Cat Lady Kicks Protest Up A Notch, Dons Silly Costume

If you read the Herald (poor, poor you), you found out today what Bostonist told you weeks ago: Heidi "the Cat Lady" Erickson is (still) conducting a one-woman protest outside the Supreme Judicial Court (not the Superior Court, as the Herald claims; that court is next door but is not the focus of Erickson's demonstration). The delightful picture accompanying the Herald piece also lets you know that Ms. Erickson has, of late, taken to wearing an all-white haz-mat suit with integrated booties and hood while manning her four-sided cardboard box/protest placard. The reason for the suit (which the Herald fails to tell you) is to demonstrate graphically (albeit somewhat obliquely) what her current set of signs says: that the Animal Rescue League of Boston, who cleaned the many dead and live cats from her Charles Street apartment, is "defrauding the citizens of charity" (we don't quite know what that means, but that's what her sign says). Erickson told Bostonist yesterday that Animal Rescue League employees testified against her at trial, saying they got ringworm from handling her cats. But, she explained vehemently to us, they were wearing the haz-mat suits (which are used by scientists handling anthrax, she told us) so they couldn't possibly have gotten ringworm. She also told us that the Supreme Judicial Court is holding her four cats hostage, and she told us their names, which included "Fluffy" and "Mr. Bunny," if memory serves. Planning your own surreal, semi-coherent protest of the state justice system? You can get your Tyvek suit here.