Pet owner asks DAC to give his cat back

The resident who said a District Animal Control board member stole his cat, Copper, appealed directly to the agency to have it returned to him and his family.

Stephen Sappo of Johnson Road began reading a prepared speech at the DAC board meeting Thursday, then put it aside and cut to the chase. "I just want my cat back," he said.

But Sappo left empty-handed after some confusion about the jurisdiction of the matter.

Woodbridge Town Manager Joseph Hellauer, a DAC board member, advised Sappo it was a police matter and probably would involve a civil lawsuit, but Sappo replied the police referred him to the DAC.

Cheryl Lipson, the board member who Sappo said took the cat, sat through the brief discussion without contributing to it.

Hellauer said he would contact the police to determine what was going on.

After addressing the DAC board, Sappo told Patch the police don’t want anything to do with the case because of its political entanglements. Lipson is friends with Police Commissioner Tina Weiner whose husband is the Woodbridge town attorney.

Lipson told Patch that she doesn’t have Copper, but declined to say where it was or provide any other information.

She previously denied that she stole an animal "and if he [Sappo] said I stole him it’s slander."

But an official police report quoted Lipson saying she did take the cat, and also spent hundreds of dollars on veterinary care for it.

Copper is one of several strays that Sappo said have visited his house since he bought it in 2004. The other felines were feral, but Copper was approachable, so he has fed him and treated him as a family pet ever since. He even built a cozy little cat house for him to curl up in out of the weather.

In January he said he received a note from Lipson who said she was concerned for Copper’s condition and offered to take him to a vet for treatment and keep him at an animal shelter until the weather got better, but Sappo declined.

One day he found Lipson’s car in his driveway, and when he returned the car and Copper were gone.

"I saw footprints going to and from the cat house," Sappo told Patch in February. "I haven’t seen [the cat] since. I called her and she said I would never get the cat back."

On Thursday, Sappo was talking about hiring a lawyer as a last resort.