Matthew Sparks Is Caught Dangling Elfie in Midair

"If it wasn't for her owner deciding to install the hidden cameras no one would have known what was going on."
-- Dan Hatfield of the RSPCA

Elfie was acting strangely and at first her unidentified owner did not know quite what to make of her erratic behavior. He was astute enough to realize however that she only acted that way whenever his new roommate, twenty-nine-year-old Matthew Sparks, was at home.

Instead of confronting him directly with his suspicions, he took the circuitous route of having hidden cameras installed in the house that he and Sparks shared in the Fishponds section of Bristol and what he discovered once he finally got around to reviewing the surveillance footage was a shocking and unmistakable pattern of sustained and systematic abuse. Specifically, his roommate would pick up Elfie and then drop her to the floor, which is not only dangerous but perturbs cats no end.

He also can be seen on the surveillance tape kicking out at her but it is unclear if he actually ever connected with any of his blows. He also not only repeatedly grabbed her roughly by the scruff of the neck but relentlessly pursued her around the house. Considering that he engaged in all of that deplorable conduct, it is entirely possible that he did far worse things to her that were not captured on tape.

Armed with the video footage, Elfie's owner brought the matter to the attention of the RSPCA and Sparks was arrested sometime last autumn. In January of this year he pleaded guilty in Bristol Magistrates' Court to causing unnecessary suffering to an animal by inflicting physical abuse and engaging in acts of mental torture. Predictably, the laughingstocks who mete out justice in Bristol let him off with a minuscule fine of £385, two-hundred hours of community service, and a lifetime ban on the owning of any and all animals.

"This was one of the most disturbing cases I have ever worked on," RSPCA inspector Dan Hatfield told the Bristol Post on January 19th. (See "Bristol Man Caught Physically Abusing and Mentally Torturing Cat in 'Most Disturbing Case Ever'.")"It is really distressing to think about the fear and pain Elfie experienced in her own home."

Luke Was Stomped to Death by a Live-In Lover

If Hatfield and his cronies at the thoroughly discredited RSPCA truly believed any of the self-serving palaver that they routinely serve up to the public they would have demanded that Sparks had been jailed for what he did to Elfie. Far from being an isolated case, it is almost unheard of for the organization to go after any feline abuser with anything other than a wet noodle. (See Cat Defender posts of March 9, 2012 and March 13, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Amateur Ornithologist Guns Down Hartley with an Air Rifle, Feigns Remorse, and Then Cheats Justice by Begging and Lying" and "The Sick Wife Defense Works Like a Charm for Cunning Patrick Doyle after He Traps a Cat and Then Shoots It with an Air Rifle while Still in Its Cage.")

The RSPCA's intransigence can perhaps best be explained as the professional courtesy that one cat abuser extends to another. (See Cat Defender posts of June 5, 2007 and October 23, 2010 entitled, respectively, "The RSPCA's Unlawful Seizure and Senseless Killing of Mork Leaves His Sister, Mindy, Brokenhearted and His Caretakers Devastated" and "The RSPCA Steals and Executes Nightshift Who Was His Elderly Caretaker's Last Surviving Link to Her Dead Husband," plus Daily Mail articles dated December 30, 2012 and December 6, 2014 and entitled, respectively, "Revealed: RSPCA Destroys Half of the Animals That It Rescues -- Yet Thousands Are Completely Healthy" and "RSPCA Forced to Apology for Wrongly Putting Down Cat Belonging to Family It Accused of Cruelty in Bungled Prosecution.")

Equally disturbing is Hatfield's enthusiastic praise for technology. "If it wasn't for her owner deciding to install the hidden cameras no one would have known what was going on," he crowed to the Bristol Post.

Au contraire, if he had been paying close attention to Elfie he immediately would have known what was happening and accordingly would have given Sparks the bum's rush long ago. Instead he, according to the January 20th edition of the Daily Mail, had the cameras installed in July but did not get around to acting until sometime in September. (See "Lodger Is Caught on Camera Torturing His Landlord's Cat after He Installs Hidden Cameras to Work Out Why His Pet Is Acting Strangely.")

By procrastinating for so long, the homeowner not only irresponsibly allowed Elfie to languish in misery for months on end but, more importantly, he placed her life in grave jeopardy. That is because systematic abuse of this nature usually follows a pattern of escalating violence that ultimately culminates in the cat's murder.

Lucy Nearly Lost Her Life to a Sadistic Roommate

Foolishly waiting around for either technology to do its job or the telltale signs of such abuse to manifest themselves in the form of bruises and broken bones often is too late in order to save a cat's life. That sobering and distressing reality was driven home with a vengeance to Lisa Altobelli, a scribe with Sports Illustrated, in March of 2007 when her then live-in lover, former New York Mets' farmhand Joseph Petcka, stomped to death her cat Norman in a drunken rage.

Petcka, who also is known to have physically abused Altobelli and at least one other woman, was let off by a Manhattan court with four-hundred-seventy-six hours of community service at a soup kitchen. (See the New York Post, December 18, 2009, "Cat-Killer Petcka Sentence (sic) to Community Service," NBC Today, September 29, 2008, "Man Who Killed Cat: 'I Did Not Act Intentionally'," and the New York Daily News, September 28, 2008, "Cat Killer Petcka Treated Me Just Like an Animal -- ex-Girlfriend.")

Earlier on October 15, 2004, thirty-nine-year-old convicted thief and drunk driver Peter Landrith did likewise to a fourteen-year-old arthritic cat named Luke that belonged to the son of his lover, Allyn Cornell. The attack occurred in the townhouse that they shared in Leesburg, Virginia, and allegedly was over a tuna fish sandwich.

In spite of Landrith's litany of lies and the savagery of the attack, Loudoun County Circuit Court judge J. Howe Brown Jr. let him off with five years probation. Even Landrith could not help from grinning from ear to ear at the absurdity of his penalty. (See Cat Defender post of January 17, 2006 entitled "Loony Virginia Judge Lets Career Criminal Go Free After He Stomps to Death a Fourteen-Year-Old Arthritic Cat.")

Declan Garrity

Even on those rare occasion when cats are able to somehow survive lengthy periods of abuse at the hands of roommates and live-in lovers they often wind up scarred and traumatized for life and that certainly is exactly what recently happened to a pretty little black, brown, and white female named Lucy. Her hellish nightmare began in November of 2015 when her unidentified twenty-nine-year-old owner, a nurse by vocation, invited twenty-four-year-old Declan Garrity into their Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan. As a consequence of that simply horrendous mistake in judgment, the newcomer did everything but kill Lucy over the course of the following three months.

When the nurse finally tumbled to what was occurring on February 20th of last year, he already had broken Lucy's right leg in two places, her left pelvis, and several of her ribs, teeth, and claws as well. As if all of that were not horrendous enough, he additionally inflicted unspecified muscle damage on her as well as burns to her tail.

Mercifully, Lucy lived but even then her initial veterinary tab exceeded $12,000 and it was expected to have climbed considerably higher. Like both Elfie's owner and Altobelli, she surely would have known what was occurring right under her nose if only she had been paying the least bit of attention to her cat.

"She was noticeably staying away from (Garrity). I thought it was weird," she later admitted to the New York Daily News on February 26, 2016. (See "Cat-Torturing Goon Tricked Pet's Owner into Thinking He Was 'Best Roommate Ever' while Sadistically Burning, Beating Animal for Three Months.") "I was like, "How can we get the cat to like him?' Your mind doesn't go straight to 'He's doing something to my cat'."

Larry Negard

Contrary to the falderol so profusely doled out in the universities and churches, sensory data is far superior to highfalutin theory and never should be ignored. Plus, cats are especially good judges of character and if they are wary of an individual, their owners should be likewise.

Garrity subsequently was charged with animal cruelty and fired by Barclays Bank but he did a runner and returned home to Omagh in Northern Ireland where he remains to this very day. Since Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has shown absolutely no interest in having this sadistic monster extradited, he in all likelihood never will be punished for the repeated beating that he dished out to Lucy. (See the Belfast Telegraph, March 3, 2016, "New York Cops Arrest Northern Ireland Man Accused of Cat Torture after He Ignores Ruling by Judge," the New York Daily News, April 20, 2016, "Cat-Torturing Creep Declan Garrity Back in Native Ireland, Manhattan Judge Issues Bench Warrant," and the New York Post, October 13, 2016, "Banker Wanted for Torturing Cat Is Found in Ireland (sic) -- with Pet Dog.")

Leaving cats alone with roommates for long periods of time while chasing shekels and sex is bad enough in its own right, but to leave an ailing one behind in order to go on a six-week sailing trip simply boggles the mind. As difficult as it may be to believe, that is precisely what Alex McAllaster of Fort Walton Beach did with her eight-year-old cat Dante in the spring of 2013.

Not surprisingly, the unidentified roommate got rid of him almost as soon as she was out the door. It took quite a bit of doing but this story ended happily on June 29th when McAllaster finally located him outside one of Walmart's stores. (See Northwest Florida Daily News, articles dated June 7, 2013 and July 3, 2013 and entitled, respectively, "Roommate Gives Away Cat; Owner Searching" and "Cat Given Away by Roommate Found: 'As Soon as He Meowed, I Knew It Was Him'.")

Duplicitous neighbors pose an even greater threat to cats than do Machiavellian lodgers such as Sparks, Petcka, Landrith, and Garrity. For instance, over the course of the past several years, nine cats belonging tyo Randy and Patsy Hamilton of Bossier City, located on the East Bank of the Red River in Louisiana, have mysteriously disappeared. Even worse, those whose remains later were found had been either shot or beaten to death.

They had no earthly idea who was killing them until their home surveillance camera recorded their next-door neighbor, sixty-eight-year-old Larry Negard of 6008 Tracy Lane, shooting yet still another of their cats, Oreo. He then climbed over the six-foot fence that separates their properties in order to retrieve the cat's body before subsequently stuffing it into a trash bag.

Following that, he likely deposited the cat in a trash can whereby it was shortly thereafter collected by the garbagemen and taken to the city dump and burned with the remainder of the trash. Negard thus was able in the space of a few, violent minutes to systematically eradicate Oreo from the face of the earth without so much as leaving behind a trace of her. It all-too-often is that easy not only to kill a cat but to get away scot-free with doing so to boot.

Stephanie Curwen Sics Her Pit Bull, Duke, on Regi

Every bit as methodical as he is cunning and murderous, Negard afterwards leaned over the fence with a garden hose in order to wash away any incriminating evidence that he may have left behind. He was not quite thorough enough this time around, however, because officers from the Bossier City Police Department had reviewed the surveillance video and therefore knew not only what to look for but, more importantly, where to find it. It therefore was not surprising that they found blood and tissue samples belonging to Oreo on the ground where Negard had shot him.

"It is terrible that someone would kill our cat," Randy Hamilton told the Bossier Press-Tribune on March 4, 2016. (See "Bossier Man Jailed for Killing Neighbor's Cat.")

In either late February or early March of last year, Negard was found guilty of simple cruelty to an animal by judge Edward Charles Jacobs of the Twenty-Sixth Judicial District Court for Bossier and Webster Parishes, sitting in nearby Benton, and sentenced to ten days in jail. He also was fined $500, order to pay another $500 in restitution to the Hamiltons, as well as court costs.

It is amazing that he received even that polite tap on the wrists considering that assistant district attorney Richard R. Ray initially wanted to let him off the hook scot-free. "He was offered probation and no jail time but be repeatedly refused and insisted on going to trial. With the video evidence we knew we had a strong case against him," he candidly admitted to the Bossier Press-Tribune."We were pleased the court found Mr. Negard guilty as charged."

Apparently it never has so much as crossed the minds of either Ray or the Bossier City Police Department to investigate the deaths of the Hamiltons' other cats. If they were to do so, there can be little doubt that they would soon discover that it was none other than Negard who had killed them all.

Stephanie Curwen

In spite of the gargantuan malfeasance demonstrated by the authorities as well as the total lack of anything even remotely approaching justice in Jacobs' ruling, Hamilton was pleased with the outcome of the proceedings against Negard. "We are so thankful that the Bossier (City) Police Department and the District Attorney's Office took this matter seriously," he mindlessly gassed to the Bossier Press-Tribune.

Interlopers who either intentionally sic their dogs on cats or simply allow them to run free and thus to instigate such attacks of their own volition are an additional concern for owners. For example in June of 2014, twenty-four-year-old Stephanie Curwen of Walter Avenue in St. Annes, Lancashire, sicced her Staffordshire Bull Terrier-mix, Duke, on a six-month-old black kitten named Regi that was owned by Lesley-Ann Brocklehurst of Baron Road in the South Shore section of Blackpool.

Upon spying the kitten sitting on top of a fence that surrounded Brocklehurst's house, Curwen promptly unleashed Duke and laughed as he dragged Regi down from the fence and killed him. She and Duke in all likelihood would have been able to have gotten away with their despicable crime if their devilty had not been captured on a surveillance camera that was mounted on the property of Brocklehurst's neighbor, Craig Hargreaves.

As was the case with Sparks, the RSPCA prosecuted Curwen but the buffoons who sit on Blackpool Magistrates' Court let her off with an inconsequential fine of £280. (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2015 entitled "Blackpudlian Thrill Seeker Who Sicced Her Pit Bull on Regi and Then Laughed Off Her Fat Ass as He Tore Him Apart Receives a Customary Clean Bill of Health from the Courts.")

An elderly three-legged black cat named Freeman from Tarring in West Sussex fared even worse than Regi. One day in early 2015 he was sunning himself in his owner's garden when he was abducted and subsequently mauled to death on a neighbor's lawn by two large dogs that were thought at the time to have been Dobermanns. After the attack, the dogs' owner pulled up in a blue car, collected them, and then proceeded on her merry way.

"To find out that he had been savaged by the dogs and the owners had not done anything is just completely callous," Freeman's forty-four-year-old owner Tracy Lynch told the Daily Mail on April 3, 2015. (See "Shocking Moment Three-Legged Cat Was Mauled to Death by Two Passing Dogs as It Lay in Its Front Garden.")"That's what's most distressing for us that they didn't do anything to check on the cat."

Freeman Was Mauled to Death by Two Vicious Dogs

The ninety-second attack was recorded by a surveillance camera that was located on the property of Lynch's neighbor, Terry Rickards, but no arrest ever was made in this case. Clearly, something is terribly wrong whenever vicious dogs are not only allowed to roam freely but to trespass on private property in order to kill cats.

Cretins who get rid of unwanted cats and kittens by by sealing them up in bags and boxes and then casually tossing them out in the trash are a universal plague. Even more distressing, they rarely are ever caught and made to answer for their heinous crimes in a court of law.

For example, shortly past midnight on August 6, 2015, sixty-two-year-old Susan Maude of Park Road in Tranmere, Merseyside, zipped up three cats, Polly, Dolly, and Dylan, and five black kittens in a laundry bag and then deposited them in a trash can at a car park off of Southwick Road. Unfortunately for her, she was captured carrying out her devilry on surveillance cameras.

"A member of the public rang a cat rescue charity and asked them (sic) to come out and collect an animal," RSPCA Inspector Anthony Joynes related to the Daily Mail on March 2, 2016. (See "Shocking Photos of Kittens Left Abandoned by Their Callous Owner, Sixty-Two, Who Dumped a Laundry Bag Full of Eight Cats Next to Bins Near Her Home.") "When they got there they discovered a cat popping its head out of a bag and found there were three adult cats and five kittens inside."

Charged with animal cruelty for not only dumping the cats but also for turning loose in the street a dog named Rusty to fend for himself she, like Garrity, did a runner and as a consequence never showed up for trial. She nevertheless was found guilty in absentia by Wirral Magistrates' Court of Birkenhead and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Susan Maude Leaves Home with a Sack of Eight Cats

Although she is now known to be living in the Normanton section of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, one-hundred-thirty-two kilometers northeast of Tranmere, that warrant never was served and she remains to this very day as free as a bird. That is of secondary importance, however, in that the main concern is that the cats were saved from simply horrific deaths. Even then they had an extremely close call.

"We're very lucky that we didn't end up with a bag full of dead cats," Joynes added to the Daily Mail."It was a hot August day and they weren't found until early afternoon."

Not only that but they very easily could have been collected by garbagemen and subsequently ground to bits at the city dump long before any relief arrived on the scene. Thankfully, that did not happen and the RSPCA claims to have rehomed all of them.

For once, surveillance cameras actually succeeded in saving the lives of several cats. "We're also lucky that members of the public who live in (sic) the street have their own security cameras and I've got to thank them," Joynes concluded.

The most infamous case of cat stealing and dumping in recent memory occurred on August 21, 2010 when forty-five-year-old spinster Mary Bale nonchalantly strolled up to a four-year-old female named Lola on Brays Lane in Coventry, Warwickshire, petted her, and then stuffed her into a garbage can. That likely would have been the end of her if her owners, Darryl and Stephanie Andrews-Mann, had not had the presence of mind to have taken a look at the footage from their home surveillance camera.

The Five Kittens That Survived Maude's Devilry

Lola's life thus was spared but even then her deliverance did not come until fifteen hours later. The footage was handed over to the RSPCA and Bale eventually was charged with animal cruelty but judge Caroline Goulborn of Coventry Magistrates' Court let her off with a measly £250 fine plus £1,171 in court costs.

