Queens Woman Sues Petco After Cat From Hell Munches On Her Finger
Queens woman Karen Costa sues Petco after cat with lion-sized temper takes bite of her finger
Tuesday, May 11th 2010, 4:00 AM
Karen Costa is suing Petco and a cat-rescue service after suffering injuries from her new cat. Below, scratches on the back of her foot.
A Queens woman who adopted a tabby at a Petco fair thought she was getting a friendly, housebroken cat.
Instead, she says, a feral creature with a lion-sized temper moved in - and took a chunk out of her finger.
Now Karen Costa is suing the pet-supply giant and a cat-rescue service and swearing off felines forever.
"No more kitties for me," Costa told the Daily News after papers were filed Monday. "It really should never have been a kitty made available for adoption."
Costa, 27, had just moved back to the city after college in 2007 and decided she could use a purring pal around the house.
She and her then-fiancé went to the Petco in Manhattan's Union Square and fell for a longhaired female tabby put up for adoption by KittyKind.
Rescue workers told Costa the fluffy cat came as a package deal with her shorthaired brother.
"We figured, 'What's one more box of kitty food?' " Costa said.
Costa paid between $150 and $200 for the 1-year-old pair and named them Harry and Sally after the movie characters.
After weeks of hiding under the bed, Harry emerged on May 30, 2007, to take a bite out of her right middle finger, Costa says.
She was hospitalized for three nights, needed surgery to repair the damage and couldn't work for six months.
As a result, the Astoria woman says she lost a marketing contract with a major beverage distributor.
Despite occupational therapy, she says she still can't use her hand well enough to enjoy her favorite pastimes, bike riding and Jet Skiing.
Her lawsuit, filed in Queens Supreme Court by lawyer Paul Oliveri, accuses Petco and KittyKind of negligence for mislabeling the cats as domestic.
Costa "would not have adopted the cats, and would therefore not have been attacked and severely bitten, had she known that one of the cats was feral...and not domestic," the suit says.
Petco did not return calls to the Union Square store and its corporate office. KittyKind officials declined to be interviewed, though one volunteer at the store scoffed at the allegations.
"It's ridiculous," she said, refusing to give her name.
The nonprofit's Web site says it does not take in feral cats. "They would be unadoptable and would be miserable living indoors," it says.
In 2006, former KittyKind head Marlene Kess was convicted of animal cruelty charges for dumping 200 dead cats in the yard of her New Jersey home.
Kess claimed she had become overwhelmed by the number of sick and dying cats she had rescued.
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