Woman must halve her pooping cats
The City Council last week told Hermosan Betty Starr she would have to get rid of two of her four cats, following a four-year neighborhood skirmish over dead birds, poop in yards, and who called who a you-know-what.
Starr had applied for a permit to breach the city’s official limit of two pets per household. Her application was denied and she appealed to the council, leading to the unanimous decision on Wednesday.
The felines in question are two that Starr adopted from the Peter Zippi fund for Animals 13 years ago, and two others adopted within the last couple of years. A fifth cat was killed by a car recently.
City officials said Starr had rejected the possible solution of keeping the cats indoors, but on Wednesday Starr told the council that she would rather keep the cats indoors than be forced to adopt them out.
“We had never been told there was a two-cat limit in Hermosa,” she said.
Neighbor James Weiss told the council he’s endured four years of poop in his yard.
“I had cat sh*t in my yard this morning,” he said. “I’m tired of it.”
He said he is a member of the Audubon Society and feeds birds, only to see them succumb to the claw.
“Her cats are killers,” Weiss told the council.
He also commented on the verbal give-and-take in the matter.
“I never called her any names, she did call me an a**hole one time,” he told the council.
Another neighbor told the council he was “a little bit embarrassed” to find himself at City Hall over the cat matter, but he said the cats had been “a pain in the rear end.”
“How long can you pick up poop from someone’s pets?” he said.
He recounted an incident in which he put “a week’s worth of poop” on Starr’s driveway to illustrate his frustration.
“She called the police,” he said. “I did call her a name.”
He described the incident as “unfortunate.”
“Two cats are enough, two dogs are enough,” he told the council. “Keep them in your yard, don’t impact the community.”