Even more revoltingly, Goulborn treated her as if she were the victim as opposed to being Lola's assailant and would-be murderer. First of all, she all but excused Bale's misconduct on the ground that she had been depressed over her father's illness.

Secondly, she argued that Bale had been treated unfairly by both the mainstream as well as social media. "The media interest in this case has resulted in you being vilified in some quarters and I have taken that into account," she ruled according to the account of the proceedings rendered on October 19, 2010 by the BBC. (See "Coventry Cat Bin Dump Woman Mary Bale Fined for Cruelty.")

Although her solicitor, David Murray, later told the BBC that she "bitterly regretted" what she had done to Lola, that certainly was a far cry from the tune that she was humming immediately following her unmasking and arrest. "I don't know what the fuss is all about," she declared to the Daily Mail on August 26th. (See "Greyhaired (sic) Bank Worker Who Dumped Cat in Wheelie Bin Could Face Court as RSPCA Prosecutors Review Case.")"It's just a cat."

A third incidence whereby surveillance camera footage proved to be crucial in saving a cat from harm occurred on November 15, 2013 when a ten-year-old large white and brown tom with patches of fluffy ginger fur named Busby was snatched in broad daylight by a man and a woman from a car park at Springfield Court in the York suburb of Holgate in North Yorkshire. Fortunately as far as his heartbroken owner, thirty-nine-year-old Chris Howson of Falconer Street, approximately four-hundred-three feet north of Springfield Court, was concerned, the abduction had been recorded by a surveillance camera belonging to one of his neighbors.

Mary Bale Steals Lola, Stuffs Her in a Trash Can, and Calmly Walks Away

The tape not only was promptly turned over to the North Yorkshire Police but posted online as well.  Howson, however, was not about to sit around hoping against hope that the authorities and the general public were going to locate his cat for him. Rather, he offered a reward for Busby's return, fly-posted the neighborhood with Lost Cat posters, and issued an impassioned appeal for his return.

"If people know where he is, please contact me," he told The Press of York on November 22, 2013. (See "York Cat Returned to Owner after Video of Theft Goes Viral.")"I just want him back, if the people who took him return him to where they took him from, there will be no questions asked..."

He augmented that appeal with a not-so-subtle threat. "If not I will pursue the matter and if they are eventually caught I will press charges," he added to The Press.

That did the trick and the man in the video telephone him and promptly returned Busby to him on November 21st. Although he seemed to be a bit on edge as the result of his trying ordeal, he was otherwise unharmed.

"He (the thief) told me he didn't think he had a home," Howson afterwards confided to The Press."I didn't believe him but I didn't really want to stand around and have a chat, I wanted to get him home. I'm grateful he has done the right thing."

A Pair of Thieves Make Away with Busby

An almost identical set of facts and circumstances repeated themselves shortly before midnight last December 4th on Brunswick Street East in Hove, East Sussex, when another still unidentified man and woman teamed up to steal a three and one-half-year-old ginger-colored tom named Mr. Cheeky from the courtyard of the house that he shared with fifty-four-year-old Ollie Wilson and forty-six-year-old Laura King. As was the case with Busby, the abduction was recorded by a surveillance camera belonging to one of the couple's neighbors.

Lamentably, in this case the tape apparently was not turned over to them until considerably later and that delay proved costly in this case. To condense a long and truly heartbreaking story into a few words, neither hide nor hair ever was seen of Mr. Cheeky again until he was run down and killed January 28th by a motorist a short distance from home on Cromwell Road. (See Cat Defender post of February 8, 2017 entitled "The Long and Hopelessly Frustrating Search for the Kidnapped Mr. Cheeky Ends Tragically Underneath the Wheels of a Hit-and-Run Motorist.")

The surveillance tapes are far too grainy as to allow for any positive identifications to be made but nevertheless there is a faint resemblance between the couple that stole Busby and the pair that nabbed Mr. Cheeky. Plus, their modi operandi are identical.

It therefore might be worthwhile for King, who is still searching for Mr. Cheeky's abductors, to touch bases with both Howson and the North Yorkshire Police. If Maude is capable of fleeing from Tranmere to Normanton in order to avoid prosecution, it certainly would have been easy enough for the thieves who stole Mr. Cheeky to have transversed the four-hundred-thirty-six kilometers that separate Holgate in the north from Hove in the south. Thanks to the invention of modern-day forms of conveyance, great distances no longer pose much of an obstacle to those individuals and groups intent upon engaging in criminal activities.

A surveillance camera mounted on board the HMS Belfast as it lay anchored near the London Bridge early on the morning of February 9, 2008 likewise failed to save the life of its mascot, Kilo, from three drunken yobs who drowned him in the Thames. The surveillance footage coupled with the eyewitness testimony of one of the museum ship's security guards, Steve Laceby, did however eventually lead to their arrests.

Busby and Chris Howson

Deplorably, even the existence of those two pieces of irrefutable evidence proved to be insufficient in order to persuade judge Sue Green of Camberwell Youth Court in London to punish Kilo's executor, a sixteen-year-old girl identified only as Jessica from the borough of Enfield in north London. As a result, she set her free with nine-months of supervised probation.

Jessica who, like Curwen, was laughing off her ugly little face as she hurled Kilo into the drink, turned in a repeat performance during sentencing and, considering the lopsided brand of justice that English jurists are known for dispensing, she perhaps was entitled to her hilarity. (See Cat Defender posts of October 2, 2008, November 10, 2008, and November 24, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Sixteen-Year-Old London Girl Is Finally Arrested in the Horrific Drowning Death of Kilo from the HMS Belfast,""London Teenager, Convicted of Killing the HMS Belfast's Kilo, Also Is Unmasked as a Remorseless Liar and Drunkard," and "Kilo's Killer Walks in a Lark but the Joke Is on the Disgraceful English Judicial System.")

Of the thirteen cases of abuse chronicled above, only nine of them involved surveillance cameras and of that latter tally only four of them were owned and operated by the victims' caretakers; the remainder belonged to neighbors. Most importantly of all, in the cases of only Elfie, Lola, Busby, and the eight cats dumped by Maude can they be said to actually have made vital contributions toward saving feline lives.

Even that latter statistic is a bit misleading in that by relying upon technology in order to protect her life, Elfie's owner actually placed her in even greater jeopardy. Much the same thing can be said for the delay on the part of Lola's owners in reviewing the surveillance footage captured by their camera.

On the legal side of the equation, surveillance footage led to convictions in only five of the cases and none of the defendants in any of those cases received any jail time except for Negard and he only got a measly ten days. That in turn lends credence to the deep-seated suspicion that almost any ailurophobe could shoot untold numbers of cats right before the eyes of most jurists and yet still be let off with a small fine and probation.

Jessica and Her Accomplices Are Captured on Camera

In spite of the meager results achieved so far by surveillance cameras, it nonetheless is believed that they do indeed have a role to play in protecting cats but before that can become a reality drastic modifications need to be made in how that they are deployed and utilized. First of all, the quality of the images that they capture must be drastically upgraded.

Secondly, in order to be effective multiple cameras that are capable of filming movements and activities from various angles and ranges are essential. Thirdly, surveillance cameras require much better nighttime lighting to be effective.

Fourthly, guardians need to actually own their own surveillance systems. As the distressing events surrounding Mr. Cheeky's abduction and death have demonstrated, relying upon those of a neighbor is woefully inadequate when it comes to both protecting cats as well as holding abusers and thieves accountable under the law.

Fifthly, surveillance footage is of no use unless it is reviewed at least several times a day. If the owners of both Elfie and Lola had been willing to have done so, they could have spared them months and hours of totally needless suffering and terror.

It additionally is a good idea to timely review surveillance footage even when cats are known to be safe and sound indoors. Individuals who are willing to do their due diligence in this regard are then in a position to identify potential dangers, whether they be human or animal, long before a catastrophe occurs.

Kilo Never Received Any Justice from the Courts

Sixthly, cameras are desperately needed at all TNR colonies in order to ward off mischief. Around-the-clock armed guards would be an even better idea but there are not too many cat-lovers who are willing to undertake that awesome responsibility and expense.

In the final analysis, however, there is not any substitute for knowledgeable, caring, and vigilant owners who are willing to devote huge amounts of time and resources to their cats' welfare and that applies regardless of whether they also rely upon surveillance technology in order to augment their other efforts. This world always has been hostile to cats and that is even more so the case today in that motorists, ornithologists, and wildlife biologists now have joined the ranks of their more traditional enemies.

"...the unfortunate feline species seemed to be fair game for every kind of cruelty and neglect," veterinarian James Herriot wrote in his 1994 book, Cat Stories. "They shot cats, threw things at them, starved them and set their dogs on them for fun."

In failing to take their cats' safety seriously enough, Altobelli failed Norman as Cornell did likewise with Luke. The same thing can be said for Lucy's unidentified owner as well as McAllaster's poor judgment in fobbing off Dante's care on an unreliable roommate.

Regardless of whether the threats emanate from roommates, neighbors, dogs, or thieves, it is naïve for individuals who care about cats to expect very much in the way of assistance from either rescue groups, the police, or the courts. Such individuals accordingly are pretty much on their own and although surveillance cameras, unlike implanted microchips, have some limited utility when it comes to protecting cats from harm, they are by no means a panacea.

Photos: the RSPCA (Elfie and Sparks as well as the eight kittens dumped by Maude), Brent Cornell (Luke), the New York Daily News (Lucy, Lola, and Bale), Steven Hirsch of the New York Post (Garrity), the Bossier Press-Tribune (Negard), the Blackpool Gazette (Regi), the Daily Mail (Curwen and Freeman) the Liverpool Echo (Maude), The Press of York (theft of Busby and him with Howson), and the HMS Belfast (Jessica and Kilo).

Stanley

"Stanley provided hospital workers, ambulance staff and patients with a talking point, amusement and cuddle therapy whenever it was needed."
-- Peter Hallett of South Western Ambulance Service

The physicians, nurses, and assorted attendants who slave away saving lives in the Accident and Emergency Department (A&E) of the Royal United Hospital are going to have to find a new provider of their cuddle therapy. The same is equally true for their many patients as well as for the department's drivers and paramedics at South Western Ambulance Service (SWAS) which serves more than five million residents in Bristol, the counties of Somerset, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire as well as the Scilly Islands.

All of that upheaval and accompanying profound sadness is attributable to the untimely passing on January 18th of the department's longtime feline companion, Stanley. None of the particulars have been publicly disclosed but if past history is anything to go by he was not permitted the luxury of living out his all-too-brief existence to the very end and then dying a natural death, but rather was prematurely killed off by his owners who reside near the fifty-two-acre, five-hundred-sixty-five-bed facility located in the Weston section of Bath in Somerset.

"He has had renal and respiratory problems for years now and we feared that even last winter he wouldn't be with us for much longer," his unidentified owner told the Bath Chronicle on January 20th. (See "Tributes Pour In for Friendly Feline Stanley Cat Who Made Bath's Royal United Hospital a Brighter Place.") "He battled through them however and I like to think this was because he wanted to share one last summer with everyone."

Very little has been disclosed to the outside world concerning the handsome brown and white tom. For instance, it is not even known either how old he was when he died or how long that he had been hanging out at the A&E. For its part, the Chronicle has left the latter matter obscure by reporting only that he had been visiting the hospital for "many years."

During his tenure there, however, he endeared himself to staffers and patients alike by sneaking into ambulances, sleeping on stretchers and visitors' chairs, and by comforting injured patients. He was so successful in that endeavor however that a Facebook page was established in his honor that soon attracted at least nine-hundred-twenty-six devoted followers.

Stanley Loved to Sack Out of the Hoods of SWAS's Cruisers

He is gone now but that has not stemmed the outpouring of heartfelt tributes and remembrances. "We miss him so much already but are grateful to know he had such a wonderful and exciting life meeting lots of lovely people at the hospital and beyond," his how his owner chose to eulogize him to the Bath Chronicle."Hopefully he made others as happy as he made us."

The hierarchy of the South Western Ambulance and Allied Health Branch (SWAAHB) of Unison, which represents the ambulance drivers and paramedics, also paused during their busy schedule in order to remember him. "Many of us benefited from the pet therapy that (Stanley) selflessly provided," a spokesperson for the trade union told the Bath Chronicle."Cheerio old chap."

It was perhaps SWAS worker Peter Hallett, however, who did the best job of summing up Stanley's invaluable contributions to RUH. "Stanley provided hospital workers, ambulance staff and patients with a talking point, amusement and cuddle therapy whenever it was needed," he affirmed to the Bath Chronicle. "Many times after a bad or upsetting job I had walked out of A&E for a cuddle with Stanley, his presence in itself having a therapeutic effect on staff. I for one will miss him greatly and the RUH will always be a little sadder around A&E without him there."

Shortly after his death, Steve Pearce started a fundraising campaign at www.justgiving.com in order to raise £400 for a memorial plague in his honor to be erected near the A&E. "Stanley was loved by so many, he brightened up our darkest hours just by being there. Usually found just outside A&E, but whenever he could get away with it, could also be found sleeping inside, on visitors' chairs and warm corners!" Pearce wrote. "His owner had no choice, but to share him with us, it's almost like Stanley felt it was his job to look after us. He will always be remembered."

That campaign proved to be so successful that by February 18th a total of £676 had been donated by eight-one caring and generous individuals. The surplus funds in turn will be used in order to purchase a work of art to be donated to the A&E in Stanley's memory.

Not only are there numerous health benefits to be derived from owning a cat, but some individuals afflicted by disease consider the presence of their companions to be indispensable to their recovery. (See Cat Defender post of April 24, 2013 entitled "A Cancer Victim in Billericay Issues an Urgent Appeal for the Prompt Return of Her Beloved Cat, Bear.")

Stanley Was a Huge Favorite of the Ambulance Drivers and Paramedics

Far from being confined to their actual owners, many of these sane benefits also accrue, as Stanley and other cats have demonstrated, to perfect strangers working and residing in hospitals and old folks' homes. As a consequence, more and more of these institutions are coming to the conclusion that there are good reasons for allowing cats to either temporarily visit or to take up permanent residence on their premises.

For example along about this time a year ago, Queens Hospital in Romford in the London borough of Havering suspended its rules in order to allow a sixty-six-year-old terminally ill woman to be visited one last time by her beloved Patch. (See Cat Defender post of May 10, 2016 entitled "A London Hospital Waives Its Draconian Anti-Cat Rules and Grants the Final Wish of a Cancer Victim by Allowing Her to See Her Beloved Patch One Last Time.")

The Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, even has its own resident feline, Oscar, who not only knows when the Grim Reaper is on the prowl but voluntarily takes it upon himself to dispense cuddly therapy to those unfortunate souls who wind up on his hit list.  (See Cat Defender posts of July 30, 2007 and May 27, 2010 entitled, respectively, "A Visit from Oscar Means That the Grim Reaper Cannot Be Far Behind for the Terminally Ill at a Rhode Island Nursing Home" and "When Lovers, Friends, Health, and All Hope Have Vanished, Oscar Is There for Those Who Have No One and Nothing Left.")

Plus, cats have proven themselves to be adept at detecting cancer as well as anticipating diabetic and emphysema attacks. (See Cat Defender posts of April 11, 2009, March 27, 2010, April 20, 2012, May 18, 2009, April 21, 2012, and April 18, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Tiger Saves His Owner's Life by Alerting Him to a Cancerous Growth on His Left Lung,"" Taken In Off the Street by a Compassionate Woman, Sumo Returns the Favor by Alerting Her to a Cancerous Growth on Her Bosom,""Grateful for Being Provided with a Loving Home, Fidge in Turn Saves Her Mistress's Life by Alerting Her to a Malignant Growth on Her Breast,""Elijah Teaches Himself How to Detect Low Blood Sugar Levels in His Guardians and Others,""Adopted from a Shelter Only Hours Previously, Pudding Saves Her Rescuer's Life by Awakening Her from a Diabetic Seizure," and "Blackie Stays Up Nights Monitoring His Guardian's Breathing for Emphysema Attacks.")

In spite of the myriad of services that cats dispense so freely to both their owners and society at large it is impossible to get around the disheartening reality that they seldom are appreciated for being, as Leonardo da Vinci once termed them, "nature's masterpiece." Far from it, more often than not they are routinely vilified as devils incarnate, systematically exterminated by the likes of the barbaric Australians, and horribly abused in so many ways by individuals, groups, and institutions.

Stanley's Indomitable Spirit Has Been Silenced

Even in Stanley's case it does not appear in hindsight that the staff at either RUH or SWAS ever fully appreciated him. On the contrary, staffers belonging to both agencies routinely rudely interrupted his repose in order to cruelly and unconscionably give him the bum rush whenever he dared to venture inside either the A&E or their ambulances. If any of them had really cared about his happiness and well-being they would have welcomed his presence and accordingly treated him as an honored guest. Their rude and uncaring treatment of him is now and forever on their consciences, that is, if they have any.

Speaking more broadly, it is high time that man did an abrupt about-face and turned over a new leaf and for once in his miserable existence endeavored to be something other than the selfish and exploitative monster that he always has been throughout history. To paraphrase a famous speech delivered almost sixty years ago by John F. Kennedy, he should stop repeatedly asking what cats and other animals can do for him and instead ask what he can do for them.

