PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) – A cat has cashed in one of her nine lives, surviving after someone left it to die in a Dumpster.

John Schnitzler, who works at the Strawbery Banke Museum, found the cat on Monday. He heard her meowing from the Dumpster, and thought she had fallen in by accident. But when he poked around in the trash, he found the cat in a box that had been sealed closed.

The cat “was really rough and matted, not groomed at all,” Schnitzler said. Someone had to put the cat in the box and throw her in the Dumpster, he said. “It’s really terrible.”

Schnitzler brought the cat to his home in Eliot, Maine, for the night, then took the animal to Sagamore Animal Hospital in Rye the next day.

A veterinarian says the cat, between 9 and 12 years old, was not injured, but she looked as if she had been neglected.

Driver indicted in officer’s death

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (AP) – A grand jury Thursday indicted an alleged drunken driver on motor vehicle homicide charges for the November death of a Swansea police office.

Wayne Smith, 49, of Swansea, was formally charged with motor vehicle homicide and manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol.

Investigators say that on Nov. 5 Smith had been drinking when he drove into a police cruiser on Route 6 and killed Sgt. Robert Cabral, 52.

Smith pleaded innocent to the charges on Nov. 7.

Slaughterhouse settles complaint

RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) – The state’s largest slaughterhouse has reopened after settling a federal complaint.

Fresh Farms Beef Inc. suspended operations earlier this month after federal officials ordered it to because of a series of alleged food safety violations.

Neither the company nor the federal regulators would discuss the problems that led to the shutdown at the time.

Fresh Farms Beef owner Nick Greeno said Thursday that the problems involved a shipping snafu.

He said meat that was supposed to go from one processing plant actually went to another, a problem that he blamed on a trucker and not on the Fresh Farms operation.

Man convicted in 2002 slaying

BOSTON (AP) – A 26-year-old Roxbury man was convicted by a jury on Thursday of second degree murder in the fatal shooting of a father of two after an argument in a housing development in 2002.

The verdict comes six months after Kevin J. Sanders’ first trial ended with a hung jury, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.

In September 2002, Sanders and Alexander Smith, 26, got in a heated argument, prosecutors said. Sanders left, returned with a gun, and shot Smith several times, continuing to fire while Smith lay on the ground, authorities said.

Sanders’ mother, Nadine Sanders, 45, was indicted on charges that she lied to a grand jury in case. Her case is still pending.

Sanders is scheduled to be sentenced in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday.

AP-ES-12-29-05 1914EST

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