A Kaneohe woman was ordered to pay a $150 fine for abandoning two kittens at Heeia State Park after the Hawaii Supreme Court rejected her appeal.
A park attendant spotted Susan Owen next to her car with the doors open and a cage in the back seat on Nov. 5, 2016. The attendant asked her, “What’s going on?” and she replied that she had just dropped off two kittens at the park.
The attendant told her it’s against the law to abandon animals, pointed to signs stating that and told her to retrieve the kittens. Owen told the attendant the kittens were wild and untrainable. The attendant jotted down Owen’s license plate number and told her to wait then left to contact the park manager. When the attendant returned, Owen was gone but the kittens were still there.
Authorities tracked Owen down and issued her a citation for pet animal
desertion.
The state has had an animal desertion law on the books since 1992. Violating it is a petty misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
In 2016, state lawmakers enacted a new pet animal or equine animal desertion law to allow judges to impose fines of up to $1,000 to discourage people from abandoning cats and dogs. The crime is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $2,000 fine and a year in jail, if a person deserts and recklessly causes the death or substantial injury to a pet animal.
At trial, Owen testified that she got the 3-month-old kittens from a friend, didn’t have a place to keep them and took them to the park because she believed it was a cat sanctuary. She said she did not retrieve the kittens as the park attendant instructed her because it was dark, she couldn’t find them and she was frightened.
Judge Michael Marr found Owen guilty, fined her $150 and ordered her to pay $30 into a state fund for crime victims. Owen appealed the verdict and Marr suspended the sentence pending the outcome of her appeal.
Owen told the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals that the kittens were not pets because they were not domesticated, she only had them for two days and never intended to keep them. The law defines a pet animal as a dog, cat, domesticated rabbit, guinea pig, domesticated pig or caged bird not bred for human consumption.
The Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld the conviction. Owen appealed to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which on Monday refused to hear the appeal.
The city prosecutor said a woman who cares for the feral cat colony in Heeia took the kittens to a veterinarian where they were treated for infection and given medication to ward off fleas and worms.