In respect to cats, that first of all entails respecting their inalienable right to not only live but to die natural deaths as well. Secondly, they should be free from all forms of violence and abuse. Thirdly, they should be endowed with an unqualified right to security, shelter, food, water, and veterinary care.

In conclusion, even once it is in situ, the plague is destined to be a rather shabby substitute for the real-life Stanley. About the only thing positive that can be said about it is that it will provide cat-lovers visiting Weston with an excuse, other than a medical emergency, for visiting RUH and paying their respects.

For whatever it is worth, in death Stanley has joined the ranks of the city's other illustrious resident, the Wife of Bath, whom if Geoff Chaucer is to be believed not only ran through men like a knife cutting hot butter but also insisted that they dutifully "paid their debt" to her each night. That in turn leads to the thought provoking question of when, if ever, is man going to wake up and pay his debt to cats like Stanley?

When all is said and done, plagues, statues, and crocodile tears do not count in this world. All that matters is how that the living are treated.

Photos: ITV of London.

A Newly-Constructed Ladder Allows Cats to Gain Entry into Ilhan's House

"This world is not just for people."
-- Sebnem Ilhan

With Tekirdag suffering through an especially cold and snowy winter, Sebnem Ilhan knew that she had to do something about the many wet and homeless cats that she saw shivering outside her house every day. In particular, she desperately wanted to bring them inside but for reasons that never have been spelled out by the media she was unable to do so, at least not in any conventional manner.

One possible explanation is that entry into her house is only secured via an elevator and that of course would preclude her from installing a cat flap. She could have trapped and then carried them inside but, for whatever reason, she declined to do that.

After considerable reflection upon the matter, she hit upon the idea of constructing a five-rung stepladder from a window in her house down to the sidewalk and that has solved that dilemma. "I made the ladder so the cats can come into my comfortable house," she explained to Yahoo News on February 28th. (See "This Animal Lover Built a Ladder for Stray Cats to Come In from the Cold.")

In doing so, she also had the foresight to take precautions against incurring any potential problems with her neighbors. "I thought if I put some flower pots there, it (the ladder) wouldn't bother anyone," she told Yahoo News.

Apparently that ploy has succeeded in not only keeping her neighbors at bay but an unspecified number of cats have availed themselves of the ladder in order to escape the elements as well as to stock up on some much needed replenishment. "I wish no animal is hungry and thirsty, just happy," she added. "This world is not just for people."

Sebnem Ilhan Comforts a Tuxedo

Press reports, already sketchy at best, have not delved into how all of this came about but since Ilhan voluntarily rescues both cats and dogs she in all probability began by setting out food and water for the cats at ground level. After that she in all likelihood moved the food on the bottom rungs of the ladder and then, little by little, she was able to lure them all the way to the top and eventually inside her abode.

All of that sans doute required a good deal of time, effort, and patience but since she earns her livelihood pulling teeth she is well versed in executing tedious and delicate maneuvers. Moreover, there never was any guarantee that they ever would catch on to what she had in mind and that is especially the case in regard to those cats who have spent their entire lives roughing it.

Located on the northern coast of the Sea of Marmara one-hundred-thirty-five kilometers west of Istanbul in the tiny sliver of Turkey that lies in Europe, Tekirdag has a Mediterranean climate that is characterized by long, hot, and humid summers that are followed by cool, wet, and snowy winters. Although overnight lows between December and March rarely dip below 35° Fahrenheit, it either rains or snows more than a third of that time.

That in itself is more than sufficient in order to make living outdoors a thoroughly wretched experience for cats. Even so, winters in the Mediterranean are nothing compared to those in the northern half of the United States and Canada which annually claim the lives of tens of thousands of cats. (See Cat Defender posts of March 5, 2007, January 21, 2010, February 2, 2015, February 23, 2015, March 14, 2015, and May 13, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Run Down by a Motorist and Frozen to the Ice by His Own Blood, Roo Is Saved by a Caring Woman,""Trapped Outdoors in a Snowstorm, Annie Is Brought Back from the Dead by the Compassion of a Good Samaritan and an Animal Control Officer,""Cruelly Declawed and Locked Up Indoors for All of His Life, Nicky Is Suddenly Thrust into the Bitter Cold and Snow for Twenty-One Consecutive Days with Predictably Tragic Results,""Abandoned to Tough It Out by His Lonesome in the Deadly Michigan Cold and Snow, Flick Sustains Horrific Injuries to His Front Paws When They Become Frozen to a Porch,""Ace Is Found Frozen to a Porch with His Eyes Gouged Out but the Authorities Are Too Lazy, Cheap, and Ailurophobic to Go After His Assailant," and "Bubba Is Condemned to Spend Forty Days Trapped Underneath a Snow Covered Porch after Her Uncaring Owners Prematurely Wrote Her Off as Being Dead.")

Ladders not only are helpful when it comes to rescuing cats from the elements but they also play a vital role in assisting elderly and disabled cats to get around on their own. For example, when a handsome ginger and white male named Tom from Fulham in the London borough of Fulham and Hammersmith, located six kilometers south of Charing Cross on the north bank of the Thames, came down with arthritis that made it not only difficult but painful as well for him to scale the eight-foot garden fence that surrounds his house.

Tom with Adrienne Ellery and Gareth Bowen

At first his owner, Adrienne Ellery, did not know what to do but her thirty-five-year-old boyfriend, retired firefighter Gareth Bowen, had an idea. "I had some wood left over from building a fence so I started on a staircase," he later confided to the Daily Mail on September 19, 2011. (See "It Was a Joint Effort: Arthritic Cat Is on Top of the World after Owners Build Him a Spiral Staircase to Get over Garden Fence.")"I knew Tom was an intelligent cat and would figure out how to use it."

His partner was not so quickly persuaded, however. "When Gareth told me what he wanted to do I was astonished and thought he was a bit mad," she admitted to the Daily Mail.

Undaunted by her skepticism, Bowen forged ahead. "I was watching Tom and it was sad to see him struggle with the fence," he added to the Daily Mail."Some days he could do it but when he came back down he was faced with an eight-foot jump and he would land with such a thud that I knew it wasn't good for his joints, particularly with the arthritis."

The end result of his labors was an aesthetically appealing twelve-rung spiral staircase that allows Tom to get up and down the garden fence. Once he reaches the summit, he is now able to navigate around the neighborhood by walking on top of the wall.

It was not all smooth sailing, however, and initially it appeared that Ellery's reservations may have had some merit. "When it was finished Tom didn't know what to make of it and I was a bit worried he wouldn't figure it out," Bowen conceded to the Daily Mail. "But then Adrienne tempted him by putting some food on each step and then Tom couldn't wait to run up the stairs. It was if he had used it all his life."

Tom Making His Way Down

Ellery readily concurred. "...it's made all the difference to the cat," she declared to the Daily Mail."It means he can get around the neighborhood and as he's getting older it's important for his quality of life."

The staircase, which Gareth constructed in a single day's work, thus has improved both Tom's physical as well as his psychological health. "On the way down he jumps the last few steps as a way of proving to himself that he can still do it," Bowen concluded. "It's great because it means he's not stuck in the house and can be sociable with the other local cats."

Bionic implants may one day be yet still another option for cats that have been robbed of limbs by murderous motorists and combine operators. These prosthetics consist of polymer and rubber paws that are attached to titanium rods that in turn are inserted into holes drilled into their ankles.

For instance in December of last year, a handsome one-year-old homeless tuxedo named Pooh was fitted with a pair of bionic legs at the Central Veterinary Clinic in Sofia in order to replace the rear limbs that were stolen from him by either a motorist or a train engineer. "Pooh's condition is more than satisfactory," thirty-five-year-old Vladislav Zlatinov of the surgery told Yahoo News on January 28th. (See "Paw-fect Rescue: Bulgarian Stray Cat Gets Bionic Legs.")"There might be some clumsiness but he can walk, jump, and run. The only difference is a gentle tapping sound."

Steven, an eight-month-old cat who also lost both of his rear legs last year, likewise has been fitted with a new pair of bionic legs but press reports have not disclosed how that he is progressing. Both he and Pooh were brought to Zlatinov's surgery by Let's Adopt Bulgaria of Sofia which footed the enormous bills for both operations.

Tom Is Back on Top of Things in His Neighborhood

"We went to Zlatinov looking for a solution because he had solved other hopeless cases of injured animals before," the charity's Vyara Mladenova told Yahoo News. "But we didn't expect him to offer this solution and for it to be successful."

It is believed that Pooh ("Fluff" in Bulgarian) and Steven are only the second and third cats in the world to have been fitted with bionic paws. The first one was a black tom named Oscar from the parish of Grouville in the Balliwick of Jersey who lost both of his rear appendages to a combine operator in the autumn of 2009.

That groundbreaking surgery was performed a year later by Noel Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick's Referrals in the Eashing section of Godalming, Surrey. Leider, it is not known either how that Oscar is doing or even if he is still alive today. (See Cat Defender post of November 20, 2010 entitled "Celebrated as the World's First Bionic Cat, Oscar Now Has Been Turned into a Guinea Pig with a Very Uncertain Future.")

The reason that so few of these procedures are performed is, quite obviously, their exorbitant cost. Although Let's Adopt Bulgaria has not publicly disclosed how much that it paid Zlatinov for Pooh's and Steven's surgeries, Oscar's new limbs cost his owners, Mike Nolan and Kate Allan, a whopping £50,000.

Such procedures surely must cost considerably less in Sofia, however, given Zlatinov's newfound optimism. "(The operations) give hope that even in a country like Bulgaria innovative things can be done," he proclaimed to Yahoo News.

Pooh and His Bandaged Paws Following Surgery

Although there certainly is not anything secretive about the technology that put Oscar, Pooh, and Steven back on their feet, there is not any record of such procedures having been performed in the United States. If that is indeed the case, it can only be attributable to Americans' legendary cheapness rather than to any lack of expertise.

Even Zlatinov has reservations about bionic implants. "Cats who (have) lost one leg do pretty well. But what happens if they loose both their hind legs?" he rhetorically mused to Yahoo News. "Yes, they move somehow, but what quality of life are we talking about?"

Not only is he wrong to raise such an objection, but unless a cat is in simply excruciating pain and without so much as prayer of recovering, most any kind of life is better than none. Moreover, the quality of life afforded amputees is actually quite good.

For example, in Monmouth, Illinois, a black and white female named Trace has only two legs. Both of her rear ones were ground up inside a motorist's engine but Geoffrey Weech of the Monmouth Small Animal Hospital never even once considered killing her.

"We felt that if a cat can be that normal with three legs, I think they can adapt to two legs," he said afterwards. (See Cat Defender post of November 17, 2010 entitled "Penniless and Suffering from Two Broken Legs, It Looked Like It Was Curtains for Trace Until Geoffrey Weech Rode to Her Rescue on His White Horse.")

Pooh and His New Bionic Rear Legs

As if any additional proof was needed, a tortoiseshell named Callie Mae at the Theodore Veterinary Hospital in the Alabama town of the same name does not have any legs at all. "She's a good kitty," Sandy Tomlin of the surgery averred to WKRG-TV of Mobile on August 9, 2010. (See YouTube video entitled "Legless Cat Ready to Start Another Life.") "She even caught a mouse one time."

Cats who have lost legs also can be fitted with specially designed wheelchairs in order to help them stay mobile. That is precisely what Louise Broomhall of Seadown in the district of Canterbury on New Zealand's south island did for her beloved one-eyed cat, Blacky, after he lost both of his rear appendages to a hit-and-run driver in June of 2010. (See The Press of Christchurch, August 19, 2010, "Blacky (the cat) Gets His Wheels.")

Killing cats that are either homeless or disabled should not be an option for any society. All of them can be saved but doing so requires, like everything else that is worthwhile in this world, time, money, and effort.

Owners such and Ellery and Bowen were willing to go the extra mile for Tom as was the case for Nolan and Allan in regard to Oscar and Broomhall with Blacky. Ilhan did not harden her heart and turn her back on the homeless cats of Tekirdag and the same can be said for Let's Adopt Bulgaria and its compassionate care for Pooh and Steven. As far as Weech and the Theodore Veterinary Hospital are concerned, the kindness that they have showered on Trace and Callie Mae, respectively, can only be described as extraordinary.

The imperative therefore is not contract but rather to expand the circle of care, compassion, and legal protections to all cats regardless of either their socio-economic status or the extent of their disabilities. That lofty goal is a preeminently achievable one; all that is lacking is the commitment to make it a reality.

Photos: Sebnem Ilhan (ladder), Daily Mail (Tom), and Let's Adopt Bulgaria (Pooh).

Simon Has Been Through Hell but Is Still Able to Smile

"I stopped counting at NZ$22,000. It sure is a lot of money but putting Simon down wasn't an option. He's part of our family."
-- Robert McCarthy

Shelters, Animal Control Officers, veterinarians, wildlife biologists, and ornithologists kill cats in droves. Even a vast majority of owners have their faithful companions unceremoniously liquidated as soon as they become either old, sickly, or their presence is no longer desired.

Mercifully, that is far from being the entire story and Robert McCarthy from Auckland is a bright and shining exception to that rule. Three years ago, he and his wife, Madeline, opened up their hearts and home to a three-legged ginger and white tom named Simon.

"When we first met him at the (Royal New Zealand) SPCA we didn't even realize he was missing his back left leg," he told The New Zealand Herald of Auckland on March 5th. (See "Meet Simon: the $22K Two-Legged Cat.")"He moved around just like any other cat; it didn't affect him at all."

It has not been disclosed either how that Simon lost the leg or why that he wound up at a shelter but, needless to say, both near-death experiences constitute more than enough tragedy for any one cat to bear. Sadly, in his case The Fates, never seemingly able to leave bad enough alone, had even more miseries in store for him.

The next installment of their devilry occurred last June when he was nearly mauled to death by a neighbor's dog. The specifics of the attack have not been publicly divulged but McCarthy first learned of it courtesy of a telephone call that he received from his local veterinarian.

It therefore is assumed that either the dog's owner or a Good Samaritan collected Simon and took him to the vet. McCarthy in turn likely was tracked down by information contained on either his collar or, more likely, from an implanted microchip.

Suffering from multiple wounds and fractures to his left front leg, Simon was promptly transferred to the Veterinary Specialist Group in the Mount Albert section of the city where he underwent emergency surgery in a desperate attempt to save his leg. Sadly, an infection set in immediately following the procedure and that necessitated its removal.

Simon and His Devoted Owner Robert McCarthy

There can be little doubt that his surgeon, Kyle Clark, wanted at that juncture to snuff out his life but McCarthy and his wife were not about to go along with that. Since their beloved cat have coped well while his injured leg was in a cast, they reasoned that he could get by without any appendages on the left side of his body.

"When his leg was in a cast he would tuck it up and not even use it, or he would use it like a crutch, so we knew he would cope okay," McCarthy told The New Zealand Herald.

Even so he surely must have had some inner doubts but Simon soon silenced them by getting out of bed and taking a few tentative steps the very next day after the leg had been removed. A few weeks later he was behaving as almost nothing had ever happened to him.

"He bounced back in no time and was tackling everything from stairs to jumping on the couch and the beds," McCarthy proudly pointed out to The New Zealand Herald.

In addition to those activities, he now rolls around and roughhouses with his housemates, a cat named Olive and a dog named Barry, as well as occasionally chasing chickens and skinks around the garden. (See video posted at both The New Zealand Herald and the Daily Mail, March 6, 2017, "Now He's Feline Fine!")

Saving Simon has not come cheap, however. For instance, the first operation in order to try and save his leg cost the McCarthys NZ$7,000 of which their pet insurance paid only NZ$3,500. His stay in intensive care, antibiotics to fight off various infections, the treatment of other undisclosed maladies, check-ups, and the dressing of his wounds cost the couple several thousand additional dollars.

On top of all of that, there was the cost of amputating his leg as well as his recuperation. "I stopped counting at NZ$22,000 (US$ 15,360, 12,425£, and 14,308€)," McCarthy disclosed to The New Zealand Herald.

Bella Was Declared Persona Non Grata and Deported

They money is immaterial, however, and McCarthy is anything but crying in his beer. "It sure is a lot of money but putting Simon down wasn't an option," he declared to The New Zealand Herald."He's part of our family."

Even if things had not worked out, he and his wife could have gone forward with clear consciences knowing in their hearts that they had done everything in their power to have saved Simon. As things joyfully turned out, Simon not only lived but has adjusted remarkably well to having just two legs.

"Simon didn't mourn the loss of a second limb and reminisce about the days when he had three legs. He simply got up on two legs and got on with life," Clark told The New Zealand Herald."We see this all the time in the animals that come to us. I think people can learn a lot from them."

That is true enough as far as it goes but she egregiously fails to even take note of the all-important fact that cat owners all over the world could learn even more from the superlative example set by the McCarthys. First of all, they have demonstrated conclusively that no true lover of the species ever gives up on a moggy no matter how old, sickly, or handicapped it may be.

Secondly, they have shown that no expense ever should be spared when it comes to saving a cat's life because doing so is the very best investment that anyone will ever make in this world. As the result of having chosen life over death and compassion over expediency, the McCarthys have been richly rewarded by still having Simon around in order to brighten up their lives.

