Communities Altering The Strays Incorporated

Animal was buried alive

Published in the Home News Tribune 9/8/04

Cat-abusers must serve time in jail

BY DINA GUIRGUIS
Staff Writer

FRANKLIN: Two maintenance workers accused of dunking a cat into a bucket of kerosene, hitting it with a fire extinguisher and then burying it alive, were sentenced to spend 14 days in the Somerset County Jail, fined $500 each, and ordered to perform 30 days of community service.

Jason J. Mate, 31, of North Brunswick and Janos Kovas, 47, of Franklin pleaded guilty in June to burying the cat in the snow.

"No living animal deserves to be treated in this fashion," said Judge E. Ronald Wright. "I don't think that any right-thinking person would do this to an animal."

Lawyers for the defendants tried to argue that, without any previous criminal record, the two men did not deserve jail time for the disorderly persons offense. But Franklin Township Municipal Prosecutor Hector Rodriguez made a strong argument for strict punishment.

"What these two people did was unacceptable and unbelievable," Rodriguez said. "We are talking about a 31-year-old man and a 47-year-old man. We need to show that Franklin Township will not tolerate the kind of conduct that they inflicted on this animal."

The maximum sentence they could have received was six months in jail, 30 days of community service and fines.

According to Katie Nordhaus of the township animal shelter, the feral cat, a gray short-haired tabby nicknamed Stinky, is doing well.

"He still only lets certain people handle him, but he's been through a lot," Nordhaus said.

Nordhaus and fellow animal-control officer Karen Longworth received an anonymous call on Feb. 4 from someone who witnessed the attempts to kill Stinky at Franklin-Hamilton Gardens apartment complex on Hawthorne Drive. The two women called police to intervene until they could get to the apartment complex.

Kovas and Mate captured Stinky in a "Havahart" trap designed to catch nuisance animals. Residents of the complex had been complaining of a foul-smelling cat in their laundry facilities.

When animal-control officers dug Stinky from the snow, he was covered with chemical burns from a previous attempt to drown him in kerosene.

Stinky, who is about 6 years old, has been released from quarantine and will be neutered tomorrow, Nordhaus said.

"He could end up being our mascot, but whatever happens he will be well taken care of," Nordhaus said. "He has trained us very well -- he gets whatever he wants."