She was feeding the stray cats that kept her company. Now the 79-year-old is going to jail.
She said she feeds the stray cats in her neighborhood because it brings her comfort and companionship. Nancy Segula has been lonely, especially after the death of her husband in 2017. A couple of the cats were left behind when her neighbor moved, so the 79-year-old fed them and kept them happy. They made her happy in return.
Then an Ohio magistrate told Segula that, not only was feeding stray cats illegal, but that she would also be going to jail for it, too.
Garfield Heights Municipal Court Magistrate Jeffrey Short gave Segula the 10-day sentence after she had received four previous citations, Fox 8 Cleveland reported.
“There’s been about six to eight adult cats and now there’s kittens coming over, too,” Segula told cleveland.com on Tuesday. “I miss my own kitties. They passed away; my husband passed away. I’m lonely. So the cats and kitties outside help me.”
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At first, she didn’t know there was a city ordinance against feeding cats, she told the news organization.
“The cats keep coming over to my house,” Segula said. “I just feel bad so then I will give them something to eat.”
Why don't feeding bans eliminate community cats?
The logic behind bans on feeding feral cats is that if there is no food available, the cats will go away. This rarely happens.
First, cats are territorial animals who can survive for weeks without food and will not easily or quickly abandon their territory. As they grow hungrier and more desperate, they tend to venture closer to homes and businesses in search of food. Despite the effort to starve them out, the cats will also continue to reproduce, resulting in the deaths of many kittens.
Second, feeding bans are nearly impossible to enforce. A person who is determined to feed the cats will usually succeed without being detected. Repeated experience has shown that people who care about the cats will go to great lengths to feed starving animals. In addition, there may be more than one feeder and other sources of food, including dumpsters, garbage cans and other animals.
I wish we had more feral cats to keep the damn rats in their place. My city is overrun by rats.
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I read this right after checking my automatic feeder. There's an old guy in this neighborhood that comes around mostly in the dark. I'm an early riser so it's easy to make sure he gets breakfast when I'm home, but I can't count on someone else putting food out early enough for him. The food can't be left out overnight because it draws in raccoons,
I finally ordered a relatively inexpensive automatic feeder that holds up to five pounds of food and dispenses five times a day. But I knew that those raccoons would just destroy it if I put it out, so I built a raccoon-proof box to house it. It was my very first construction project and I didn't even lose any fingers building it. 
So far, it's been working very well.
We have a TNR program here in which you can borrow a trap to trap cats and then take them in to get spayed or neutered and then release them back where they were trapped. I'd like to try to trap this guy, but I was told that the TNR program is on hold for a bit for complicated reasons.