Every bit as importantly, cats such as Tripod, Trace, and Callie Mae have long proven that they can get by splendidly on three, two, and sometimes even no legs at all. Their determination, perseverance, and will to live serves only to make them not only all the more remarkable but precious as well. (See Cat Defender posts of February 9, 2006 and November 17, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Newspaper Cat Named Tripod Is Killed Off by Journalists He Befriended in Vermont" and "Penniless and Suffering from Two Broken Legs, It Looked Like It Was Curtains for Trace Until Geoffrey Weech Rode to Her Rescue on His White Horse," plus WRKG-TV of Mobile, August 9, 2010, YouTube video entitled "Legless Cat Ready to Start Another Life.")

As wonderful as Simon's recovery has been, at least two dark clouds are hovering over his future. The most pressing of which is the presence of his neighbor's killer dog.

Simon Can Run and Play Just Like Any Four-Legged Cat

Since the dog's owner has not had so much as the common decency to offer to pay Simon's humongous veterinary bill, that in itself suggests that the McCarthys could very well be in for further difficulties with either him or her. With that being the case, it is imperative that they either devise some means of containing Simon or never allow him out of their sight for so much as a split-second whenever he is outside.

By losing two legs plus being dumped on death row at a shelter, Simon already has been put through Hell and that alone makes it highly unlikely that he is capable of withstanding much more abuse. It accordingly is not sufficient that the McCarthys have saved his life; rather, they must now endeavor to take any and all measures within their power in order to preserve it.

The second major threat to Simon's well-being comes from the authorities now that Prime Minister John Key has announced plans to take New Zealand down the same path as neighboring Australia by systematically exterminating all of its homeless cats. (See The Washington Post, July 25, 2016, "New Zealand Vows to Kill Every Weasel, Rat and Feral Cat on Its Soil" and Cat Defender post of November 18, 2016 entitled "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

Key's eradication scheme is the brain child of loudmouthed, cat-hating buffoon Gareth Morgan who does not have anything better to do with his great wealth. (See The Guardian of London, January 23, 2013, "Cat Lovers Pounce on Campaign to Save New Zealand's Birds" and a column authored by him in The New Zealand Herald on November 14, 2015 and entitled "Cats -- the Number One Threat to Native Wildlife.")

Even the Royal New Zealand SPCA is in league with him and therefore cannot be counted upon to protect cats. (See TVNZ of Auckland, April 10, 2014, "SPCA Advice on Stray Kittens: Shoot Them.")

Even the mundane act of simply attempting to smuggle her cat, Bella, into Auckland Airport was sufficient in itself in order to get a Vancouver woman denied entry into the country last December. (See the Daily Mail, December 21, 2016, "Is It a Prrrranda? Woman Deported from New Zealand for Smuggling Her Pet on a Fourteen-Hour Flight from Canada in Her Handbag.")

The message is thus perfectly clear: the McCarthys cannot under any circumstances allow any of those cat-hating fiends to come within ten feet of Simon. After all that he has been through and so bravely transcended, the only acceptable dénouement for him would be to die a natural death in bed many years from now.

All of those dark and gloomy thoughts aside for the moment, his miraculous triumph over simply outrageous misfortune is indeed something to warm the heart on this very cold and blustery St. Patrick's Day with spring, despite what the calendar says, nowhere in sight.

Photos: John Oxenham of The New Zealand Herald (Simon) and the Daily Mail (Bella).

Archie

"I've become fascinated with tracking Archie, but it is so worrying."
-- Iain Simpson

Many notable individuals and organizations long have touted the benefits of modern technology but when it comes to improving the lives of cats their proclamations ring especially hollow. That is so much the case in fact that an even stronger argument could be made that irresponsibility to cats and technology go hand in glove.

A good case in point is how that Iain Simpson and Clare Smith from the village of Quarrington in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, so outrageously neglect the personal safety of their four-year-old, brown and white resident feline, Archie. Not only do they permit him to stay out all night unchaperoned but they additionally allow him to go AWOL for weeks at a time without, apparently, even so much as bothering to search for him.

Instead of availing themselves of the only morally acceptable option open to them, which would be to lock him up indoors overnight, they instead have elected to invest £49.95 in a G-Paws satellite tracking collar. Lightweight, waterproof, and with a battery life of up to eight hours, these devices are capable of recording the minute details of  cats that like to roam and their findings later can be downloaded onto maps.

They additionally are equipped with motion detectors which automatically shut them off once a cat comes to a complete rest for longer than five minutes and that in turn also helps to extend the lives of their batteries. So far, more than five-hundred of them have been sold in the United Kingdom.

Archie and Iain Simpson

As the result of surveillance data gleaned from one of these devices, Simpson and Smith soon learned that after Archie leaves their house at night he walks six kilometers to the busy, two-lane A15 motorway, which stretches one-hundred-fifty-three kilometers from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in the north to Scawby, Lincolnshire, where he apparently lies down in traffic and sleeps for two hours. Leaving aside for the moment that it is a miracle that he already has not been run down and killed, such a revelation would be more than sufficient not only to scare the bejesus out of any genuine cat-lover but, more importantly, it would prompt drastic remedial action.

As difficult as it may be to believe, that has not occurred; on the contrary, Simpson's reaction to that shocking revelation has been pretty much confined to mild bemusement. "I've become fascinated with tracking Archie, but it is so worrying," he conceded to the Sleaford Target on March 20, 2014. (See "Britain's Bravest Pet: Missing Cat Sleeps in the Middle of A15, According to Archie's GPS Collar.")"It's like worrying about a teenager on a night out. I know he's gone but he'll never tell me where."

It is because of G-Paws' motion detector that Simpson learned that Archie spends hours on end on the A15. "He's a fearless tyke really. The data from his tracker shows him being stationary in the middle of the road for hours at a time," he added to the Sleaford Target."I can only assume he's gone to sleep. Maybe the sound of traffic relaxes him. I don't know."

Since he quite obviously knows where Archie is hanging out, the responsible thing for him to do would be to go and collect him. Sadly to say but Simpson has proven himself to be totally unwilling to do even that much for his cat.

Archie and Clare Smith

"I do know that he always comes back in the morning for his breakfast, none the wiser that I had been absolutely terrified for him," is how that he casually sloughed off his reprehensible lack of action to the Sleaford Target."He's probably Britain's bravest pet. He's certainly braver than me."

That is because Archie is totally unaware of just how lethal motorists are to cats. It accordingly is Simpson's and Smith's job to protect him from their machinations as opposed to reveling in his deering-do.

G-Paws' creator, Dave Evans, is equally callous. "This just goes to prove the secret lives of our pets is (sic) much more diverse than we could ever could imagine," he gleefully crowed to the Sleaford Target in between, no doubt, salivating over all the money that he is making from the sale of his tracking devices.

Whereas multitudes of owners condemn their faithful companions to early graves by either wittingly or unwittingly allowing them to venture out into traffic by their lonesomes, this is the only second known example on record whereby one of them has knowingly turned a blind eye to a cat that makes a habit of sleeping in the middle of a busy street. The first such incidence concerned a fifteen-year-old, one-eyed female named Krümel ("Crumb" in Deutsch) from the old Hanseatic city of Hattingen in Nordrhein Westfalen.

Owned by seventy-six-year-old English ex-pat Jane Herold, she regularly sleeps out front of her mistress's establishment, the Hotel Garni Herold, at the corner of Krämersdorf and Kleine Weilstraße. "Wenn sie einmal liegt, dann leigt sie und steht für nichts und niemanden mehr auf," Herold, who has operated the small lodging house for more than forty-five years, disclosed back in 2012. "Oft schläft sie mitten auf der kleinen Weilstraße und die Autofahrer müssen um sie herumkurven."(See Cat Defender post of September 17, 2012 entitled "Contrary to the Neighborhood Scuttlebutt, Krümel Is Alive and Well, at Least for the Time Being, at the Hotel Garni Herold.")

The Busy and High-Speed A15 Near Quarrington

Cats most assuredly are entitled to their freedom but that does not include allowing them in the street. Umpteen numbers of them, both the famous and the obscure, are intentionally mowed down and killed every day by motorists and even those that are lucky enough to survive these unproved attacks often wind up maimed for life. (See Cat Defender posts of January 30, 2010, November 21, 2012, and February 8, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Casper Is Run Down and Killed by a Hit-and-Run Taxi Driver While Crossing the Street in Order to Get to the Bus Stop,""Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT," and "The Long and Hopelessly Frustrating Search for the Kidnapped Mr. Cheeky Ends Tragically Underneath the Wheels of a Hit-and-Run Motorist.")

Ladling on the Silicon Valley snake oil, whether it be implanted microchips, surveillance cameras, or satellite tracking devices, is not the answer to this age-old conundrum; au contraire, doing so serves to only exacerbate an already perilous situation. (See Cat Defender posts of May 25, 2006, February 22, 2017, and June 11, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats,""The Months of Unrelenting Abuse Meted Out to Elfie by a Roommate Graphically Demonstrate the Advantages as Well as the Limitations of Using Surveillance Cameras in Order to Protect Cats," and "Katzen-Kameras Are Not Only Cruel and Inhumane but Represent an Assault Upon Cats' Liberties and Privacy.")

That petit pait has been demonstrated most conclusively in Archie's case where his owners have failed to act in spite of having been warned of the imminent danger that he is in by a tracking device. It accordingly is safe to conclude that if cats are to be protected it is not going to come courtesy of technological advances, but rather through the gift of caring and conscientious guardians.

As far as Archie is concerned, no additional articles about him have appeared online so it is not possible to say what ultimately become of him. Nevertheless, unless Simpson and Smith had an abrupt change of heart and belatedly decided to keep him out of the dangerous A15, it is very doubtful that he is still above ground.

Photos: the Sleaford Target (Archie) and Mike Lobb of www.geograph.org.uk (the A15).

Killing Cats and Selling Their Pelts Keeps Barry Green in Beer Money

"It's art. I give all my cats another life. I hate to waste a skin and they are much appreciated."
-- Barry Green

Sixty-five-year-old bearded and beer-guzzling Barry Green from the tiny village of American River on Kangaroo Island, located fourteen kilometers off the coast of the state of South Australia, may not look like much to the discriminating eye but he is a big man down under. That is so much the case in fact that he is treated as an unqualified national hero by the country's capitalist media, its politicians, and its denizens.

His first claim to fame is that of being a self-anointed, fully-fledged member in good standing of that sanctum sanctorum, the environmental movement. "I'm a hands-on environmentalist," he proudly declared to The Sydney Morning Herald on February 21, 2016. (See "Kangaroo Island's Barry Green Wages War on Feral Cat Threat to Native Birdlife.")

His authority for making such an outlandish claim rests solely upon his having killed as astounding fourteen-hundred cats over the course of the past nineteen years. His modus operandi has not been divulged but he apparently lures them into traps baited with commercial cat food and afterwards shoots them in the head.

He then methodically weighs and measures each of his victims before entering that data along with their color, sex, and the location of their murders into a ledger. As the result of his meticulous recordkeeping, he recently was able to proudly declare that he had killed exactly thirteen-hundred-ninety-two of them through February of this year.

"It averages out to about two a week but I don't trap as much as I used to," he explained to his avid supporters at The Sydney Morning Herald."I can't afford to travel and you've got to check the traps every day."

C'est-à-dire, his overpowering lust for feline blood is tempered only by his stinginess in that killing cats not only costs him a pretty penny in petrol to power his jalopy but on top of that there is the added expense of bait, traps, and shells to consider. His self-professed adherence to a governmental edict that traps be checked every day can be safely dismissed as a lie given that neither he nor the high-muck-a-mucks gives so much as a hang about how long that a condemned feline is forced to languish in a trap; both parties simply want them dead as quickly as possible and in furtherance of that objective any available means will suffice, no matter either how cruel or barbaric.

The thing that really perturbs him, however, is the government's refusal to share with him any of the A$2 million in bounties that it has placed on the heads of cats living on Kangaroo Island. That concentrates the centerpiece of its full court press to eradicate all of them, including domestics, by 2010.

"The government's throwing big money around to try and solve the problem but none of it is coming my way," he cried to The Advertiser of Adelaide on March 18 of this year. (See "Catman: Lone Kangaroo Island Crusader Gets No State Anti-Feral Cat Bounty Despite Killing Thirteen-Hundred Cats.")

Whereas it is not known how that the authorities in either Canberra or Kingscote, the administrative center of the island, dole out their bounty money, Green certainly would not be engaging in such painstaking recordkeeping if he were not expecting to get his fair share of it somewhere down the line. Besides, there cannot be any doubting whatsoever the resolve of the authorities.

"We have to reach a point where we don't have any cats on this island," mayor Peter Clements declared to the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) on October 16, 2016. (See "Feral Cats: Kangaroo Island's Plan to Eradicate All Felines Within Fifteen Years.")"The feral cat is an apex predator. It is ruining our species here on the island and we are totally committed to eliminating all cats."

The island's estimated six-thousand homeless cats plus an unspecified number of domestics are an integral part of the government in Canberra's plans to wipe out more than two-million of them nationwide by a variety of what can only be described as diabolical means. (See Cat Defender post of November 18, 2016 entitled "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

A similar dispute over pay arose a little more than a year ago when it was revealed that archers Zach "Shaggy" Slattery and Aaron Wilksch were having a field day mowing down cats on Kangaroo. Like Green, they too lamely attempted to to pass themselves off as environmentalists and humane killers. (See the Daily Mail, February 24, 2016, "Man Who Shoots Feral Cats with a Bow and Arrow Posts Pictures of Kills Online Gets Death Threats for His 'Animal Cruelty'" and the ABC, February 24, 2016, "Bow Hunter Targeted with Global Hate Campaign for Shooting Feral Cats in Australia.")

Shortly thereafter, Threatened Species Commissioner Gregory Andrews, the driving force behind Australia's war on cats, denied that the bow hunters were on the government's payroll even though other media outlets earlier had claimed that indeed was the case. (See the ABC, March 13, 2016, "Bow Hunting of Feral Cats Is Cruel and 'Not Part of the Strategy,' Threatened Species Commissioner Says" and The Mirror of London, March 7, 2016, Anonymous Declares War on 'Cat Killer' Who Admits to Slaughtering Moggies with a Bow and Arrow.")

While it is entirely possible that Slattery and Wilksch were killing cats for the sheer pleasure of doing so, that does not seem likely. If they were not on the payroll of the moral degenerate Andrews, they likely were trafficking in the lucrative market that already exists for their flesh and pelts.

In Green's case, after he kills the cats he next skins and tans their hides in a prelude to fashioning them into, inter alia, blankets, curtains, caps, refrigerator magnets, bookmarkers, and holders for telephones, toilet paper, and beer bottles and cans. His wife, Julie, no doubt plays an integral role in the latter part of that process.

Dead Cats Drying on a Laundry Rack

Far from being an isolated case, many of his fellow countrymen, such as Nigel Burgess and Robyn Eades of King Island, located midway between Melbourne and Tasmania, are actively engaged in the same sorry business. (See Cat Defender post of July 14, 2008 entitled "An Australian Park Ranger and a Seamstress Team Up to Go into Business as Cat-Killers and Fur Traffickers.")

The ever obliging Australian media conveniently omit any reference whatsoever to what Green does with the flesh of his victims. Since it would be totally out of character for anyone as niggardly and greedy as him to simply discard it, he very well could be using it in order to bait his traps.

A far more plausible scenario, however, is that he, like his fellow environmentalist and children's author, Kaye Kessing of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, is consuming what he kills. After all, since he used to work in a slaughterhouse, that would be something that is right up his alley. (See Cat Defender post of September 7, 2007 entitled "Australians Renounce Civilization and Revert to Savages with the Introduction of a Grotesque Plan to Get Rid of Cats by Eating Them.")

Green's cat-killing prowess in turn has transformed American River into a popular tourist attraction that siphons off many of the one-hundred-eighty-thousand visitors who annually travel to Kangaroo Island. Once they arrive, the pièce de résistance is none other than Green's abode, which he appropriately has dubbed as "Feral's End."

For example, media tycoon, tax cheat, thug, and all-around first-class louse Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer once stopped by sometime before his death in 2005 in order to purchase six of his beer holders. That in itself is not surprising given that birds of a feather tend to flock together but also because most Australians, being the descendants of English jailbirds, never have been quite able to rise above their genetic predisposition toward immorality and criminality.

None of that explains, however, why that individuals who supposedly care about cats are so willing to subsidize Green's wholesale slaughter of them. "People put them (cat blankets) on an armchair and treat them like a normal pet," he averred to The Advertiser.

That is ever more so the case now that Hasbro of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is busily marketing robotic cats that not only meow and purr but also are capable of moving their eyes, ears, paws, and rolling on their stomachs. Priced at $100 apiece, they are popular with individuals, such as those confined to old folks' homes, who either are not allowed to have cats of their own or are incapable of properly caring for them. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 14, 2017, "The Cats Aren't Real, but Comforts to Seniors Are.")

In addition to being a cat killer and a trafficker in their fur, Green also is a medicine man. "I had a lady from Queensland ring me to say her Chinese herbalist recommended cat skins for her rheumatoid arthritis," he proudly admitted to The Advertiser."It's the static electricity that helps."

