A landlord, John Norris, of an old church building on East 5th Street in Peru, Indiana, entered his tenant’s room in which there were nine cats and took them, in animal carriers, while his tenant was out and left them outside a Peru animal clinic. The cats were in good condition when found and they have been returned to the tenant.
UPDATE: My thanks to Anne Hesse for helping me. A part of this that I missed is that there was a dispute between the tenant and Norris and as a consequence the tenant kept his cats in crates two of which were locked. It looks like Norris removed these crates when the tenant was out for a bike ride. A police officer reported that he believed that Norris wanted to dump the cats somewhere. Norris initially lied about the whereabouts of the cats and eventually came clean.
Screenshot from Anne Hesse’s smartphone 
Screenshot from Anne Hesse’s smartphone
Mr Norris was arrested and apparently faces charges of theft and animal cruelty. He clearly thought that nine cats was too much for a one-room apartment and decided that he was above the law in doing something about it.
The information comes from the Miami County Prosecutor and the Peru Police Department. Mr Norris is 48-years-of-age.
Location
The area
Note
I wonder if the tenancy agreement allows the tenant to keep a cat and it almost certainly would prevent keeping nine cats as this would probably breach one or more of the terms of the agreement. This maybe why he took the cats after the tenant refused to comply. The animal cruelty charges seem incorrect. Theft seems correct.
I’m sorry that I don’t have any more information on the story because all the pages bar one which cover the story are inaccessible by me living in Europe. This is a common problem currently because the European Union introduced privacy regulations and many American news businesses running websites decided to bar Europeans from their websites instead of providing privacy notices pursuant to the EU regulations.
Source: theindychannel.com.
