[CAT] "Woman with 107 cats in home found guilty of animal cruelty"

[rfmcdonald]

Alyshah Hasham's report in the Toronto Star of the conviction of a woman in the Yonge and Eglinton area on charges of animal cruelty related to her cat hoarding is disgusting. How could she have let things get so out of hand?

For two years inside the non-descript home of a law professor, a nightmare was brewing.

“Wall to wall cats; floors, walls, furniture rotting and coated in cat urine, cat fur and cat feces. The smell was literally overpowering,” a judge said Thursday. “The first officer on the scene thought there might be a dead body inside the house.”

Hours later, as OSPCA staff in haz-mat gear were in the process of removing a feral colony of 107 cats from the home, homeowner Diane Way returned with a pull-cart full of cat food.

“This was a sad case,” Ontario Court Justice William B. Horkins told the court Thursday, after a 23-day trial.

“With apologies to Shakespeare, Diane Way loved her cats ‘not wisely, but too well’ and as with Othello, there were tragic results.”