Every bit as certain as death and taxes, whenever there is a cat to be nakedly abused and exploited to the hilt the Chinese are as sure as shooting to be involved in the carnage right up to their slanted eyeballs. For instance, not only are they huge connoisseurs of feline flesh and traffickers in their fur but they routinely exterminate in droves those that are homeless. (See Cat Defender posts of February 8, 2006, March 27, 2008, and March 27, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Stray Cats Rounded Up in Shanghai, Butchered, and Sold as Mutton in Restaurants and on the Street,""Tens of Thousands of Cats Are Being Rounded Up and Sent to Death Camps as Beijing Prepares to Host the Summer Olympics," and "Persecuted by Both the Government and Their Fellow Citizens, a Few Dedicated Women Are Attempting to Save China's Cats.")

Mao Tse-tung even went so far as to declare the South China Tiger to be an enemy of the people and as a result it is now believed to be extinct in the wild. Those few that remain are confined to captive-breeding facilities where they are mercilessly robbed of their body parts and fluids in order to make Tiger Bone Wine and an assortment of quack herbal remedies. (See Cat Defender posts of November 2, 2007 entitled "For the First Time in Decades, Rare South China Tiger Is Confirmed to Be Alive in the Wild.")

There is at least one effort currently under way in order to return a few of them to the wild but that project faces many daunting obstacles. (See Cat Defender post of March 11, 2008 entitled "South China Tigers Are Being Bred and Trained at a South African Reserve for an Eventual Return to the Wild.")

Such a development is not even remotely possible, however, for the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine) which the dedicated conservationists down under had hunted into extinction by the 1930's.

In addition to both big and small cats, the Chinese are pushing the populations of both elephants and rhinoceroses to the brink of extinction because of their lust for ivory. They are doing likewise with the sharks that they relieve of their fins in order to turn them into soup, raccoon dogs which they slaughter in the millions for their valuable fur, and moon bears which they exploit for their fluids. (See Cat Defender post of November 18, 2005 entitled "A Chinese Farmer Gets His Just Deserts as He Is Killed and Eaten by the Moon Bears That He Tortured for Their Bile.")

Feral's End Has Become a Popular Tourist Magnet

It thus is fair to surmise that even though the governmental largess may not as of yet have started to pour in, Green is doing rather well financially in his dual roles as both a merchant of death and a medicine man. That is so much the case in fact that he is planning on expanding his business.

"I'm looking to take on an apprentice but they need to know it's a tough and messy job and not for everyone," he told The Advertiser.

He of course could really clean up financially if he were willing to advertise his services but so far he has relied almost exclusively upon his comrades-in-arms within the capitalist media as well as word-of-mouth in order to promote his cat-killing racket. "I have hundreds of letters (but) I don't advertise anywhere because of the cat lovers," he conceded to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Even the prospect of additional criticism is not sufficient in order to even tempt him to mend his evil ways and to find some legitimate means of coming up with his beer money. "I can already see lots of hate mail coming again," he forecasted to The Advertiser.

In spite of all the do-re-mi that Green is making, the inveterate liars at The Advertiser would have the outside world to believe that he is a near penniless wildlife advocate whose cat-killing spree has "cost him thousands over twenty years" and that he "only recoups a few dollars selling macabre souvenirs of his trophies." A far more accurate portrait of him would be that of a ruthless and cold-blooded killer motivated solely by greed and an unquenchable thirst for feline blood who is operating under the guise of an environmentalist with a halo in order to mask his despicable crimes.

The reason that Green has been unable to reap the financial bonanza that he so dearly covets is that killing cats has become so banal in Australia that it scarcely any longer even raises so much as an eyebrow. The same is true for the tens of millions of cane toads, red foxes, rabbits, rats, carp, camels, horses, donkeys, pigs, dingoes, and kangaroos that his fellow citizens are so cruelly and senselessly extirpating. (See Agence France Presse, September 25, 2005, "Millions of Animals Face Death Sentence in Australia.")

In order to truly make a mint off of the slaughter of defenseless animals it is first of all necessary that such outrageous crimes be capable of sparking fierce opposition. Australians however that are so totally bereft of any sense of right and wrong that they are ready, willing, and able to sanction the commission of almost any crime, no matter either how great or heinous.

If, on the other hand, Green were to reside in a society that paid at least lip service to both morality and the anti-cruelty statutes he could be assured of at least being arrested. Once he therefore had become a cause célèbre, the big bucks and the job opportunities would begin to roll in like a torrent.

For example, James Munn Stevenson was an obscure amateur ornithologist who got his perverted kicks by slipping around on the sly and gunning down hundreds of cats with his trusty rifle. That undoubtedly provided him with immense personal pleasure but both fame and fortune continued to elude him.

He got careless one day, however, and as a result he was caught flagrante delicto and arrested. That faux pas led to a few anxious moments for him but in the end he ultimately was acquitted by a jury and afterwards he not only landed a prestigious job teaching at a nearby college but also became a hero to ornithologists and wildlife biologists everywhere. (See Cat Defender posts of November 22, 2006, May 1, 2007, November 20, 2007, December 8, 2007, and August 7, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Evil Galveston Bird Lover Is Finally Arrested After Having Gunned Down Hundreds of Cats,""The Houston Chronicle Launches a Propaganda Offensive on Behalf of Serial Cat Killer Jim Stevenson,""Bird Lovers All Over the World Rejoice as Serial Killer James M. Stevenson Is Rewarded by a Galveston Court for Gunning Down Hundreds of Cats,""All the Lies That Fit: Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support for James M. Stevenson," and "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank.")

Then there is the unforgettable case of Robert Fawcett, the general manager of Howling Dog Tours of Whistler in British Columbia (BC). During the 2010 Winter Olympics in nearby Vancouver he was raking in upwards of £200 an hour by offering dog sled rides to the attendees.

Once the games ended, however, so did the flow of the moola and being way too cheap in order to feed and house his Siberian Huskies, he shoot and slit the throats of more than one-hundred of them between April 21st and April 23rd. Afterwards, he buried their bloody corpses in a mass grave.

His wholesale atrocities did not make the light of day until late January of the following year and even then it was only because he had applied for and received a disability pension. In order to get his bloody hands on that governmental freebie, he not only had remorselessly confessed to killing the dogs but also claimed that doing so had left him suffering from a post traumatic stress disorder. (See the Daily Mail, February 1, 2011, "Pack of One-Hundred Huskies Shot and Knifed to Death Before Being Tossed in a Mass Grave by Tour Operator Trying to Save Money," the Calgary Herald, February 1, 2011, "Canmore Firms Shocks by Slaughter of One-Hundred Sled Dogs in Whistler, British Columbia," the Calgary Sun, February 2, 2011, "SPCA Drawn into Husky Controversy," the Daily Mail, May 3, 2011, "War Games Experts Exhume Bodies of One-Hundred Sled Dogs Killed by Tour Operator in Post Winter Olympics Massacre," and Macleans, October 27, 2011, "Whistler's Sled Dog Massacre.")

Barry Green's So-Called Masterpiece, "Curiosity."

Once his case was finally heard in North Vancouver Provincial Court on November 22, 2012, numbskull judge Steven Merrick let this monster off with a minuscule fine of C$1,725 which he, sans doute, paid for with the pile that he already was getting from the government. Quite understandably, that utterly insane verdict left Marcie Moriarty of the BC SPCA flabbergasted.

"To say we are shocked by this sentence for these gruesome killings is an understatement," she told The Globe and Mail of Toronto on that same date. (See "Fawcett Spared Jail Time in Sentencing Related to Sled Dog Killings.")

No additional news articles have appeared online concerning him but more than likely he is still living high on the welfare hog and in fact he may never have to turn so much as a hand ever again at any type of gainful employment. Things are different in Australia where absolutely no one cares how many cats that individuals like Green kill but that is not any reason for him to be pissed off at the world and crying in his beer when there are so many ways, other than governmental, that he could be cashing in on his crimes.

For instance, he could ask his champions at The Advertiser, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the ABC to add him to their anti-cat reporting teams. Plus, just about all of Australia's ultra-ailurophobic universities would dearly love to have him on staff in order to instruct their acolytes in the proper techniques of killing and skinning cats. Already brainwashed to the point of being totally unable to differentiate fact from fiction in a post-truth world, they doubtlessly would eat up his warped morality with a pitch fork.

A tome and a world tour in order to promote it would be yet still another way for him to pocket a few simoleons. Why, just in the United States alone members of the National Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, just to name a few, would jump out of their silk drawers for the opportunity to get down on all fours like a dog and to lick the manure off of his boots.

If all other money-making schemes should fail to bear fruit, he could always organize a one-man exhibit featuring none other than himself. He might even want to call it: "Eureka! Neanderthal Man's Long-Lost Australian Bastard Brother."

An even better idea would be for the international community to band together and establish a sanitary cordon around the entire continent and its many islands. Perhaps in the due course of time its human inhabitants would choke to death on their own vileness and lies.

In the meantime Green has another activity in order to keep himself busy. That is to say, he has come to consider himself to be somewhat of an artist.

In particular, he has created the housing for a clock, a curtain, and a suit out of the fur that he has stolen from his victims. His masterpiece, however, is a meter-wide collage entitled "Curiosity" that is comprised entirely of the severed heads of cats with bird feathers stuffed into their mouths.

Although the intent of this purported objet d'art is to insinuate that the cats killed the birds that could not possibly have been the case in that Green gets all of the cats that he kills by trapping them and no cat is about to venture into a cage with food already in its mouth. That petit fait in turn strongly suggests that the birds were killed, not by the cats, but rather by this self-professed "hands-on environmentalist."

Entitling the collage "Curiosity" also reveals once again the utter contempt that all Australians harbor in their black and corroded souls for cats. They also manufacture and market sausages laced with paraaminopropiophenone (PAPP) under that brand name which they use in order to hideously poison cats on Kangaroo as well as throughout the country. (See The Sydney Morning Herald, July 1, 2014, "'Curiosity': the Cat-Killing Bait to Protect Native Species.")

That same marked disdain for the species also is evident for all to see in the derogatory names that Green has attached to some of his pelts, such as "Longshot,""Splat," and "Up Close and Personal." He, however, has purloined a far more loftier name for his despicable crimes.

"It's art," he exclaimed to The Advertiser with a devilish chuckle. "I give all my cats another life. I hate to waste a skin and they are much appreciated."

At least in death his cats are able to retain some small measure of their former inestimable value and that is a good deal more than ever can be said of Green and his fellow countrymen. Not only are they patently unfit to be allowed to go on breathing for so much as another minute but even their remains would not make passable fertilizer.

Photos: Dylan Coker of The Advertiser (Green) and Emma Byrnes of The Sydney Morning Herald (dead cats, Feral's End, and "Curiosity").

Peat

"The Glenturret Distillery team are heartbroken. He was inquisitive, fearless and a social cat and we will miss him terribly."
-- Lesley Williamson

Alcohol and cats never have been a good mix under any circumstances. For in addition to the litany of utterly despicable crimes that are perpetrated against them by individuals laboring under Dionysus' sway, there are yet still other cretins who intentionally pollute their tiny bodies and minds with a deoch am dorais.

Even the mere acceptance of employment at a distillery in exchange for room and board can be lethal to cats as Peat tragically found out on September 8, 2014 when he was run down and killed by a hit-and-run driver outside the Glenturret Distillery, located three kilometers northwest of Crieff in Perthshire. Found lying beside the road by an unidentified staffer, he was rushed to a local veterinarian where, with distillery manager Neil Cameron looking on, he shortly thereafter either died on his own or was deliberately killed off.

As if that were not horrific enough in its own right, the petit light-brown and white kitten with captivatingly beautiful blue eyes was only six months old and had been on the job for just a little over two months. No one ever was arrested and it is highly unlikely that any of the local authorities even so much as bothered to open a cursory inquiry into the matter.

Ever since its genesis as a an illegal bootlegging operation of the banks of the Turret River way back in 1717, Glenturret has undergone many reincarnations and name changes over the course of the years but resident felines always have been the one constant. Although they were originally recruited as mousers in order to safeguard its grain reserves from rodents, they nowadays have been largely supplanted in that role by professional exterminators.

In their case, however, the Luddites' very real concern about technology eliminating jobs and thus leading to high employment has proven to be unfounded. That is because just as one window of opportunity was closing for them, another one was swinging wide open.

Consequently, cats are in even greater demand than ever these days at the ancient distillery, but they are no longer expected to catch mice. On the contrary, all that is required of them is that they meet, greet, and indulge the whims, such as posing for photographs, of the more than one-hundred-thousand visitors who annually trek to the facility.

In that endeavor, there can be little doubt that Peat was preeminently successful, even if his tenure was destined to have been a brief one. That was so much the case in fact that he already had attracted more than eight-hundred followers on Twitter at the time of his murder.

"The fluffy little bundle has been charming his way into our visitors' hearts this week, has already made himself at home in our new Tasting Bar and is showing signs of settling in nicely," is how that the distillery's Lesley Williamson summed up his immediate impact upon arrival to The Press and Journal of Aberdeen on June 18, 2014. (See "Kitten Takes Up New Distillery Role.")

Peat Was Hardly the Size of a Bottle of Scotch When He Was Killed

Peat was chosen over nine other kittens that had been born on a local farm belonging to Shona Stewart and she had been hoping that his newfound notoriety would motivate members of the public to offer homes to some of those that had been left behind. "We've been so pleased to see Peat settling into his new role at the Famous Grouse Experience (a highfalutin moniker for a tour of the plant and a free shot of scotch) and he seems to have caught the imagination of the local and, indeed, world press," she told the Daily Record of Glasgow on August 26, 2014. (See "Peat the Glenturret Distillery Cat's Quest to Find Homes for His Brothers and Sisters.")"I'm really hoping that we find good homes for his siblings and cousins, some of whom are similar in coloring to Peat, and are just as cute."

That certainly was a noble idea but the criminal motorist had other plans in store for Peat and his death certainly did not make Stewart's task any easier. It also left a big void at the distillery.

"The Glenturret Distillery team are (sic) heartbroken," Williamson told The Press and Journal on September 10, 2014. (See "Peat the Distillery Cat Dies after Being Struck by a Car.") "He was inquisitive, fearless and a social cat and we will miss him terribly."

Ironically, it was precisely those characteristics coupled with the distillery's utterly appalling lack of concern for his personal safety that cost Peat his life. Even more inexcusably, staffers had been forewarned of the dangers that he was flirting with when sometime earlier he had gotten stranded up a tree and had to be rescued. Yet, even that brush with disaster proved to be insufficient in order to persuade them to take better care of him.

Far from being an isolated case, quite a few of the cats and kittens shanghaied into servitude at Glenturret have either died or disappeared without so much as a trace. For instance, Peat's predecessor was a tom named Barley who arrived, courtesy of the charity Cats Protection, in September of 2012 but he likewise lasted only a little over a year on the job before mysteriously disappearing sometime during the winter of 2013-2014.

"We were very sorry to lose Barley, however, the team are (sic) truly delighted to welcome Peat to our Glenturret Distillery family," was all that Williamson had to tell The Press and Journal on that subject back on June 18, 2014.

Earlier in 2005, the booze purveyors brought on board a longhaired, even-tempered tuxedo named Brooks from Cats Protection's Cardyke Center near Glasgow. At that same time, they also adopted a gregarious ginger and white tom named Dylan from Cats Protection's Frofar branch in Angus County.

As is the case with all shelter cats, Brooke and Dylan had their own sad stories. Specifically, she had been a former stray whereas he had wound up on the street after his owner had died.

Brooke and Dylan Did Not Last Long at Glenturret

"We are delighted to finally have not one but two cats in position at the distillery and we are sure the charismatic Dylan and the beautiful Brooke will soon be firm favorites," Carol McLaren of the distillery told Pet Planet on June 30, 2005. (See "Cats Protection Felines Are New Top Cats.")"Dylan has already thrown himself into the spirit of things, clearly keen to make a good impression in his first days on the job and helping our team to extend a very warm welcome to our visitors."

Cats Protection was equally effusive. "...with thousands of cats in our care, we were confident we could find just the right feline for them, and we were thrilled when they decided to adopt two of the three final contenders," the organization's Helen Ralston crowed to Pet Planet. "Dylan and Brooke won't let them down. They are lovely cats, just perfect for the job."

That in itself is an utterly appalling attitude, especially coming as it does from an animal welfare group. The crucial concern in placing cats is not whether they will fulfill the expectations of their new guardians, but rather that the latter faithfully execute their custodial obligations to the former.

Moreover, that is a far cry from the position that Cats Protection's Moray Branch later took toward twenty-nine-year-old Suzi Gallagher of Elgin, two-hundred-eighty kilometers north of Edinburgh, and her adopted cat, Bramble. In her case, the charity improvised a ruse in order to confiscate Bramble because Gallagher had violated its edict by allowing the cat out into her garden. (See the Aberdeen Evening Express, July 25, 2013, "Animal Charity Admits 'Error of Judgment' to Reclaim Cat from North-East Family.")

For reasons that never have been publicly explained, neither Brooke nor Dylan lasted very long at Glenturret with the former dying in 2011 and the latter preceding her in death at some undisclosed time before that. The historical record would not be complete, however, without mentioning that the third cat in the mix, Jet Li, who although not selected to work at the distillery, nevertheless was adopted by one of its employees.

Described as a "strikingly handsome chap" he, like Brooke, came from Cats Protection's Cardyke Center, but other than that absolutely nothing is known about him. It nevertheless is safe to conclude that, if against all odds, he should still be alive today that would constitute a rather compelling argument in favor of placing cats in traditional homes as opposed to fobbing them off on bloodsucking capitalists to neglect and exploit to the hilt.

