Pet owner wants community to defend pet cemetery

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — A pet owner wants to bring the whole community to court to help her defend the area’s only pet cemetery.

Benjamin may look like a pet, but this pigtail monkey is Kim Phelps’ baby.

“Benji is still on bottles, baby formula, baby cereal, diapers,” Phelps said.

Benji is not her only baby.  Phelps adopted Cassie first.

“She was a little butterball,” Phelps said. “She had a seamstress that lived in Carolina Beach and she would dress up as fancy as can be.”

About 4 years ago, Cassie’s life came to an unexpected end.

“She was like our child and we felt like we needed to bury her properly,” Phelps said.

Only one place existed and that was Walden Pond Pet Cemetery.

“We decided that it would be best to bury all of our fur babies together at Walden Pond,” Phelps said.

Cassie and their dog Chaff are now buried there together and Phelps said one day Benjamin will be with them. That could change, because like dozens of others,  Phelps got a letter saying she needs to dig them up, so property owner Ricky Coates can develop the land.

“It was so sad,” Phelps said.

She hired an attorney to file a lawsuit for all of them. In June, a judge entered a preliminary injunction restraining Coates from requiring that anyone move graves or prohibiting visits until a decision is made.

“Now, he is asking to dismiss the temporary injunction and let him go on and develop whether it mean asphalt over the graves or build a building over the graves,” Phelps said. “He doesn’t care.”

Phelps wants him to know how much she cares. On August 18th, they are going to court and she wants the community behind her.

“It’s very important that the judge sees how the community can come together and support each other and that we all believe that our fur children have a right to be buried no different than we see ourselves,” Phelps said.

Phelps said she needs the community to come to courtroom 400 on August 18th at 9:30 am. Calls to Coates have not been returned.