An elderly Columbia woman accused of hoarding more than 75 dead and sickly cats in her town house, blamed Howard Animal Control for exaggerating the filth of her living conditions and euthanizing cats that could have been treated.
Ayten Icgoren, 81, appealed to a Howard jury that will determine whether she is guilty of 21 animal cruelty charges, each carrying a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail.
“I have always wanted to help all the living creatures — animals and humans,” testified Icgoren, a petite woman with a thick Turkish accent.
“I’m fighting to change what Animal Control does to these poor animals.”
Animal Control officers searched Icgoren’s Swan Point Way town house in August 2006 and removed 58 sickly cats in addition to many that were dead.
During testimony, officers recounted the choking odor, urine- and blood-soaked floors, mounds of cat feces and boxes of cat carcasses inside the house.
But Icgoren testified Wednesday that the officers “are lying” and “exaggerating.”
She said the officers only photographed foul areas of the house and the feces they described was actually soil from her garden, which she spread on the floors in place of cat litter.
Icgoren said she couldn’t carry heavy bags of cat litter, nor could she clean her house because of a broken foot.
Icgoren also claimed her cats were never injured until the animal officers pulled them from the house during the brutal raid.
“They injured the cats to catch them, cruelly, and the cats were bleeding and dripping blood,” Icgoren said.
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack or a stroke because of my age and the sadness I felt.”
Most of the 58 living cats were feral and euthanized because of the health conditions, according to Animal Control.
But defense attorney Arthur Reynolds Jr. said the veterinarians only spent a couple minutes examining each cat and euthanized many that could have been treated for minor conditions such as ear mites.
Reynolds said his client is not cruel, just an elderly woman incapable of caring for excess cats.
Icgoren, who is Muslim, said her religious beliefs prohibited her from spaying the cats and the breeding became uncontrollable.
“[Spaying] is wrong because we cannot ask the cat’s permission. We cannot ask if it’s all right to do this operation,” Icgoren said.
Her religious beliefs also require that she properly bury deceased pets, Icgoren said, which explained the boxes of cat carcasses that she planned to take to her Laurel property for burial.
Icgoren is appealing an October 2007 animal cruelty conviction, for which she received three years of probation. The trial before retired Howard Circuit Judge J. Thomas Nissel concluded Wednesday and the jury was expected to begin deliberations.