Brooke and Dylan had replaced a cat named Amber who died in 2004 but nothing else is known about her, not even when she first arrived at Glenturret. The exact opposite is the case with her illustrious predecessor, a longhaired tortoiseshell named Towser, who most definitely left her paw prints all over not only the distillery but cat lore as well.

Most notably, during her twenty-four years in residence, which spanned the divide separating 1963 and 1987, she was credited by Guinness World Records with having killed an utterly astounding twenty-eight-thousand, eight-hundred-ninety-nine mice! He fame was such that during her lifetime she was featured on the long-running BBC children's program, Blue Peter.

Towser Killed Almost Twenty-Nine-Thousand Mice

Even though she has been dead for thirty years, she is far from forgotten. Most notably, she lives on in the form of a bronze statue that is located in the visitors' center of the distillery. A replica of her paw prints also can be found on the labels of the now very rare and difficult to find Fairlie's Light Highland Liqueur.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, her longevity stands in stark contrast to the exceedingly brief tenures of her successors. Although it is by no means certain, it nonetheless could be that she owed her long life to her job description.

C-est-à-dire, as principally a mouser, she very well may have been permanently confined indoors whereas those cats that have followed her have been turned loose to roam the perilous roads surrounding the distillery as soon as they were no longer needed to charm tourists. It additionally is conceivable that during her lifetime Crieff had considerably fewer residents, and by extension motorists, than it currently does with a population of just under seven-thousand souls.

As William Shakespeare pointed out in Act 2, Scene 1 of The Tempest,"what's past is prologue" and that certainly has proven to be the case in regard to those unfortunate felines that have followed in Peat's paw prints. For example in July of 2015, the distillery acquired another pair of kittens, Glen I and Turret, as his replacements.

"Glen is, at eight-weeks-old, very timed and quietly inquisitive while Turret, on the other hand, is a tabby on a mission," the distillery's Stuart Cassells told The Scotsman of Edinburgh on July 30, 2015. (See "Famous Grouse Enlist Two New Distillery Cats.")"He's a month older than Glen and into absolutely everything from climbing, including your leg, to playing with whatever or whoever he can find."

The decision to recruit two kittens as opposed to one has been attributed to a love of the species coupled with an acknowledgement of their psychological needs. "The whole team at Glenturret are (sic) thrilled to welcome some new little furry team members and we have decided to home two kittens instead of one so we can have twice the fun," Cassells explained. "There is a lot of evidence to suggest that it is good for a cat's development to be around other cats as they are very social animals. They are also less likely to venture as far, so we have welcomed the cute and very mischievous Glen and Turret."

Leaving aside the fact that both kittens were taken away from their mothers way too soon, it is strongly suspected that Glenturret's true motivation in adopting them was to have at least one cat left should anything happen to the other one. Whether or not there is any truth in that observation, it certainly proved to be prescient in that Glen fell ill almost as soon as he was installed at the distillery and either died on his own or was deliberately killed off during the same month that he arrived.

"The whole team at Glenturret were (sic) so very sad about Glen's passing, but none more so than Turret," Cassells confided to The Spirit Business of London on December 9, 2015. (See "Glenturret Mouser Gets New Furry Friend.")"We knew we had to get him a friend to play with and we searched extensively. Finally we found a kitten around the same age and who was clearly in good health, and both cats were successfully introduced to each other."

The Ill-Fated Glen I and Turret

The result of that search was the hiring of an indomitable kitten who since has been dubbed as Glen II. "I must say, though, that Glen clearly thinks he's the boss and Turret isn't quite up for relinquishing his cozy spot underneath the still quite yet," Cassells continued to The Spirit Business."Glen particularly likes to be front and center when there's a tour in, and has found a spot on top of a whisky cask where he gets maximum attention. A true showman, and a natural in the role!"

There is not any proven connection, but it is just possible that Turret is feeling somewhat overshadowed and neglected these days by the newcomer and that just might account for why he did a runner in February of this year. The details are rather sketchy but apparently he was AWOL for at least a week or longer before he turned up at Crieff Hydro, nearly three kilometers south of the distillery on the A85.

More than likely that would have been the last that the whisky makers ever saw of him if a staffer at Crieff Hydro had not posted a notice about him on Facebook. As a consequence, someone connected with the distillery just happened to see it and Turret shortly thereafter was returned home. (See the Fife Free Press of Kirkcaldy, February 16, 2017, "Distillery Cat Was Just 'Feline' Like a Holiday.")

The media have reported that the distillery searched for him "in the immediate area," but he quite obviously had wandered considerably farther afield. That petit fait alone calls into question its commitment to him and its other cats because once a search of nearby areas fails to bear fruit it is imperative that the scope of such an effort be dramatically expanded.

Even under the best of circumstances locating a missing cat is nearly an impossible task; nevertheless, throwing in the towel should not be an option. In such cases, owners must be willing to commit the time and resources that are required in order to look both high and low because a cat could be either hiding inside a wall at home or halfway across the country, especially should it become trapped inside a motor vehicle.

The picture that emerges of Glenturret's guardianship of the innumerable cats that have resided under its roof for the past fifty-four years is a decidedly mixed one. On the positive side of the ledger, it is to be commended for opening up its doors, if not indeed its hearts, to cats and thus saving their lives by adopting. Also as far as it is known, all of its resident felines have received adequate amounts of food, water, heat, shelter and, possibly, even veterinary care.

Most importantly of all, the company's public image has not been sullied by any reports of abuse and that includes the type that saloon crooner Wilbur Willard was serving up to his cat, Lillian. "...when Lillian is a little kitten I always put a little scotch in her milk, partly to help make her good and strong, and partly because I am never no hand to drink alone, unless there is nobody with me," he explained in Damon Runyon's famous short-story, "Lillian," which first appeared in the February 1, 1930 edition of Collier's."Well, at first Lillian does not care so much for this scotch in her milk, but finally she takes a liking to it, and I keep making her toddy stronger until in the end she will lap up a good snort without any milk for a chaser, and yell for more. In fact, I suddenly realize that Lillian becomes a rumpot, just like I am in those days, and simply must have her grog..."

Glen II and Turret in Front of a Statue of Towser

On the negative side of the equation, its abysmal failure to satisfactorily provide for the personal safety of its cats constitutes an unpardonable disgrace. In particular, it treats them as valuable company assets during business hours only to hypocritically turn around and cast them out on the street evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays. Moreover, that assessment does not even begin to take into consideration the quality of the care that it provided to the hundreds, if not indeed thousands, of nameless and forgotten mousers who slaved away for it during the first two and one-half centuries of its existence.

Its shabby, uncaring treatment of its cats has therefore demonstrated once again that before any meaningful improvements can be made in the welfare of felines everywhere the age-old myth that they are capable of taking care of themselves, especially when pitted against a monster as thoroughly evil as man, must be debunked. (See Cat Defender post of October 9, 2015 entitled "A Lynch Mob Comprised of Dishonest Eggheads from the University of Lincoln Issues Another Scurrilous Broadside Against Cats by Declaring That They Do Not Need Guardians in Order to Safeguard Their Fragile Lives.")

Another bare-faced lie that also desperately needs to be relegated to the dust bin of history is that they are self-sufficient loners; au contraire, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they require almost constant attention as well as supervision and that in turn means that they, generally speaking, fare much better in homes where at least one guardian is present at all times.

Unless they are left intact and therefore are on the prowl for a mate, they only roam out of boredom and neglect. Knowledgeable owners therefore know that two of the best means of keeping them contented at home is to interact with them frequently throughout the day and night and to supply them with treats from time to time.

All of that is self-evident to any halfway observant ailurophile and yet both the universities and the capitalist media continue to pretend that they need to be convinced. (See The Washington Post, April 3, 2017, "Shocker: Some Cats Like People More Than Food or Toys.")

The reasons for their intransigence are as old as time itself. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it," Upon Sinclair once observed and, translated to the intellectual community, that means simply that there is far too much research money available and too many cats to be tortured as guinea pigs it to ever willingly renounce one of its most cherished and lucrative lies.

In Glenturret's case, the easiest and most humane solution would be for it to have its staffers take Turret and Glen II home with them each evening and to keep them with them on weekends and holidays. That way they would be able to enjoy a lion's share of the benefits commonly associated with having a traditional home, such as security, supervision, and constant companionship, while the distillery still would be able to continue to reap a financial bonanza by way of the invaluable contributions that they are making to its bottom line as cute and cuddly public relations props.

As far as Cats Protection is concerned, it once again has demonstrated through its procurement and delivery upon a silver platter of, inter alia, Brooke, Dylan, and Barley to Glenturret that it is far more concerned with sucking up to money than it is ever going to be with looking after the legitimate needs of the cats that are under its care. That, in a nutshell, is the overarching problems with just about all animal rescue groups.

Not surprisingly, a thorough lack of respect for the sanctity of feline life almost always accompanies an abiding love of shekels. (See Cat Defender posts of August 26, 2015 and February 17, 2016 entitled, respectively, "A Myriad of Cruel and Unforgivable Abandonments, a Chinese Puzzle, and Finally the Handing Down and Carrying Out of a Death Sentence, Spell the End for Long-Suffering and Peripatetic Tigger" and "Cats Protection Races to Alfie's Side after His Owner Dies and He Winds Up on the Street, Swears It Is going to Help Him, and Then Turns Around and Has Him Whacked.")

Turret's Life Is in Grave Danger

Finally, there cannot be any denying that alcohol is one of the greatest evils ever invented by man. In fact, David Nutt is on record as classifying it as being far more harmful to society than either heroin or crack cocaine.

"Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used," he told the BBC on November 1, 2010. (See "Alcohol 'More Harmful Than Heroin,' Says Professor David Nutt.")
"Crack cocaine is more addictive than alcohol but because alcohol is so widely used there are hundreds of thousands of people who crave alcohol every day, and those people will go to extraordinary lengths to get it."

Whereas the vast majority of cat-haters never have needed any Dutch courage in order to carry out their despicable crimes, it nevertheless is well-documented that some of them have done so while under its influence. (See Cat Defender posts of September 18, 2008, November 24, 2009, August 17, 2009, October 30, 2010, and November 25, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Drunken Brute Beats, Stabs, and Then Hurls Fifi to Her Death Against the Side of a House in Limerick,""Kilo's Killer Walks in a Lark but the Joke Is on the Disgraceful English Judicial System,""America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as a Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets off with Time on the Water Wagon,""Drunken Bum Is Foiled in a Macabre Plot to Make a Meal Out of Kittens, Nirvana and Karma, That He Allegedly Ran Down Earlier with His Truck," and "A Cruel Teenage Drunkard and Dope Addict Who Bound a Cat and a Dog with Tape Before Killing Them Is Let Off Easy by a Calgary Court.")

An abiding love of the bottle also has been responsible for Animal Control officers neglecting the welfare of the cats and other animals under their supervision. (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2006 entitled "An Animal Control Officer Goes on a Drunken Binge and Leaves Four Cats and a Dog to Die of Thirst, Hunger, and Heat at a Massachusetts Shelter.")

On Kangaroo Island, Barry Green slaughters cats in droves just so that he can stay sloshed day and night on beer. (See Cat Defender post of April 4, 2017 entitled "A Mass Murderer of Cats, Entrepreneur, Medicine Man, and Artist Are Just a Few of the Many Hats That Are Worn by a "Hands-On Environmentalist" on Kangaroo Island.")

In addition to abusing cats, drunkards also have a long and checkered history of venting their spleens on horses. "I only wish all the drunkards could be put in a lunatic asylum instead of being allowed to run foul of sober people," Anna Sewell wrote in her 1877 classic, Black Beauty."If there's one devil that I should like to see in the bottomless pit more than another, it's the devil drink."

Despite the enormous harm done to cats, individuals, and society, there simply is not any known means available of slaking man's thirst for gorilla juice. "It is a pleasure to souls to become moist," the presocratic philosopher Heraclitus acknowledged long ago before astutely adding that "the dry soul is the wisest and the best."

About the only thing positive thing ever to have been said about alcohol came courtesy of eighteenth century English lexicographer Samuel Johnson. "There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking, as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten," he once opined.

Although it is highly improbable that he could have presaged the startling emergence upon the political scene of the current leaseholder at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, that individual nevertheless is precisely the type of blighter that Johnson had in mind when he uttered those remarks. It accordingly is almost superfluous to point out that such a teetotaling, perennial old sourpuss like him would be well served by an occasional belt of Glenturret's single malt scotch.

Photos: The Scotsman (Peat and Glen I with Turret), the BBC (Peat beside a bottle), Alan Richardson of Pet Planet (Brooke and Dylan), the Daily Record (Towser), The Spirit Business (Glen II and Towser), and the Fife Free Press (Turret by himself).

It Took a Visit from The Nuge to Get a Smile Out of Trump

"This picture says it all...two of the most insincere smiles in history. What a pair of assholes!"
-- David Crosby

The decision by Hillary Rodham "and Gomorrah" Clinton to label half of Donald John Trump's supporters as a "basket of deplorables" may very well have cost her the 2016 presidential election but even so it is becoming harder and harder with each passing day to deny the accuracy of her assessment. (See The New York Times, September 10, 2016, "Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers 'Deplorables,' and the GOP Pounces.")

A good case in point was the Trumper's breaking bread at the White House on April 19th with cat-killers and disgraced rockers Theodore Anthony Nugent and Kid Rock. Also included in that Who's Who amongst animal killers was former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Louise Plain who gladly will snuff out the life of any one of them for either fun or profit.

"Your one and only Motor City Madman, Whackmaster Strap Assassin One dined with President Donald J. Trump at the White House to make America great again," Nugent wrote afterwards on Facebook according to the April 21st edition of The Star Ledger of Newark. (See "Guess Who Came to Dinner.")"Got that? Glowing all American over the top. We the people. Gory details coming as soon as possible!! Brace!"

At last check he has yet to make good on that promise so it is not known what that these Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse discussed during their four-hour powwow. Nevertheless, there cannot be any doubt that when it comes to gore, Nugent is a specialist.

"Always has been, always will be on the Nugent farm, where I have instructed my family, friends, hunting buddies and casual passerby to blast every cat they see," he wrote in a guest column for his buddies, the Moonies, at The Washington Times on December 3, 2010. (See "Nugent: The Time for Kitty Killing Has Come.")"The answer is so simple it is stupid: kill the feral cats on sight. Because of their breeding, we need to wipe out as many of these vermin as possible. No closed season on feral cats is the solution."

Whereas the National Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and all of Australia and New Zealand wholeheartedly agree with him, that does not alter the salient fact that shooting cats violates every anti-cruelty statute on the books and as such it is illegal in just about all jurisdictions across the country. It accordingly is totally inexcusable that the Michigan Humane Society in Bingham Farms, thirty-five kilometers north of Detroit, has not investigated Nugent and subsequently arrested him.

Furthermore, what he calls his "farm" is actually nothing more than a canned hunting ranch known as Sunrise Acres in Jackson, one-hundred-twenty-five kilometers west of Detroit. Although no details have been made public concerning what actually goes on there, the way that these types of operations usually conduct business is to parade doped-up exotic animals into corrals where they then are shot at point-blank range by trophy hunters. Some of the these operations even allow individuals to kill animals from thousands of miles away simply by clicking the mouses on their computer screens.

In addition to being one of the most morally repugnant forms of animal abuse imaginable, operations such as Sunrise Acres have to get their exotic cats and other animals from somewhere and that raises legal questions under both the Endangered Species Act as well as the Convention on International Trade in Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Much more to the point, there is not so much as a speck of actual hunting done at Nugent's ranch; rather, what he is operating is an unlicensed slaughterhouse.

Nugent's anti-social behavior is not confined to killing cats and other animals but rather it extends to physical alterations and slanders directed against animal rights activists. He even has gone so far as to threaten the life of a sitting president.

"If Barack Obama becomes president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year," he declared at the National Rifle Association's (NRA) annual convention in St. Louis on April 17, 2012 according to The Huffington Post's edition of that same date. (See "Ted Nugent for Mitt Romney: Rocker Stumps for GOP Candidate at NRA Convention.")

That veiled threat, which constitutes a Class E felony under the United States Code, Title 18, Section 871, earned him a visit from agents of the Secret Service but they ultimately refused to take any action against him. Former United States Senator Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. of North Carolina likewise got away scot-free with doing the same to President Bill Clinton back in the 1990's.

Kid Rock and Nugent Gleefully Pose with a Dead Cougar

It is the same story all over the country. Right-wing loonies from the boonies with money, such as Nugent, Helms, and Nevada rancher and welfare bum Cliven Bundy, are allowed to get away with almost any crime whereas the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters are attacked by the authorities with vicious dogs, water cannons, and rubber bullets for protesting the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

In Nugent's case, not only was he not prosecuted by the Secret Service but he was rewarded for his criminality by Steve Stockman of Texas' thirty-sixth congressional district with an invitation to attend Obama's State of the Union Address on February 12, 2013. (See The Washington Post, February 13, 2013, "Ted Nugent's Cross-Aisle Schmoozing at the State of the Union.")

His transformation from threatening the life of one president to being rehabilitated to the point of being invited to attend a joint session of Congress and to now being feted by the current occupant of the Oval Office can only be described as unbelievable. Nevertheless, anyone who has studied the link that exists between cruelty to animals and crimes directed against individuals surely must be alarmed by his meteoric ascendancy.

