“WEB ONLY: Cat lover pleads guilty; no more pets - Daily Local News” plus 1 more |
| WEB ONLY: Cat lover pleads guilty; no more pets - Daily Local News Posted: 06 Feb 2011 03:00 AM PST MEDIA COURTHOUSE — A woman described as a "gentle soul" and a cat lover admitted guilt Friday to charges she pulled a gun on humane officials when they came last September to take custody of her 66 cats because of the squalid living conditions in her Upper Darby home. Denise Ann Merget, 58, of the first block of Leighton Terrace, Upper Darby, remained handcuffed as she stood crying beside defense attorney Lisa Healy. "She's a cat hoarder," said Healy. "They are her life. She really is a gentle soul who took in stray cats. They had cats that had cats that had cats until it got out of hand. She can't have one cat because it's an addiction." Under the terms of the plea, Merget is not allowed to have any animals — cats or otherwise — during the almost seven years that she will be under court supervision. She was also ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation and abide by all treatment recommendations. Merget was formally sentenced by Judge James Nilon to eight to 23 months in jail to be followed by five years probation. She has been in jail since her Sept. 10 arrest. Healy told the court that when Delaware County SPCA officials came to Merget's residence and informed her they were going to take her animals away, the defendant "panicked." "It was like they were there to take her kids," said Healy. Healy said outside the courtroom that Merget, who is rail thin and has been on Social Security disability since 1997, would forgo food to make certain the pets were being fed. Merget pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault on the officers and 60 counts of failing to provide proper care and sanitary conditions for the animals. Assistant District Attorney Lynorr Hiller said that if Merget is released from jail and moves in with her sister, who has two cats, the animals are to be kept in separate quarters and the defendant is to have no unsupervised contact with them. Continued... Merget also must forfeit all 66 pets and one bird that are currently in the custody of the SPCA and to make restitution to the agency of $775. Healy said the bird belonged to Merget's 91-year-old mother, who is in a nursing home suffering from dementia. Merget must also to forfeit all weapons she owns, and they are to be destroyed. Also under the terms, once she is released, the SPCA would make unannounced visits twice a month to ascertain that she was abiding by the conditions. The pleas entered by Merget are unrelated to the 20 cats that were later found in an upright freezer in the basement of her row home. Authorities said at the time that Merget's mother also had lived in the house and it could not be ascertained how long the animals had been frozen. Hiller said the only issue before the court involved the charges from that one day when county SPCA and health officials came to her home and she pulled a .38 revolver on them. The criminal complaint stated she eventually dropped the weapon. The court document stated the cats and Merget were living in "a completely unsanitary environment." Merget told the court she was sorry. "I do want to apologize to the SPCA and to you, your honor," said Merget. "I am very sorry, and this will never ever happen again." MEDIA COURTHOUSE — A woman described as a "gentle soul" and a cat lover admitted guilt Friday to charges she pulled a gun on humane officials when they came last September to take custody of her 66 cats because of the squalid living conditions in her Upper Darby home. Denise Ann Merget, 58, of the first block of Leighton Terrace, Upper Darby, remained handcuffed as she stood crying beside defense attorney Lisa Healy. "She's a cat hoarder," said Healy. "They are her life. She really is a gentle soul who took in stray cats. They had cats that had cats that had cats until it got out of hand. She can't have one cat because it's an addiction." Under the terms of the plea, Merget is not allowed to have any animals — cats or otherwise — during the almost seven years that she will be under court supervision. She was also ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation and abide by all treatment recommendations. Merget was formally sentenced by Judge James Nilon to eight to 23 months in jail to be followed by five years probation. She has been in jail since her Sept. 10 arrest. Healy told the court that when Delaware County SPCA officials came to Merget's residence and informed her they were going to take her animals away, the defendant "panicked." "It was like they were there to take her kids," said Healy. Healy said outside the courtroom that Merget, who is rail thin and has been on Social Security disability since 1997, would forgo food to make certain the pets were being fed. Merget pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault on the officers and 60 counts of failing to provide proper care and sanitary conditions for the animals. Assistant District Attorney Lynorr Hiller said that if Merget is released from jail and moves in with her sister, who has two cats, the animals are to be kept in separate quarters and the defendant is to have no unsupervised contact with them. Merget also must forfeit all 66 pets and one bird that are currently in the custody of the SPCA and to make restitution to the agency of $775. Healy said the bird belonged to Merget's 91-year-old mother, who is in a nursing home suffering from dementia. Merget must also to forfeit all weapons she owns, and they are to be destroyed. Also under the terms, once she is released, the SPCA would make unannounced visits twice a month to ascertain that she was abiding by the conditions. The pleas entered by Merget are unrelated to the 20 cats that were later found in an upright freezer in the basement of her row home. Authorities said at the time that Merget's mother also had lived in the house and it could not be ascertained how long the animals had been frozen. Hiller said the only issue before the court involved the charges from that one day when county SPCA and health officials came to her home and she pulled a .38 revolver on them. The criminal complaint stated she eventually dropped the weapon. The court document stated the cats and Merget were living in "a completely unsanitary environment." Merget told the court she was sorry. "I do want to apologize to the SPCA and to you, your honor," said Merget. "I am very sorry, and this will never ever happen again." 