Michelle K. Jimenez told The Star Press on Monday she fed the three cats dog food almost every day since moving to her house at 1022 W. Powers St. at the end of October.
“I'm not an animal abuser,” Jimenez said. “I'm not a neglecter, either. I couldn't help what happened. I feel bad, and, yes, it's partially my fault because I should've thrown (the cats) to the streets, but I'm not that way. I was wanting (animal control) to come get them so they weren't on the streets.”
Jimenez, 26, faces three preliminary counts of abandon or neglect of a vertebrate animal, each a Class A misdemeanor carrying a maximum one-year jail term. As of Monday, Jimenez — who was not arrested during the Dec. 23 incident — was yet to be formally charged in Muncie City Court, where she is expected to receive a summons to appear at a date to be determined.
Jimenez’s four dogs were also taken into the custody of animal control officials.
Jimenez said she first called the Muncie Animal Shelter in late October when the three cats began hanging around her property.
When she was told animal control would not pick up the cats unless they were contained, she said she put them in her garage in the rear of the property.
When Jimenez called back, however, she said she was told the animal shelter would only accept the cats if they were brought to their facility.
“I was like, 'I don't have a car. I have four children. I can't take these animals,’” Jimenez recalled. “The lady was like 'Well, we can't take them.'”
Jimenez said her sister, brother-in-law and mother each called the animal shelter, too, and were told the same thing.
Phil Peckinpaugh, superintendent of the Muncie Animal Shelter, said Monday he has never heard anyone at his office refuse to pick up contained cats.
“I can say with a 100-percent certainty that we would not have told multiple people ‘No,’” Peckinpaugh said. “We do it every day; we pick up contained cats every day. I would say that I don't believe (Jimenez’s claim).”
When animal control and police officials were called out to Jimenez’s residence Dec. 23, they reported finding the three dead cats in the garage. Peckinpaugh said last week the cats had already begun to decompose, and “two of the cats had actually began to eat one of the other cats before they died.”
According to a Muncie Police Department case report written by Officer Chris Kirby, “Mrs. Jimenez blocked the cats in the garage so they could not escape and did not feed them. The cats appeared to have starved to death.”
Jimenez on Monday said “there wasn’t anything blocking” the cats from going in and out of an opening in the front of the garage “unless someone went in there.”
“There had been people going in and out through there without me knowing it,” Jimenez said. “So, more than likely, that had been blocked by them people. That door has been unlocked, so anything's possible.”
Asked Monday how she believed the cats died, Jimenez said it was “probably the cold, the one day I didn’t go out there to check on them.”
“That's probably what had happened was when it got really down below zero, that's what killed them,” she said.
Peckinpaugh said that if three cats placed in a garage had died that day or night because of cold conditions, then his staff would’ve been “picking up dead cats all over Delaware County.”
“This didn't take a day,” Peckinpaugh said of the cats’ death. “This didn't take that one time. This took weeks. It takes a long time for an animal to starve to death. Animals are pretty resilient little creatures, especially cats.
“This wasn’t a cold thing. This was blatant starvation.”
More than anything, Jimenez said she’d like the animal shelter to return her four dogs, which were “taken from me and my kids before Christmas.”
“This has nothing to do with my dogs,” she said. “Them cats, I am so sorry for what happened. I may have been to blame because I didn't check to see if the opening was still open in that garage, but I checked to see if they had food. And I feel so bad.”
Peckinpaugh said Jimenez is yet to call him and ask about the status of her dogs, however.
“If it were me and it were my dogs, instead of contacting (the media) to get my dogs back, that's probably a conversation I'd have with the animal shelter first,” he said. “There's a 10-day holding period that we hold them for, and then they'll be placed up for adoption.”
Peckinpaugh said Jimenez “wouldn’t be eligible” to adopt her dogs after the 10-day holding period, which ends Thursday.
(Muncie Star Press - Jan 1, 2014)
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