Born as Robert James Ritchie in the northern Detroit suburb of Romeo, one-hundred-seventy-three kilometers east of Jackson, Kid Rock is another archetypal example of the "deplorables" that constitute the hard-core of Trump's political base. Not only was he arrested for a series of alcohol-related misdemeanors in Detroit between 1991 and 1997 but he also was charged with assault on at least three distinct occasions between 2005 and 2007.

Like Nugent, he too is an avid gun collector and hunter. In that respect, he is perhaps best known for having killed a cougar while on a hunting trip with Nugent in January of 2015. (See The Mirror of London, January 21, 2015, "Kid Rock Angers Fans by Posing with a Dead Cougar. Grisly Snap Was Posted after Hunting Trip.")

The horrific crimes and slanders committed against animals by the third member of Trump's Achse des Bösen dining party, Palin, hardly need any reiteration. Nonetheless, in the past she has publicly bragged about gunning down more than forty caribous from helicopters as well as having hunted bears and possibly even wolves.

Consequently, it is not surprising that she fully supports the aerial gunning of wolves by the USFWS and the USDA's Wildlife Services. Every bit as deplorable, she massacres animals in order to churn out snuff films. (See the New York Daily News, December 9, 2010, "Aaron Sorkin: 'Sarah Palin's Alaska' Is a 'Snuff Film' and Ex-Alaska (sic) Governor Is 'Deranged'," the Daily Mail, December 7, 2010, "Sarah Palin Kills a Caribou on Her TV Show (but Misses Target Five Times)," and The DoDo, February 19, 2015, "Seven Bonehead Things Sarah Palin Has Done to Animals.")

Looked down upon as a social and political pariah by most decent folks, Palin is, quite understandably, eternally grateful for being invited out to eat with the Trumper. "A great night at the White House," she is quoted as cooing by The Star Ledger."Thank you to President Trump for the invite!"

The chow apparently was not bad either. The "dinner was beyond superb," she gushed to The Press of Atlantic City on April 21st. (See "Palin, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock Join Trump at White House.") Thanks to "the outstanding White House staff, chefs, Secret Service, and of course the president for making it such a special evening."

In that light, the irony of having gone from being hunted by the Secret Service to being protected by it surely could not have been lost on Nugent. The only difficult part of the equation for him must have been refraining from splitting his sides laughing.

Palin with One of the Many Caribous That She Has Killed

Even though the highfalutin fare served up at such tony joints as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue doubtlessly has it appeal for souls as coarse as those that belong to Palin, Nugent, and Rock, generally speaking it is much too heavy and voluminous for sensitive palates. A much simpler fare consisting of rye bread, Kalamata olives, cheese, and yogurt would be far preferable.

It is even entirely conceivable that a bloke might make out just as well at any one of Washington's numerous soup runs. At least the company would be a step up in this world.

The only drama of the evening came when the members of the Achse des Bösen took a much needed break from gouging themselves and feeding their ugly little faces in order to pose mockingly in front of a very old portrait of Rodham "and Gomorrah." Unless she is planning on entering the fray in 2020, their behavior can only be classified as a classic case of vindictiveness coupled with the tasteless beating a dead horse.

Since the sit-down affair was closed to the media, the only details of what transpired have come courtesy of Nugent and Palin. That has not deterred the former's fellow rockers, however, from putting in their two cents' worth.

"This picture says it all...two of the most insincere smiles in history," David Crosby of the legendary 1960's apostles of rock, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (CSNY), proclaimed to Rolling Stone on April 21st. (See "Ted Nugent, David Crosby Spar over White House Visit.")"What a pair of assholes!"

That also marked the first time in recent memory that anything other than either a frown or a scowl has been seen on the Trumper's dour map. The only logical conclusion to be drawn for that startling development is that he only lets down his hair when he is surrounded by kindred spirits.

Even though that nothing short of superlative opening salvo pretty much said it all, Crosby was not through just yet. "Nugent is a brainless twit..." he continued to Rolling Stone."I can outthink him without even trying hard."

True to form, the always combative Nugent took the bait like a rat to cheese. "David Crosby, he's kind of a lost soul, and he's done so much substance abuse throughout his life that his logic meter is gone," he chimed to Rolling Stone. "His reasoning and depth of understanding is pretty much gone, so it doesn't surprise me. I feel quite sad for the guy."

After he had mulled over the matter for a few days, Nugent's pity gave way to his customary preference for confrontation and that is when he challenged Crosby to a public debate. (See The Washington Times, April 25, 2017, "Nugent Throws Down Debate Gauntlet after David Crosby's Trump Rants: 'Anytime, Anywhere'.")

Rock, Palin, and Nugent Mock Rodham

That certainly is a chicken-hearted response from someone as notoriously violent as Nugent. If he were a real man, he would have challenged Crosby to a duel to the death.

The reason that he demurred is that he only has enough guts in order to gun down defenseless cats and other animals. When it comes to facing off against an opponent who is quite capable of nailing his rotten hide to his barn door, Nugent reveals himself to be nothing more than a rank coward and a blowhard.

It was at this juncture that Crosby's bandmate, Graham Nash, decided to enter this rather public pissing match and he did so by floating the possibility of a CSNY reunion tour. "Here's how I feel about it: I believe that the issues that are keeping us apart pale in comparison to the good that we can do if we get out there and start talking about what's happening," he told Variety on April 20th. (See "Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young Could Reunite -- Because They Hate Trump More Than Each Other.")"So I'd be totally up for it even though I'm not talking to David and neither is Neil (Young). But I think we're smart people in the end and I think we realize the good that we can do."

Even so that is not going to be an easy feat to pull off under those circumstances. Plus, the members of the band have issues that go back decades.

David "has been fucking awful. I've been there and saved his fucking ass for forty-five years, and he treated me like shit..." Nash exclaimed only last year. "David has ripped the heart out of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young."

As far as the fourth horseman of that happy quartet that convened at the White House on April 19th is concerned, very little has been reported by the media concerning his views on cats and other animals. It therefore is assumed, correctly or incorrectly, that he not only does not own any animals but that he fully shares the views and supports the abhorrent behavior of his dinner guests.

Unverified online reports, however, maintain that his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., are trophy hunters. In particular, during a trip to Zimbabwe they allegedly killed a civet, an elephant, a crocodile, a Kudu, and a waterbuck.

Moreover, his appointees to head the departments of the Interior and Agriculture as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Ryan Zinke, Sonny Perdue, and Scott Pruitt respectively, are anything but animal lovers. None of the foregoing should be misconstrued, however, as to imply that Obama and the Democrats ever did anything positive for cats and other animals, but that is a topic that will have to wait for another day.

In conclusion, there cannot be any denying that the executive branch of the national government is now firmly in the hands of a criminal gang of moral retards who not only hate cats but do not have any noticeable regard whatsoever for other animals and Mother Earth. By freely choosing to dine with rotters like Nugent, Rock, and Palin, Trump not only has exposed himself for what he is but in the process he has brought down shame upon both the office of the president and the country as well.

Photos: Facebook (Nugent and Trump, Rock and Nugent with a dead cougar, and the Achse des Bösen in front of Rodham's portrait), and the Daily Mail (Palin with a dead caribou).

Orakel

"Auch ihr fehlendes Augenlicht scheint sie nicht zu beeinträchtigen. Sie erkundet bereits neugierig ihre Umgebung und ist sehr geschickt, was den Schluss zulässt, dass sie bereits seit Lägerem erblindet ist."

-- Wiener Tierschutzverein

Just as the thorn always accompanies the rose, so too is it with cats in that the immense joy that they bring to their owners and supporters is always tinged with, at least, an equal proportion of profound sorrow. Das heißt, they are such tragic actors and actresses upon the world's stage that the only thing missing is a dramatist of the caliber of Sophocles to do for them what he did for mankind all those millenniums ago.

The outrageous Unglück that always has dogged their every step like a malevolent shadow manifests itself in a million different abuses and deprivations that fail to recognize any international boundaries and few, if any, legal and moral constraints. Consequently, to single out any one particular class of offenses from this turbulent sea of unrelenting misery is an almost impossible task but without question the utterly deplorable plight of elderly and infirm cats has to rank at the top of that list.

Even so the overwhelming majority of these abused, neglected, and forgotten senior citizens of the feline world never make the headlines; im Gegenteil, they most often are either systematically liquidated by society or die in obscurity on their own. Despite that harsh reality, ever so often one of them, thanks to a favoring nod from The Fates, does come to the attention of the public and that has been the case with Orakel.

Found wandering the forlorn streets of Breitenfurt bei Wien, thirty-three kilometers southwest of Wien, sometime over the long Easter weekend, she was then was transported to Wiener Tierschutzverein (WTV) in the Vösendorf section of Wien. Judging by the pitiful condition that the diminutive brown, black, and white female was in, her deliverance did not come a day too soon.

Most readily noticeable to the naked eye, her fur had become so matted that she was unable to untangle it. The charity's Tierärztin soon thereafter also quickly discovered that she was suffering from severe malnutrition, respiratory difficulties, a liver condition, and that plaque had accumulated on her teeth and gums.

As if all of that would not have been enough misery for any cat to have borne, Orakel was laboring under two even more compelling disabilities. First of all, she was judged by the veterinarians to be at least seventeen years old and, secondly, she also was blind.

No one connected with WTV has publicly speculated as to how long that she had been on her own but, given her handicaps, it would seem unlikely that she was on the street for more than a few weeks. That estimate is based upon how exceedingly difficult it would have been for her to have procured very much in the way of food, water, and shelter over a protracted period of time.

Being elderly and blind, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that she had spent her entire life indoors and therefore neither possessed the savoir-faire nor the means in order to fend for herself in the wild. TSV has not broached the subject, but it is entirely possible that she even may have been declawed and as such that would have made defending herself and climbing trees in order to elude predators pretty much impossible.

Just the fears, stress, and other psychological horrors that surely must have accompanied such an abrupt change in lifestyle would have been sufficient in order to driven a young and healthy cat out of its mind, let alone one laboring under the difficulties that afflicted Orakel. It accordingly is truly a miracle that she lasted for as long as she did without succumbing to despair as well as to the machinations of the elements, motorists, dogs, and cat-haters. (See Cat Defender post of February 2, 2015 entitled " Cruelly Declawed and Locked Up Indoors for All of His Life, Nicky Is Suddenly Thrust into the Bitter Cold and Snow for Twenty-One Consecutive Days with Predictably Tragic Results.")

Despite quite obviously having had at least one and possibly even more guardians during her lifetime, Orakel was neither wearing a collar nor microchipped. Furthermore, no one has filed either a missing cat report with the authorities or inquired about  her at WTV.

It accordingly is difficult to get around the distressing, and infuriating, conclusion that she was intentionally abandoned. As best it could be determined, neither WTV nor the Polizei have opened an investigation into this matter but if such an effort accomplished nothing else it, if successful, would at least put a face on such a heartless crime.

Abandonments occur all the time but it is difficult to fathom how that anyone could care for a cat for that length of time only to then turn around and cast it out in its old age and infirmities to fend for itself in a hostile world. Although individuals of that ilk would appear auf den ersten Blick to belong to the pages of horror stories, they in fact are definitely real. The difficulty lies in identifying them and subsequently holding them accountable under the anti-cruelty statutes.

At WTV, Orakel finally received the emergency care that she had so desperately needed and deserved for so long. The first order of business involved brushing out as many as possible of the tangles in her fur; the remainder had to be cut out.

After that she was given fluids, most likely intravenously, in order to help her regain not only strength but some of the weight that she had lost while on the street. The tartar was removed from her teeth and she was administered a battery of unspecified nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs.

It has not been specified either what ails her liver or what is being done in order to treat it. Leider, her blindness likely is irreversible considering her age.

"Generell ist, Orakel aber für ihr Alter gesundheitlich noch ganz gut in Schuss," TSW said in an April 18th press release. (See "Wiener Tierschutzverein pflegt blinde Katzendame.")

Following treatment, Orakel was transferred to WTV's Katzenhaus where she, as far as it is known, has made a remarkable comeback. "Sie scheint auch zu merken, dass sie nun in guten Händen ist, denn Orakel ist extrem anhänglich und verschmust und sucht ständig den Kontakt zu Menschen, um sich laut schnurrend von allen Seiten streicheln zu lassen," the charity added.

Besides being a friendly and gregarious cat, she also is able to get around adroitly and that suggests that she, in all likelihood, has been sightless for a long time and perhaps even from birth. "Auch ihr fehlendes Augenlicht scheint sie nicht zu beeinträchtigen," TSV disclosed. "Sie erkundet bereits neugierig ihre Umgebung und ist sehr geschickt, was den Schluss zulässt, dass sie bereits seit Lägerem erblindet ist."

In spite of all the wonderful progress that she has made over the course of the past few weeks, Orakel is far from being out of the woods just yet. That is due principally to the fact that she still needs a home and it is extremely difficult even under the best of circumstances for shelters to place elderly felines.

Plus, in her case she is not only elderly but blind and sickly as well. (See Cat Defender posts of March 23, 2015, August 6, 2015, September 12, 2015, and August 26, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Old, Sickly, and on the Street, George Accidentally Wanders into a Pet Store and That, in All Likelihood, Saved His Life,""Elderly, Frail, and on Death Row, Lovely Pops Desperately Needs a New Home Before Time Finally Runs Out on Her,""Pops Finally Secures a Permanent Home but Pressing Concerns about Both Her Continued Care and Right to Live Remain Unaddressed," and "A Myriad of Cruel and Unforgivable Abandonments, a Chinese Puzzle, and Finally the Handing Down and Carrying Out of a Death Sentence Spell the End for Long-Suffering and Peripatetic Tigger.")

Fortunately, there are a few shelters and sanctuaries that provide long-term care for cats, such as Tilly and Maya, that are unable to secure new homes. (See Cat Defender post of May 27, 2016 entitled "Snubbed by an Ignorant, Tasteless, and Uncaring Public for the Past Twenty-One Years, Tilly Has Forged an Alternative Existence of Relative Contentment at a Sanctuary in the Black Country" and the Donau Kurier of Ingolstadt, July 9, 2013, "Die Geschichte der Maya.")

For its part, WTV has pledged to attempt to provide Orakel with a "schönen und stressfreien Lebensabend" in a new home. There is not any guarantee, however, that it will be successful in that endeavor.

That in turn brings up the disturbing topic of what will become of her if she is not adopted and none of the alternatives available to her are the least bit pleasant to contemplate. Furthermore, just because her former owner gave up on her, as WTV is likely to do at some point in the future, is not a valid reason for the remainder of humanity to follow suit.

Orakel is a courageous grand dame of the feline world who has suffered much, overcome even more, and demonstrated too strong of a will to live in order to be thwarted now. She in all probability does not have all that much time left in this world but she nevertheless is richly entitled to every last second of it.

Anyone who therefore is able to offer her a loving home is encouraged to contact TSV via telephone at 43-01-699 24 50 -16.

Photo: Wiener Tierschutzverein.

Maisy Drenched in Deadly Petrol

"I was awake all night Tuesday (April 4th) hoping that she would just get through the night. This has been one of the worst cases I've dealt with. I was in tears most of the night worrying that she would pass away."

-- veterinarian Kimya Davani

A cat-hating monster of undetermined pedigree and affiliation wanted one-year-old Maisy dead so badly that either he or she went to quadruple lengths in order to turn that objective into a reality. That individual began by binding the small, brown-colored cat's four appendages with, most likely, either rope or some type of tape before dousing her from head to toe in petrol. The next order of business was to seal her up tightly inside a plastic trash bag an then to stuff her into a garbage can at the curb in order to be collected by the trash haulers.

Any one of those diabolical means would have sufficient in that, first of all, the fumes from the petrol would have, sooner or later, either sucked the breath out of her or damaged her respiratory system so irreparably that she no longer would have been able to breathe. She additionally could have been burned alive in the ensuing conflagration if a passerby had unknowingly tossed a cigarette into the garbage can.

Secondly, she very easily could have suffocated to death inside the bag. Thirdly, she likely would have been unwittingly crushed to death by either the trash haulers or at whatever facility that they dump their loads at the end of the day.

Finally, if against all odds she had been able to have weathered all of those perils, she surely would have succumbed to hunger and thirst at some point. It accordingly is hard to imagine that any cat ever has found herself in such dire and utterly hopeless circumstances.

Her very clever assailant thought that either he or she had covered all the bases but that individual made one little mistake in that he had failed to gag Maisy. As things eventually turned out, that oversight made the difference between life and death.

At some undisclosed time during the afternoon of April 4th, two garbagemen stopped to make a pickup in the 500 block of North Front Street in Reading, one-hundred-five kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, whereupon they nonchalantly picked up the bag containing Maisy and tossed it in the rear of their truck. The bag in short order was packed and crushed.

Maisy's Saviors Alongside Their Rig

Normally, that would have been the end of Maisy and this story never would have been written but she, somehow, had miraculously eluded being crushed to smithereens by the compactor. Every bit as amazing she still had enough life still left in her tiny body in order to cry out for help.

The unidentified workmen, who slave away for Harold Adam Refuse Removal in Hamburg, three-three kilometers north of Reading, not only heard her plaintive cries for help but waded into the piles of smelly and rotting garbage in order to pull her out alive. They did not stop there, however, but instead took time out from their exceedingly demanding schedule in order to transport her to the Humane Society of Berks County (HSBC).

