This intriguing cat story can be summarised quite succinctly (cf. the original story). Zack Whedon bought a house in Highland Park, Los Angeles. The house had been upgraded by a developer who had bought the property from the executors of the will of cat hoarding lady who had died at the property. Whedon had no inkling that this was the case.
Cat corpses exhumed in LA home. Photos by ZACK WHEDON. This is a montage. The line of photos at the top are examples of the exhumed cats in bags.
Whedon was doing some gardening and he dug up two dead cats in plastic bags. One was all bones and the other was a corpse. He thought nothing of it because people do bury their pets in their backyard.
However, over the ensuing weeks he dug up no less than 70 cats in the garden. The last ‘dig’ was carried out after he announced the excavation on his Instagram page which he had set up to report on the macabre findings at his home. It had become a form of entertainment it seems. Whedon and his brother and brother-in-law and a friend spent 6 hours digging up the last 18 cats to take the grand total to magnificent 70.
It had long become apparent that the resident who had died there was a classic cat hoarder who had, unbeknownst to her, broken the laws of Los Angeles by failing to ensure that her deceased cats were buried at an established pet cemetery (Los Angeles Municipal Code as of 1964).
The L.A. County Department of Public Works have said that animal control will pick up the dead cats. Strictly speaking Whedon has a claim against the developer who sold him the property if he could show that the developer was aware of the illicit cat cemetery at the house. He won’t bother though. I am sure he is correct in that decision.
Comment: The thing that interests me the most is the moral issue concerning the digging up of 70 cat corpses and I presume disposing of them. I am not sure how they were disposed of. I guess they had to be exhumed (that’s the correct word) but I think it would have been nice if there had been a little service of some sort to wish the cats a safe journey over the rainbow bridge. Perhaps they did this. Apparently they did buy candles and crystals and made a little offering to the cats but I am not clear what this means.
You see…it is likely that some of these cats suffered at the hands of the cat hoarder. Often cats under these circumstances are badly neglected and invariable some suffer and die prematurely. I feel they needed a loving send-off to their renewed journey over the rainbow bridge.
Source: Los Angeles Magazine online.
