Alabama cat ladies say they're living nightmare over love of animals

WETUMPKA — The police officer yanked Mary Alston, 60, out of her car. In the midst of a heat wave in June, he put her in the back of a police car with just one window cracked open.

This is where her nightmares start. Alston said she relives the scene as she sleeps. It's been that way since June 25, when Wetumpka police arrested Alston and her friend, Beverly Roberts, 85, after police told them they were trespassing on public property to feed cats.

The women objected, argued that feeding cats wasn't illegal. Body cam footage from the arrest made its way from the Montgomery Advertiser's news site to regional, national and even international news sites and programs.

Officers left Alston in the back of the car for 30 minutes to an hour while they searched the women's cars, said attorney Terry Luck, who represents the two.

“I thought I was going to die," Alston said.

She screamed as loud as could, saying she could not breathe, but the officers did not heed her cries.

'The law should've been on our side'

On Dec. 13, Wetumpka Judge Jeff Courtney found Roberts guilty of criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct and Alston guilty of criminal trespassing and interfering with governmental operations.

Courtney sentenced Roberts and Alston each to two years of unsupervised probation and 10 days in jail. The jail sentence was suspended. They were ordered to each pay $100 in fines, plus court costs.

“Let’s make it clear that feeding cats is not illegal," Alston said.

Roberts was not surprised that the judge found them guilty because of the "small-town politics" that she said were at play. The mayor, she said, gave the official order to arrest Roberts and Alston. Luck said a police officer testified to this during the trial.

Luck said he requested that Courtney recuse himself from the case, as Wetumpka Mayor Jerry Willis serves as his employer. Courtney refused to do so.

The women are waiting to hear what will become of the appeal that Luck filed for them on Monday.

“All the evidence we had and all the body cam footage, the law should’ve been on our side," Alston said.

More:Wetumpka's 'cat ladies' found guilty on all four charges

A history of animal advocacy

Roberts has long been a voice for animals in Wetumpka. She was crucial in getting two laws passed that protected neglected dogs. The Wetumpka City Council passed the first law in 2019. The ordinance mandated that instead of chaining up their dogs, owners must put them on a tether, which would allow them space to run.

When Alston found a dog that had wrapped its tether around a chair, she knew the tethering law did not have enough teeth.

“Basically had we not found him that day he probably would’ve hung himself," Alston said about the dog.

In 2020, the city council passed a no-chain law, keeping people from chaining their dogs in any way. But the city did not enforce it, Roberts said.

So Roberts and Alston did what they could to help the dogs. They brought food and dog houses to homes where people were neglecting their dogs. They often called the one animal control officer to report the owners.

“Well I guess, you know, I came on too strong to him, and I guess I just thought when you get over 80 you can do anything you wanted to and say anything you wanted to," Roberts said. She later added about Willis, “I don’t think he likes strong women."

Wetumpka Mayor Willis declined to comment on the story.

In 2021, Alston and Roberts went to meet with Willis. When they arrived they were greeted by a group of unhappy men, including the police chief, assistant police chief and a lieutenant. They ordered Alston and Roberts to quit calling about the dogs.

“'You know you all have got to quit calling. Back off,'" Roberts recalls them saying. "And the police chief looked at me and he said, 'Somebody’s going to get hurt,' and I took that as a threat."

More:Feeding cats on public property lands Alabama 'cat ladies' in jail

'And then I discovered cats'

“We left kind of crestfallen after that," Roberts said about the meeting. "And thinking I guess we need to quit calling, so we quit calling, and let it rest.

"And then I discovered cats," she said with a laugh.

Roberts first began feeding stray cats behind a dumpster in town, and police eventually ordered her to stop feeding them there. So Roberts went up the hill, to a location that was not even on the same street as the first spot.

She and Alston began feeding cats and doing TNR, which stands for trap, neuter, return. The whole idea, which is encouraged by animal experts in surrounding areas, including Montgomery, is to slowly reduce the cat population by neutering and spaying the animals, so they naturally die off but do not reproduce.

Allison Black Cornelius, chief executive officer of the Greater Birmingham Humane Society, takes the move a step further. At her organization, people practice TNVR, trap, neuter, vaccinate, return.

TNVR and TNR are not common practices. But they should be, Cornelius said, especially TNVR, which spares the cats diseases as well.

To practice TNR, Roberts and Alston often dug into their own pockets to neuter and spay the cats, and then they returned the cats to their colonies.

The animal control officer had given the women permission to work at the site where they were ultimately arrested, the women said.

Still, three police vehicles showed up that Saturday morning. The officers arrested the two women and took them to jail. The men could have given the women citations with a court date, but when tempers flared, they instead chose jail for the two retirees.

In the jail, the women were put into separate cells, “like we were bank robbers," Alston said.

Alston was still struggling to breathe, but she said the guards would not let her have her heart medicine.

Roberts had not eaten breakfast that morning, and she began leaning over the bench and eventually passed out, she said. Beforehand the guards had denied Roberts water.

“I looked around the corner, and Beverly was laying on the floor," Alston said. "I didn’t know if she’d had a stroke or a heart attack or if she was even still alive, but no one was coming to try to help her."

Roberts eventually came to and again asked an officer for water. "They said, 'Well we'll bring you some in a little while,'" Roberts said.

The experience has left them both with nightmares. Roberts has struggled to get out of bed and eat. Alston says she suffers from nerve damage since she was yanked her out of her car during the initial arrest.

But still, their main worry is for the cats.

Alex Gladden is the Montgomery Advertiser's public safety reporter. She can be reached at agladden@gannett.com or 479-926-9570.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Wetumpka cat ladies say small-town politics behind arrest