By trade Marylyn Sciortino is a Swedish massage specialist — she operates the China Mary Rose Massage clinic in McCully.

By passion she's a cat lady.

Sciortino has more than 100 cats she calls her own. But unlike other cat ladies, she doesn't keep a single one under her roof.

"I have no cats at home," she says as she gently strokes a contented white feline at Kaka'ako Waterfront Park. "All of my cats have been fixed."

She has taken each of her stray cats to the Hawaiian Humane Society to be spayed or neutered and has microchips implanted in them for identification.

Each day of Sciortino's life is virtually identical to the one before. That's because with 100-plus cats, each expecting to be fed at a certain time — cats expect to be fed at the same time and place each day, she says — there's little room for variation.

Her area of cats extends from Kapi'olani Boulevard to Magic Island to Kaka'ako. She begins her feeding rounds at 1 a.m. and doesn't finish until several hours after the sun comes up.

On the face of it, Sciortino seems never to sleep. Between her clinic and her cat patrol, she puts in up to 22 hours a day.

"A typical day is 12 to 15 hours a day with cats," she says. "And I still have go to the clinic and answer the phone and the door and collect the money."

If things work out OK, she gets a couple of hours of shut-eye. Otherwise, she survives on, yes, cat naps. She takes them throughout the day, mostly during the time she's doing reception duty at the clinic.

At Point Panic, Marylyn Sciortino gets a kitten ready to be taken to the Humane Society to get neutered.

It all started 2 1/2 years ago, when Sciortino spotted a lonely cat on Kapi'olani Boulevard. After getting acquainted with it, she bought it food at a nearby convenience store. Each day she returned to feed it.

In time, she was feeding another cat. Then another.

Today, the figure is at 9 dozen, and counting.

"It's like having children," she says. "Once you have them, you have to support them. There's no vacation in this. You can't even take one day off a year because they all have to be fed."

The payoff is that cats are fascinating creatures. Sciortino is single and doesn't have children. She thinks that may have something to do with the attraction.

"Cats are affectionate," she says. "It's very rewarding."