Kimberly Jameson lives in Hartland, Minnesota, USA where she is known to the mayor as a cat lover; she’s ‘crazy about cats’. Hartland has a local ordinance which limits cat owners to two cats per household.
Kimberly had ten cats which she claimed was allowed because they were registered as emotional support animals. However, it transpires that this did not exempt her from the ‘2 cat law’.
She was under a court order to get rid off all but two of her cats by Nov 17th 2018.
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There is a continuing, alleged feud between Kimberly and the mayor of the town, Debra Flatness, who appears to be on good terms with the local police because she is a retired police detective. It would appear that the mayor had become irritated by what she perceived as Kimberly’s flouting of the 2 cat law.
The mayor is keen to enforce this particular law and directed her enthusiasm for it against Kimberly who feels persecuted because she said that others have more than two cats but they were left alone.
Kimberly had planned to move home in the spring to avoid the cat restriction ordinance and save her cats but before she made arrangements the Albert Lea police came to her home at 515 Johnson Street to enforce the law.
Apparently the police removed 16 cats which included Kimberly’s ten therapy cats and 6 strays which she had rescued. She was told that the cats had been taken to the Animal Humane Society of Golden Valley. Nets were used to capture the cats. We are told that one panicked cat ran into the road and was killed.
Kimberly is in tears and heartbroken. She was prepared to move home to save her cats. She believes that most of them will be euthanized because they are old but was unable to get out of Hartland fast enough.
She has been told to pay the license fee for 2 cats within 5 days to get 2 of her cats back. The remainder she has been told will be adopted out.
P.S. The two cats per household rules are designed to reduce the number of stray and feral cats. A laudable objective. The irony is that Kimberly was a cat rescuer and her rescued cats might end being killed at the shelter.
Authorities don’t get the reality of most things like this, and they end up being more cruel to people and their pets and counter-productive to their own goals.
Yes, they should have waited for her to move. That was the humane solution. But appears that the mayor disliked her and was keen to disrupt her life.
Women and their cats have been the easy targets of bullies for thousands of years.
I feel sorry for Kimberly and her stolen cats. I believe that laws that dictate numbers of cats allowed, although well meant, often result in more strays, ferals and sadly, as in the case of the cat who ran into the road, dead cats.
Whatever happened to compassion? There was no need for the police to be such thugs. It sounds as if the mayor was pursuing a personal grudge. That is an abuse of her position & office.
Women are so frequently the deadly enemies of other women. The sisterhood is a myth.