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NORTHRIDGE : Woman Denies Abusing Animals

By HENRY CHU
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A Northridge woman accused of selling alley cats as pedigreed felines pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of animal cruelty and theft.

Jaie Brashar, 46, was arraigned in Van Nuys Municipal Court on three counts of animal cruelty, nine counts of grand theft, five counts of petty theft and one count of attempted grand theft, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen Cady said.

Prosecutors allege that Brashar, over a period of several months, sold or tried to sell common street cats as purebred animals. She was arrested Feb. 20 after an angry customer--whose $230 “Burmese male kitten” was declared a female stray by a veterinarian--set a trap and secretly videotaped a friend buying two kittens from the woman, police said.

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Authorities found nearly three dozen cats, most of them sick and underfed, at Brashar’s apartment after her arrest.

Brashar is scheduled to appear in court March 23 for a preliminary hearing. She remains free on $15,000 bail.

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Henry Chu

Henry Chu first joined the Los Angeles Times in 1990 and worked primarily out of the San Fernando Valley office before moving to the foreign staff in 1998. He served as bureau chief in Beijing from 1998 to 2003, Rio de Janeiro from 2004 to 2005, New Delhi from 2006 to 2008 and London from 2009 to 2014. He was a 2014-15 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. From 2016-19 he was international editor at Variety magazine. A graduate of Harvard University, Chu returned to The Times in March 2020 as deputy news editor based in London. He left in 2024.

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