200 Dead Cats Found Stuffed In Woman't Back Yard

[matcom]

<snip>

Over two decades, Marlene Kess built a reputation in Manhattan as a caregiver of last resort for homeless and dying cats. If her rescue and adoption agency, KittyKind, couldn't place a sick animal, she took it home herself, overseeing its recuperation or caring for it until its death.

Yesterday, authorities discovered what Kess' philosophy looked like in practice. Summoned to the woman's East Orange home by a neighbor complaining about a stench, city health inspectors found 48 cats inside the house -- 38 of them in one room -- and more than 200 dead cats stuffed into garbage bags in the back yard.

The sight of so many decomposing corpses -- and the fetid odor they produced -- sickened animal-welfare officers and others who responded to the two-story home on State Street.

"Oh my God, it was awful," said Michael Fowler of the Associated Humane Societies, the state's largest shelter group. "The smell was horrible."

Kess -- the 56-year-old founder and executive director of KittyKind, which operates one of New York City's few no-kill shelters -- moved to East Orange from Manhattan in July. Dozens of cats, apparently, moved with her. More arrived while she was there.

"She claims that she takes in sick cats -- cats with feline leukemia -- and that she is a known rescuer who people will bring their cats to when they're dying," said Sgt. Joseph Bierman of the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

When those cats did die, they went into large, heavy-duty garbage bags. Then they went into the yard, which backs to a parking lot used by the East Orange Board of Education and the East Orange Community Charter School.

Bierman said he counted 21 garbage bags, each containing 10 or more vermin-infested carcasses. In some cases, he said, the cats had become so decomposed a precise number of bodies could not be determined. Kess had been placing dead cats in the yard since she moved in, Bierman said.

"I haven't seen anything quite like this," Bierman said. "Certainly it's an unusual incident."

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1116565548185690.xml

[Zuni]

1. awful

[gollygee]

2. ick ick ick

poor kitties

[deadparrot]

3. *inserts tasteless, yet obligatory, Frist joke* nt

[KamaAina]

7. Please tell me this woman is not having an affair with Frist

actually, if they were, it might be bye-bye 2008 primaries...

[demnan]

4. Kooky

I wonder why people do these things? It's nice to take in sick animals, or animals who need homes but some people just go absolutely bizzaro about it. You can't save them all. And the disposal of dead bodies? That creeps me out.

[achtung_circus]

5. As someone who does this for a living

cat ladies are the worst, and the self-appointed rescue organizations include some of the worst.

BTW Most, although not all, cat collectors are women. My personal worst, however, was a man.

108 cats
172 pigeons
14 Mpurning Doves
200 Budgies.

[ryan_cats]

6. This is what I'm afraid might happen to me.

My wife and I take in kittens, cats and dogs to spay/neuter and then find homes for them but sometimes you fall in love with them or people don't want them and you're stuck with them, not that I don't mind getting stuck with animals but there is finite space available.

This person sounds like the typical crazy cat person or cat hoarder. Too sad.

I don't know what to think here.

[short bus president]

8. Photo here:

http://centerclick.org:81/previews/archive/simpsons/p.cat_lady.mov.jpg

:P

[Karenina]

9. There is no malice intended...

it's a mental illness and very sad all the way around.

[DS1]

10. I'll bet there were "WomAN'Ts" everywhere

:D