Dead Cats and Caskets Scratch Mystery

The manager of a Loudoun County, Va., photo shop thought it was odd that the pictures he developed for Doris and John Stecker included snapshots of dead cats and kittens.

He grew suspicious when similar pictures showed up on subsequent rolls of film. Finally, a batch in August included one of a dead cat with roses beside its body. That’s when the manager decided to take his concerns--and the pictures--to the county sheriff.

The photographs led to a search of the couple’s home by animal control wardens, who seized 60 cats that had been exposed to what wardens later determined was a terminal illness. The couple also had 60 caskets in their workshop holding dead cats.

But prosecutors, who agreed to allow the couple to keep 10 cats, said the Steckers weren’t intentionally mistreating their pets. They are just above-average feline lovers, authorities said, with too many cats to handle properly.

“We don’t believe for a second they intended to make these cats unhappy,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Atty. Karin Cather said. “But with 60 cats . . . they were in over their heads.”

The couple will not face criminal charges as long as they don’t bring more animals into their home or put food and water out for strays. They also must obtain veterinary care for the remaining cats and keep them inside the home.

The Steckers, who run Private Feline Rescue--a nonprofit adoption program for unwanted cats--contend that their pets were well cared for but said many were old or had health problems. The couple said they have helped place thousands of cats in 23 years.

John Stecker said he routinely takes pictures of cats that die in his care and then buries the pets in homemade caskets. He first photographed a dead cat years ago after he saw a garbage can full of animals that had been euthanized and decided that his pets would have a proper burial.

“People ask me why I do it, and I don’t know why,” Stecker said. “I always take pictures and make caskets--and if the roses are blooming, I put a rose by them.”

He said that about 30 caskets are buried in his backyard and that he kept the other 60 caskets in his workshop while searching for a place where the ground was softer. Recently, he buried those cats on a friend’s farm in Maryland.

The Steckers, who are in their 60s, recently decided to give up their adoption service because they knew some of their cats had been exposed to illnesses, said their attorney, David Moyes. They also had to decide which cats to keep.

“It’s like if you have 35 kids and you line them up and say, you can have 10 of them,” said Doris Stecker, who wore a T-shirt with a picture of kittens on it to court. “They are all my babies. I raised most of them from bottles.”

Cather said the cats were exposed to a fatal disease--feline infectious peritonitis--for which there is no reliable diagnostic test. She said there is no evidence that any cats that had been placed in adoptive homes were infected.

The couple said they first started rescuing cats in 1967 when John Stecker spotted a wobbly kitten in the road as he drove home.

After that, the couple said, they began taking in strays and, before long, they were getting five to 10 phone calls daily from people who wanted to give up their cats.

“We’re both too softhearted,” John Stecker said. “Neither one of us can say no.”