The head of Howard Animal Control described the scene as “ horrendous” and “heartbreaking” in one of the county’s most notable animal cruelty cases involving more than 75 dead and sickly cats hoarded inside a townhouse.
Cardboard boxes full of cat carcasses, sickly kittens nursing inside of kitchen cabinets and urine soaked floors coated in mounds of feces were among the sights that Animal Control Administrator Deborah Baracco recounted to a Howard jury Tuesday.
“The inside of the home was probably in the worst condition I have ever seen,” she said.
“My eyes and throat were burning. [The odor] was making me gag.”
The cats’ owner, Ayten Icgoren, 81, is appealing her 2007 animal cruelty conviction, claiming she loved the cats and couldn’t care for them once they began breeding uncontrollably.
“The one thing she did wrong was not having the cats spayed,” said defense attorney Arthur Reynolds Jr., during opening arguments Tuesday.
“That may not be right, but it’s not criminal.”
Reynolds also said Icgoren suffered a broken foot during a car accident and could not clean her house or find new owners for the excess cats.
He blamed the cats’ injuries on animal control officers who, he said, busted down the door to Icgoren’s house on Swan Point Way in Columbia, brutally removed the cats and euthanized them instead of treating their health conditions.
“There was animal abuse in this case, there was animal torment … but it was committed by animal control officers,” he said.
“They viciously and barbarously killed 50 of the cats that this woman loved so much.”
But neighbor Nadia Wasserman described Icgoren as an unfriendly woman who refused to call an exterminator even though her house was the source of a community insect infestation.
“We couldn’t have dinner without all these bugs around,” Wasserman testified.
“That in itself was disgusting, but on top of that was the most horrible stench … I couldn’t take it anymore, so I called animal control.”
Icgoren was sentenced in October 2007 to 360 days in jail, all of which were suspended by Howard District Judge Neil Axel, who prohibited her from owning or caring for any animals and placed her on three years probation with routine house checks by Howard Animal Control.
If convicted during her appeal, Icgoren could face up 90 days in jail for each of the 21 charges.
