A 79-year-old woman from Ohio will have to spend ten days behind bars for feeding stray cats. Nancy Segula says that she began feeding the cats in 2017 after her neighbor moved away and left the cats behind. When the cats started showing up on her back porch, she decided to feed them.
"It began in 2017 with me feeding stray kitties. I used to have a neighbor that had a couple cats, and he moved away, so he left them," Segula told WJW. "I would always feed them and care for them because I was worried about them and I'm a cat lover."
Her other neighbors were not happy that Segula was feeding the stray cats and called the animal warden to report her. She received a citation in 2017 but continued to feed the cats that were hanging out around her yard.
She received three more citations, and the most recent one required her to appear in court. Segula was shocked when Magistrate Jeffrey Short decided to sentence her to ten days in jail.
"It's too much of a sentence for me for what I'm doing. When there are so many people out there that do bad things," she said.
Her son, Dave Pawlowski, is incredulous that the magistrate felt she deserved to go to jail for feeding some stray cats.
"I couldn't believe what my mother was telling me. She gets ten days in the county jail, I couldn't believe it," Pawlowski said. "I'm sure people hear about the things that happen downtown in that jail. And they are going to let my 79-year-old mother go there?"
Segula is due to report to Cuyahoga County Jail on August 11 to begin serving her sentence.