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| Even death can't part pets and owners - AZCentral.com Posted: 05 Feb 2011 11:46 PM PST by Jim Fitzgerald - Feb. 6, 2011 12:00 AM HARTSDALE, N.Y. - Rhona Levy has her burial planned out. She'll be cremated, her ashes will be divided into two bright-red urns and she'll be taken to the cemetery. Then, half of her will go into a plot with Snow, Putchke and Pumpkin, and the other half will go in nearby with Shaina and Twinkie. The New Yorker is among what appears to be a growing number of Americans who want to share their final resting place with their best friends - even if those friends were cats or dogs or iguanas - and are getting buried or reserving plots at pet cemeteries. "I've elected not to be married - it just didn't happen, I was engaged a few times - and I didn't have children," said Levy, 61. "And these little furry kids, they just became my first and foremost love. So I wanted to be close after I died." The International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories, with 200 members, estimates that a quarter of the nation's pet cemeteries take in deceased humans, and the demand is growing. "We hear about it all the time in our membership, people asking for it," said Donna Bethune, the group's executive secretary. Pet owners "oftentimes maybe don't have extended family and their pet pretty much was their family, like their child to them. And there's not a family plot where everyone's going to be." At the 115-year-old Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, which claims to be America's first pet cemetery, president and director Edward Martin Jr. estimates the remains of 700 people have joined the 75,000 or so buried animals. Inscriptions on the mostly small headstones at Hartsdale, which slopes up from a busy boulevard but was appropriately hushed after a big snowfall, reveal the sentiments of some of the people who decided to join their pets after death. A headstone for Edward A. Way, who died in 1976, bears what sounds like a tribute to a perfect marriage: "Here we sleep forever, I and my beloved Bibi, my loving companion for fourteen years, together in life, together in death." Bibi's grave is alongside, labeled "Miss Bibi Way, 1959-1973." Cemetery records indicate she was a cat. In 1995, Arthur Link's ashes were interred at Hartsdale, joining his wife, Marjorie, and 16 of "Our Longtime Friends." The 16 cats each has a name engraved on the black granite monument: Aspen, Fritzie, Ginger, Gidget, Muffin, Bambi, Cricket, Snoopy, Gina, Patches, Foxy, Buttons, Dudley, Omar, Khayyam and Valentino. Martin said human remains have been added to animal graves at Hartsdale, 20 miles north of Manhattan, since a woman had her ashes sprinkled over her dog's grave in 1925. Burying human remains goes back to at least 1950, and the scattering of ashes in no longer permitted. He said he thinks the increasing number of humans - 10 or 12 in each of the past few years, compared with three to five before - may be related to "more people getting used to the idea of cremation." Hartsdale and most of the other pet cemeteries contacted said they require humans to be cremated before joining their deceased pets. Martin said lawyers have told him that because cremation is a "final disposition," there's no regulation against putting the ashes of pet owners in with their dead ferrets or goldfish. Dan Shapiro, spokesman for the New York Department of State, which regulates cemeteries, isn't so sure. He said there's no rule that says humans can't be in pet cemeteries, but added, "there's nothing that says they can." He said the remains of a human in a pet cemetery might be deprived of the guarantees - such as perpetual maintenance - that a human cemetery offers. But Martin noted that a payment for perpetual care is required before human remains can be interred at Hartsdale. Doyle Shugart, who owns two Deceased Pet Care cemeteries in Bethlehem and Douglasville, Ga., and is chairman of the cemetery association's ethics and standards committee, has heard of no legal hurdles elsewhere. He said regulations vary from state to state. Pets are banned from most human cemeteries, he said, but some allow an urn of animal ashes in a person's casket. At least one famous pet cemetery won't let humans in. David Stiller, president of the board of directors for the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, where Charlie Chaplin's cat and Humphrey Bogart's dog are buried, said, "We don't think we're a human cemetery, and we don't want to get into that." He said he wouldn't be surprised, however, if there were some "unauthorized scattering" of owners' ashes over pets' graves. Several owners are leaving instructions in their wills, said Bill Remkus, owner of the Hinsdale Animal Cemetery in Willowbrook, Ill., where the ashes of 35 people are interred. "More people are asking about it and putting their wishes in writing. They don't care anymore what other people think," he said. Martin says Hartsdale will bury any animal, "as long as someone says, 'This is a pet.' " He says 90 percent of the animals are dogs and cats, but records also show birds, guinea pigs, ferrets, iguanas, turtles, monkeys, rabbits, fish, rats and a lion cub. Celebrities from George Raft to Mariah Carey have buried pets there. In 2008, a travel guide listed the cemetery among the world's 10 best places to be entombed - along with the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramids. Prices at Hartsdale vary depending on the size and location of the plot, Martin said. It costs $1,300 to put a cremated cat into an inexpensive plot. Opening the grave to add a human's remains - or another cat's - costs $235. The perpetual-care requirement is an upfront $1,800 payment. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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