ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080036
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FRONT ROYAL
SOURCE: Associated Press
LEILANI MONAHAN said she had the cat spayed because "I was afraid for her."
Audrey and Brian Brehm figured Goober, their longhaired Calico cat, had met her untimely end, perhaps beneath the wheels of a car or a bus.
Six days later, Goober returned, but something was missing.
Their neighbor had had the cat spayed - without the Brehms' knowledge or consent. So they charged her with a misdemeanor count of catnapping.
They charged Leilani Monahan, a Warren County magistrate, with taking the cat and ``defacing'' it.
``She made my children cry, and nobody makes my children cry,'' Brian Brehm said.
Warren County General District Judge William G. Hammer, however, was unmoved and found Monahan innocent during a brief trial Wednesday.
Monahan's side of the story was that Goober was a hussy, and she spared the animal from her own promiscuity.
``They're making it out like I go to people's houses and grab their cats, and that's not the case at all,'' Monahan said. ``I really [still] think that this little one had been abandoned. I was afraid for her.''
Monahan said before the trial that the hungry cat had begged at her doorstep for more than a month. She said she decided to neuter Goober after she caught her cavorting with a tomcat that has a disease deadly to other cats.
``I think what worried me the most was that if I had been found guilty, it would have made others leery of rescuing animals,'' she said.
Brian Brehm said the verdict puts his family ``in a worse position now because she's been given a license to do this again'' to his family's four other cats.
``Our animals don't run wild, and we've found homes for all of their kittens. It's not like we're creating homeless strays or anything,'' he said.
LENGTH: Short : 45 linesby CNB