Clipped from the St.Catharines Standard Newspaper

A devastated St. Catharines cat owner says she’ll try to find another affordable apartment after a judge ruled she has to evict her pets.

“They’re all I got. It’s not fair. It’s not right,” said Joanne Kinslow through tears, after being told Tuesday that she lost her case to keep Shadow and Oreo in her rented unit at 215 Glenridge Ave.

“I’ve got 90 days to get rid of my cats. To me it’s a bad decision. My friend can keep her cats and I have to get rid of mine.”

Superior Court Justice Joseph Quinn wrote in his decision that Kinslow gave him no legitimate basis to rule against her condominium corporation’s no-pets declaration.

She “demonstrated a preference, not a need, for her cats,” he wrote in the ruling handed down this month.

“The rights and expectations of the unit owners should not be compromised by the mere preference of an occupant. The cats must go.”

It was a very different outcome for Kinslow than it was for another tenant in the same building who won the right to keep her cats in 2005.

“I find it a little strange that with almost the identical two … situations with the same judge, he would reach a different decision,” Kinslow’s lawyer, Terry Kirby, said Tuesday.

Kinslow has been fighting to keep her cats since January 2006, when she received a letter from the building’s condo corporation telling her to comply with the no-pets policy.

Kinslow has a brain injury and bipolar disorder and said the cats make her feel better and have a calming effect.

When she didn’t get rid of the cats, the Niagara North Condominium Corp. sent three more letters to no effect.

In August 2007, the corporation sought an application from court to enforce its no-pets policy.

The corporation argued bylaws and rules are essential to condominium owners.

But Kinslow’s lawyer argued the corporation’s application was an abuse of process because the case was the same as that of Heather Waddington, another tenant with a brain injury in the same building. In 2005, the condominium unit’s owner, 215 Glenridge Ave. Ltd. Partnership, took Waddington to court seeking a compliance order that she remove two cats.

Quinn ruled in favour of Waddington, saying the Condominium Act does not authorize a blanket ruling banning all pets.

The Niagara North Condominium Corp. then took Waddington to court for the same reason and another judge dismissed the application as “an abuse of process.” An appeal by the corporation was lost in March 2007.

But Quinn said in his Kinslow decision there were “important factual distinctions” between the Waddington and Kinslow cases.

He highlighted Kinslow’s own affidavit, in which she said she was aware of the no-pets policy when she moved into the highrise in May 2002 and got rid of a cat because of it.

After she noticed other people in the building had pets, she acquired her two cats, she said.

Despite her lawyer’s argument that her human rights were being trampled, Quinn wrote there was no evidence Kinslow couldn’t live without her cats.

He found the fact she got rid of a cat before moving in showed she was able to live without a pet.

“In other words, at that time she was both willing and able to occupy her unit without a pet,” Quinn wrote. “Today she may be unwilling, but she still is able to do so.”

Kinslow said on Tuesday she will try to move rather than get rid of her pets, but it won’t be easy. She is receiving disability benefits and is paying subsidized rent through Niagara Regional Housing.