stewThis is just so many kinds of wrong, I can't even count all of the kinds of wrong this is. An 81-year-old woman in Whittman, Arizona starts out with the usual story. Nothing you haven't seen on Confessions: Animal Hoarding. The woman, Lucienne Touboul, was hoarding at least 64 cats, and was subsequently charged with animal neglect and cruelty charges in 26 of those cases. Now, sometimes I do feel bad for women who hoard (men do it too, but with cats it's often women). Believe it or not, a lot of these women have a good heart and are trying to help rescue strays. They start out well, but they get in over their head, rescue too many, and then can't care for them all.

But this woman goes beyond that. She brings it where I haven't heard of any animal hoarder bringing it before. She brings it all the way down to Crazy Town.

This isn't the police's first encounter with Touboul and her hoarding, oh no. It appears that they paid her a visit in 2010. And at that time they found nine cats frozen in her refrigerator.

Now, this is bad enough. HOWEVER. I once saw an episode of some TV show where a male cat hoarder kept his cats' dead bodies in his freezer because he couldn't bear to part with them. He loved his cats so much that when they died (he didn't kill them, they died of natural causes), he couldn't let them go. I mean, it's gross, but I felt bad for the guy, that he loved them so much he couldn't part with their carcasses. Obviously, the man had mental issues, but I still had sympathy for him.

So ... is this what was Touboul was doing? Storing her beloved cats' dead bodies? Not quite. When the cops found the dead cats in the fridge, she told them that she was eating them. Yeah, she was making "cat stew"!!!

Said the town's sheriff:

I’ve never heard of a case quite like this where an animal lover presumably turns her much loved pets into stew.

Ugh, this is so wrong. I understand that in other countries, cats and dogs are eaten. But, so far as I know, those cats and dogs are not kept as PETS for years before they become dinner. Plus, was the woman starving? Did she need to eat her pets? Doubtful. This is America. While few states explicitly bar people from eating their pets (though New York does, yay, New York!), this activity does tend to fall under animal cruelty statues. So, there's that.

The woman is plainly not in her right mind. She's now in prison, probably not a place that an elderly and mentally-imbalanced woman should be. But the cats are, thankfully, being evaluated in a safe place where they won't be made into stew.

Do you feel bad for this woman or should she be locked up? Have you ever eaten strange animals?

 

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