in June. Sauer’s will left each of the cats an inheritance and stated that the cats were to remain in the Sunset Park home forever, but a Hillsborough County probate judge ruled it was in the cats’ best interest to be adopted out.

“We were in the house the first week of May,” Sherry Silk, executive director of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay, told the Times. “We were told by the caretakers that they had been in the crates for at least six or seven months prior to that. One of her veterinarians informed us that the cats did not like each other and often fought and presented with scabs and wounds from fighting.”