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HILLIARD, OHIO---You'd think that police would have something better to do in Franklin County than arrest people for "kitty litter".
Some police arrest people for animal cruelty.
But in Hilliard, police arrest people for trying to help homeless animals.
Police Officer Shane O'Connor arrested Janice Rolfe, 62, in December for littering.
No, she didn't throw papers from a car or leave garbage bags alongside the roadway.
She was cited for littering for leaving cat food out for a stray cat and for illegally providing shelter to an animal.
The Franklin County prosecutor's office has decided to drop the charges against Rolfe.
The police officer said that he had seen Rolfe park her car and walk into the woods where he saw her leave a plastic dish of food for a cat which was living in a ditch. He waited for her to leave and found a wooden box in the ditch she had left as a shelter for the cat and some other plastic dishes.
He decided it was a crime and arrested the retired schoolteacher on two counts.
Rolfe said she had seen someone drop the cat which she calls Fluffy from a car about five years ago and if she didn't already have three cats, she would have taken the cat home. Instead, she tried to give it a shelter and took food to it several times a week. She had a friend build what she calls a "cat condo".
A neighbor, a lawyer, said he would represent her and argued that the city's ban on shelter for animals pertains to livestock, not cats, and that putting food out for an animal is not littering. 2-22-07
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© 2007 North
Country Gazette
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