Woman Gets 1 Year for Selling Alley Cats as Purebreds

A Northridge woman who blamed her troubles on an identical cousin who police say does not exist was sentenced Wednesday to one year in jail for selling alley cats as pedigreed felines.

Jaie Brashar, 47, convicted of cruelty to animals and bilking dozens of pet lovers, also was ordered not to own or sell cats during a five-year probationary period.

A Van Nuys Superior Court jury found Brashar guilty in January of 11 charges after seeing videotapes showing filthy conditions and sickly cats at her apartment.

Several victims testified that they paid her hundreds of dollars for purebred kittens that turned out to be mixed breed.

Brashar had testified that false statements to buyers were made by an identical cousin, who she said has disappeared. She did not repeat that claim prior to sentencing Wednesday by Superior Court Judge Sandy Kriegler, who could have sent her to state prison for up to six years.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. Cady, who recommended the one-year jail term, contends that Brashar’s claim of an identical cousin was a “transparent attempt to escape responsibility for her actions.”

Brashar was arrested in February, 1992, after numerous people who answered newspaper ads for pedigreed kittens complained to authorities.

Animal control officers said they seized 34 cats from Brashar’s apartment, most of them sick and underfed.

A cat-breeding expert testified that the kittens Brashar sold for as much as $500 each were not pedigreed and that paperwork documenting the animals’ breeding was bogus.