The citizens of Wetumpka, Alabama, rest a little easier today.

The Thelma and Louise of Cat Crime have been brought to justice.

A municipal judge in a small south Alabama town found Beverly Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, guilty on all four charges brought against them in a case that brought national attention to the town of 7,200, previously known as the birthplace of James Anderson who played the role of ne’er-do-well Bob Ewell in the film version of “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Anderson, being from that neck of the woods, assumed it was a documentary film. But I digress.

Let the message now go forth across every town and hamlet and sprawling metropolis: Wetumpka is a law and order town, by gum!

Roberts and Alston were each charged with criminal trespassing. Roberts was also charged with disorderly conduct and Alston faced charges of interfering with government operations, all misdemeanors.

But what this case was really all about was cats.

For some time, Roberts and Alston had been flaunting a non-existent law by feeding feral cats on public property near the courthouse, and the cops were getting pretty fed up with the flagrant defiance.

On multiple occasions, cops told the ladies to stop feeding the cats. Each time, the ladies said, in so many words, “Isn’t there a meth lab you should be busting instead of hassling us?”

Finally, on the morning of June 25, Wetumpka police officer Brendan Foster arrived at the scene  of the crime and, thanks to some top-notch law enforcing, caught the ladies red-handed. Officer Foster noted in his report that he found Alston in possession of Fancy Feast, which as everyone knows is the fentanyl of feline foodstuffs. Armed with this incriminating evidence, the women were promptly arrested and hauled off to the hoosegow. Since feeding feral cats is not against the law, the police charged the women with various other charges, including, as noted, trespassing on public property. How you can trespass in a parking lot of a publicly-owned property at 8 a.m. on a workday speaks to the finer points of the law, I guess. But let’s not get distracted by that.

The problem was the cats.

They were running amuck in Wetumpka. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting another cat down by the courthouse.

Something had to be done.

According to Wetumpka authorities, feeding feral cats only brings in more cats. I don’t know how this works, maybe it’s by meow of mouth. I’m skeptical of that explanation, though. The ladies were catching these cats and paying for them to be spayed/neutered. I’m no expert of reproduction, but I’ve always assumed spaying and neutering cats means fewer cats not more.

Animal rights groups and the local humane society were clearly in the Alston/Roberts camp on this. You know what produces more feral cats, they say? NOT spaying and neutering them.

Ah, but the city’s crack team of prosecutors were one step ahead.

“Oh, yeah? Well, what about the buzzards?” the lead prosecutor argued, to which the defense council responded, “Wait. What? Did you say buzzards?”

According to the prosecutor, the cat food cans the cats were feeding from had been attracting buzzards. Buzzards began pooping on the cars of the good citizens of Wetumpka because, well, that’s how the digestive system works.

Clearly, the whole thing was clearly spiraling out of control. First, it’s cats. Then, it’s buzzards.

If this wasn’t put to a stop, you know what comes next, of course — eagles, wildcats and foxes, which are the natural predators of buzzards.

Well, if Alston and Roberts thought the city of Wetumpka was going to idly sit by and watch the birthplace of Bob Ewell turn into Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, they had another think coming.

The judge had heard enough, sentencing the ladies to 10 days in jail and two years of unsupervised probation. The jail sentence was suspended, because the judge isn’t a monster, after all.

As for those two years of unsupervised probation, it’s anybody’s guess what Alston and Roberts will be doing while running around town unsupervised.

But they definitely won’t be feeding feral cats…

Right?

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].