Baltimore Sun

The judge said he was reluctant to send an octogenarian to jail.

But Howard County Circuit Judge J. Thomas Nissel did just that yesterday, sentencing 81-year-old Ayten Icgoren to six months behind bars for mistreating dozens of cats in the Columbia townhouse where she lived with her daughter.

“If it had been a younger person, I would have given you a much longer sentence,” said Nissel, who suspended consecutive 90-day terms on all but the first two charges.

Icgoren, of the 7300 block of Swan Point Way, also will serve 18 months of probation after she is released from the county’s detention center.