The charity's Chelsea Cappellano took one look at Maisy and was horror-stricken. "This is the worse animal cruelty case I've ever seen or experienced," she declared to the Reading Eagle on April 6th. (See "Cat Found Doused in Gasoline in Garbage Can in Reading.")

She almost immediately was transferred next door to Humane Veterinary Hospitals Reading (HVHR) where Kimya Davani and her crackerjack staff launched into an all-out race against the clock in order to reclaim Maisy's fragile life from the ice-cold hands of the Grim Reaper. Considering the pitiful state that she was in, the odds were heavily stacked against Davani and her assistants.

Since she had been so extraordinarily lucky in avoiding the compactor's blade, the staff christened her Miracle Maisy. Even so, the estimated six hours that she had spent breathing in the petrol fumes had taken their toll on her.

"The first twenty-four hours are crucial. Though there are no visible life-threatening injuries, we are worried that the toxicity of the gasoline has affected her lungs and neurological functioning," Davani disclosed to the Reading Eagle."At this time, we're monitoring her for onset illness and ensuring that her chemical burns and bruises heal properly."

Maisy after Having Been Shampooed and Shaven

In addition to all of that, her body temperature had dropped precipitately, she was emaciated, dehydrated, and had sustained unspecified damage to her liver. The most pressing issue, however, was to remove the petrol from her fur and skin before it siphoned the life out of her.

In furtherance of that worthy objective, Davani and her staff spent the greater part of that first day shampooing and drying Maisy's fur but when that endeavor ultimately proved to be insufficient they were forced into taking a bolder initiative. "The gas was so embedded in her fur that she wasn't drying, and because of this her internal body temperature had dropped," Davani told the Reading Eagle."We had to shave most of her body in order to get her temperature up again."

She also was outfitted with a sweater in order to help her keep warm. After that, however, there was little that Davani and her staff could do except to wait and hope for the best.

"I was awake all night Tuesday (April 4th) hoping that she would just get through the night," she told the Reading Eagle on April 7th. (See "Miracle Maisy on the Mend.")"This has been one of the worst cases I've dealt with. I was in tears most of the night worrying that she would pass away."

Anyone who ever has attended to ailing cats can readily sympathize with those sentiments. The overwhelming majority of the time they do not pull through whereas in other instances they mount courageous, last-minute rallies only to turn around and break their owners hearts to bits by succumbing to the Grim Reaper's machinations.

One never knows how these things are going to turn out unless one is willing to pull out all the stops and to travel that last, lonely mile in an effort to save a dying cat's life. It does not happen too often in this world but ever once in a blue moon even the calloused hearts of The Fates can be swayed by tears and that, mercifully, was the case with those that Davani shed on Maisy's behalf.

Maisy Was Fitted with a Sweater in Order to Keep Her Warm

"Maisy is feeling great today. Most of her vitals have returned to normal and she started bonding with some of our staff members," Davani was able to joyfully report to the Reading Eagle on April 7th. "But I think she may still be a little overstimulated with all the attention she's getting."

By either April 8th or April 9th, she was well enough in order to be placed in foster care with a woman identified only as Donna. A few days later she was dewormed and vaccinated against rabies and the Feline Panleukopenia Virus.

"Her coat is slowly growing back in, and her skin redness has subsided substantially, though she's feeling a bit itchy now. She is still underweight but has shown improvement since her last visit," Davani's colleague at HVHR, Alicia Simoneau, wrote in an untitled April 12th article that was posted on HSBC's Facebook page. "One concern that remains is her constant paw and tail flickering. This could be the lingering effects from the gasoline exposure, and we'll continue to monitor her for changes."

On April 14th, she was spayed and returned to her foster mom. In an April 18th posting on HSBC's Facebook page Donna described her as "playful, affectionate, and super-friendly."

Following a detailed screening process, the HSBC said good-bye to Maisy on either April 29th or April 30th when it and Donna relinquished custody of her to an anonymous adopter. "Maisy is settling in nicely. She's radiant energy!" that truly blessed individual wrote May 1st on HSBC's Facebook page. "Within twenty-four-hours she already started purring, investigating, and playing. String seems to be her favorite toy."

The HSBC was equally ecstatic. "We're over the moon knowing Miracle Maisy has a home, one that will erase all the bad memories of her traumatic experience and replace them with nothing but love and kindness," it wrote in the same Facebook article.

Kimya Davani Worked Tirelessly in Order to Save Maisy's Life

The response from the authorities to this latest, horrific act of cruelty perpetrated against an innocent and defenseless cat has been predictable; c'est-à-dire, all blow and no go. "It's critically important that we protect the animals in the community," Karel Minor of Humane Pennsylvania, an umbrella organization of which HSBC is a member, told the Reading Eagle in the April 6th article cited supra."It's our goal for whoever committed this terrible crime to receive the help they need or the prosecution they deserve."

Pursuant to that the HSBC has offered a US$1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest but just how disingenuous all such offers of that sort are was made manifest when PETA followed suit by offering to part with US$5,000 from its precious hoard. (See the Philly Voice, April 10, 2017, "Reward Up to $6,000 in Pennsylvania Case of Cat Doused with Gas, Tossed in Trash Truck.")

Besides the well-known fact that rewards of this nature are almost exclusively public relations stunts that rarely, if ever, produce any positive results, PETA is way too busy stealing and killing cats to ever be bothered with saving so much as a solitary feline soul. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007, February 9, 2007, and October 7, 2011 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in a North Carolina Courtroom,""Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs," and "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

Given that PETA's wholesale crimes against the species have been so thoroughly documented, the capitalist media's stubborn insistence upon doing its bidding can only mean that they not only share its viewpoint but support its killing of cats. Absolutely no one has the guts to call a spade a spade but allowing PETA to put in its two cents' worth on any issue affecting cats is tantamount to the media designating the Ku Klux Klan as the go to organization for a comment on issues concerning black-Americans.

Make no mistake about it: PETA does not speak for any individual or group with any degree of credibility within the feline protection movement. Au contraire, it mouths off only for itself and its champions within the thoroughly dishonest and discredited capitalist media.

Animal cruelty cases are solvable only through the application of sound detective work and although the Reading Police Department (RPD) is supposedly looking into the attack on Maisy, there is not so much as a scintilla of evidence that it has stirred so much as a muscle in that regard. Even in those rare cases when arrests have been made, prosecutors rarely go after the culprits with anything other than wet noodles, juries fail to convict, and even when they do judges adamantly refuse to mete out any jail time.

Consequently, countless cats wind up each year in garbage trucks, city dumps, and at recycling centers. Worst still, with the exception of a minute few of them, such as was the case with Maisy, Autumn, Alfie, and Penny, there are not any eleventh-hour reprieves. (See Cat Defender posts of March 23, 2009, May 4, 2010, and August 23, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Mistakenly Tossed Out in the Trash, Autumn Survives a Harrowing Trip to the City Dump in Order to Live Another Day,""Picked Up by a Garbage Truck Driver and Dumped with the Remainder of the Trash, Alfie Narrowly Misses Being Recycled," and "An Alert Scrap Metal Worker Discovers a Pretty 'Penny' Hidden in a Mound of Rubble.")

Maisy Likes to Chase Strings

A few of the lucky ones are discovered before they wind up on garbage trucks but even then it is an awfully close, not to mention traumatic, shave for them. (See Cat Defender posts of October 3, 2009, February 24, 2010, February 25, 2010, and October 24, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Deliberately Entombed Inside a Canvas Bag for Six Days, Duff Is Saved by a Pair of Alert Maintenance Workers at an Apartment Complex in Spokane,""Sealed Up in a Backpack Inside a Plastic Bag and Then Tossed in the Trash, Titch Is Rescued by a Passerby in Essex,""Bess Twice Survives Attempts Made on Her Life Before Landing on All Four Paws at a Pub in Lincolnshire," and "Chucked Out in the Trash, Tabitha Winds Up in an Oxygen Chamber with Four Broken Ribs, an Injured Lung, and Pneumonia.")

In Maisy's case, the prima facie evidence is mixed. On the one hand, her emaciation would seem to imply that she was homeless while, on the other hand, her friendly demeanor suggests that she, at least at some point in her life, had had a guardian. The perpetrator of this despicable act of animal cruelty therefore could have been either her previous owner or an inveterate cat-hater, such as either an ornithologist, wildlife biologist, or environmentalist. (See Cat Defender posts of May 18, 2013 and April 4, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It" and "A Mass Murderer of Cats, Entrepreneur, Medicine Man, and Artist Are Just a Few of the Many Hats That Are Worn by a 'Hands-On Environmentalist' on Kangaroo Island.")

On the positive side of the ledger, if this incident has exposed what The Shadow used to refer to as "the evil that lurks in the hearts of men," it simultaneously has highlighted the good that is also to be found therein. First and foremost, there were the two-hundred individuals who by April 6th had compassionately opened up their hearts and wallets to the tune of US$6,500 for Maisy's immediate care. "We have been very surprised by the support we've received," Mary Keller of Humane Pennsylvania told the Reading Eagle in the April 7th article cited supra.

Secondly, Maisy was the beneficiary of the expert and conscientious care provided by Davani and her staff at HVHR. At the very pinnacle of this honor roll of heroes, however, are the trash haulers from Harold Adam without whose derring-do Maisy never would have made it to HVHR in the first place.

"We are so thankful to those men and the trash company for bringing her in," Cappellano acknowledged to the Reading Eagle on April 6th. "Many people would have turned a blind eye in this situation, but they were proactive in getting her the help she needs."

Truer words never have been spoken and this pair of hard-working men are true heroes in every sense of that word. They even stopped by HVHR on April 7th in order to check on how Maisy was progressing.

Maisy Has Plenty of Toys to Play With These Days

The compassion that they showed Maisy is not anything unusual for members of their profession. For instance on August 28, 2015, Bekir Mercil and his two assistants devoted thirty minutes of their valuable time in order to unload four to five tons of trash from their truck in order to save the life of tiny brown kitten named Melker.

Without their dramatic intervention, he would have been burned to a crisp at a plant in Stockholm. Like Maisy's rescuers, they did not rest on their laurels, however, but instead transported him to a shelter where Maria Carlsson of a veterinary clinic in Vallentuna, thirty-six kilometers north of Stockholm, later adopted him. (See The Local of Stockholm, August 28, 2015, "Stockholm Bin Men Rescue Doomed Kitten" and the Daily Mail, September 11, 2015, "Binmen to the Rescue! Cat Is Plucked from Under Five Tonnes (sic) of Rotting Waste Just Moments Before It Was Due to Be Incinerated.")

None of the heroics of all of those involved in rescuing Maisy can completely obliterate, however, the sobering conclusion that Pennsylvania is one of the worst places for cats to live in America. First of all, the police make a habit out of murdering them on sight. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008 and September 1, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo" and "The Legal and Political Establishment in a Small Pennsylvania Backwater Closes Ranks and Pulls Out All the Stops in Order to Save the Job and Liberty of the Bloodthirsty Cop Who Murdered Sugar.")

That is another reason why that members of the law enforcement community, such as the RPD, so stubbornly refuse to take seriously cruelty to cats. That in turn puts them in the same class of rotters as the hypocritical, cat-killing scumbags at PETA.

Some of the Keystone State's shelters and sanctuaries likewise can be safely dismissed as little more than feline slaughterhouses. (See Cat Defender posts of March 19, 2010 and May 10, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Trapped and Killed by the Delaware County SPCA, Keecha's Life Is Valued at Only $1 by a Pennsylvania Arbitration Panel" and "Lunatic Rulings in Cats With No Name Cruelty Cases Prove Once Again That Pennsylvania Is a Safe Haven for Cat Killers and Junkies.")

Even its highfalutin and pompous, albeit as rich as Croesus, universities are little more than hangouts for feline abusers and killers.  (See Cat Defender posts of February 12, 2007, June 9, 2008, and March 19, 2014 entitled, respectively, "God-Fearing Baptists at Eastern University Kill Off Their Feral Cats on the Sly while Students Are Away on Christmas Break,""Pennsylvania College Greedily Snatches Up Alumnus' Multimillion-Dollar Bequest but Turns Away His Cat, Princess," and "Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital.")

Pretty Little Maisy Is Hoping to Make a New Start in Life

Like any other jurisdiction around the world, Pennsylvania also has its fair share of drunkards, motorists, and mutilators who are allowed by the authorities to injure and kill cats with impunity. (See Cat Defender posts of October 30, 2010, March 5, 2007, and April 24, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Drunken Bum Is Foiled in a Macabre Plot to Make a Meal Out of Kittens, Nirvana and Karma, That He Allegedly Ran Down Earlier with His Truck,""Run Down by a Motorist and Frozen to the Ice by His Own Blood, Roo Is Saved by a Caring Woman," and "Holly Crawford Hits the Jackpot by Drawing a Judge Who Simply Adores Kitten Mutilators and Dope Addicts.")

It is extremely difficult to properly assess Maisy's prospects considering the extent of the damage that has been inflicted upon her young and tiny body. At last word, she was eating and drinking normally and that her blood levels had returned to normal. (See the Reading Eagle, April 11, 2017, "Maisy the Cat Recovering in Foster Care.")

She still has some tenderness in her hips, however, and her liver has been damaged as the result of the petrol leaching into it through the pores in her skin. Despite all of that, Davani expects the organ to improve in time and for her to be able to enjoy a perfectly normal life.

Hopefully, that will come to pass but only time will tell. Not many cats that are tossed out in the trash survive long enough in order to live another day so it is high time that one of them finally got the best of those formidable odds.

Hers is only one small victory, however, on a worldwide battlefield that is littered with the dead bodies of countless cats. Nevertheless, all of those involved in saving Maisy can take immense satisfaction in knowing that, at least on this all-too-rare occasion, they have prevailed over the machinations of a determined cat killer. Maisy's triumph and recovery therefore belongs to them every bit as much as it does to her and it is, above all, truly something to be celebrated and cherished.

Photos: Humane Society of Berks County (Maisy covered in petrol, shaven and shampooed, wearing a sweater, playing with a string and her toys, up-close, and her saviors) and Susan Keen of the Reading Eagle ( Maisy with Davani).

Churchill and His Horribly Burned Neck

"The closer she (the Good Samaritan) got, she saw the cat was spray-painted purple and saw an injury on its neck. It was a very open wound."

-- Nan Parks of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County

It is a debatable point as to whether it is adults or juveniles who commit the worst offenses against cats and kittens. The same likewise can be said for the immense joy that both groups derive from their lawlessness.

The only tangible difference that distinguishes the two aggregates is that adult abusers and killers, such as ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and environmentalists, feel compelled to manufacture out of thin air all sorts of highfalutin balderdash and outright lies in order to camouflage their true motivations. (See Cat Defender posts of May 18, 2013, June 27, 2008, and April 4, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It,""The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island," and "A Mass Murderer of Cats, Entrepreneur, Medicine Man, and Artist Are Just a Few of the Many Hats That Are Worn by a 'Hands-On Environmentalist' on Kangaroo Island.")

Juvenile cat abusers, on the other hand, spare the public from having to listen to any exculpatory nonsense and simply glory to the hilt in their abject cruelty and wickedness. A rather poignant example of how that they think and behave occurred on April 9th when a group of them either trapped or somehow cornered a two-year-old gray cat subsequently dubbed Churchill on Essick Park on Church Street in Reading, one-hundred-five kilometers northwest of Philadelphia.

Once they had him at their mercy, these pint-sized devils methodically proceeded to spray-paint him purple and to burn a three to four-inch gash in the left side of his neck. It is not known precisely how that the latter injury was inflicted, but it could have been done with either a cigarette lighter or a propane torch.

There really is not any way of knowing either what other forms of cruel and inhumane punishment that they had in store for Churchill or even if he ever would have made it out of that wretched park alive if an unidentified Good Samaritan had not arrived upon the scene in the nick of time. What exactly transpired next is far from clear, but these cowardly monsters apparently vamoosed at the very sight of the woman.

"The closer she got, she saw the cat was spray-painted purple and saw an injury on its neck," Nan Parks of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County (ARLBC) later told WFMZ-TV of Allentown on April 19th. (See "Cat Spray-Painted, Set on Fire in Reading.") "It was a very open wound."

She immediately scooped up Churchill and transported him to the ARLBC's shelter at 58 Kennel Road in Birdsboro, thirteen kilometers southeast of Reading, where she then abandoned him at the facility's stray animal building. She was thoughtful enough, however, to leave a note with him detailing the location and circumstances under which she had found him.

Since press reports have not divulged exactly when Churchill was assaulted, it is not possible to know when that the Good Samaritan arrived with him at the ARLBC's shelter. Nevertheless, given that is only open from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. on a Sunday coupled with the fact that she was forced to leave a note, the assumption, correctly or incorrectly, is that Churchill was left unattended.

It likewise never has been explained why that she chose the ARLBC over the Humane Society of Berks County (HSBC) which, at 1801 North Street in Reading, was only 2.73 kilometers, or about an eight minute drive, north of Church Street as opposed to the sixteen minutes that it took her to cover the 8.69 kilometers that separate Church Street from Kennel Road. The latter also is open from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Sundays but Humane Veterinary Hospitals Reading (HVHR), located next door, is only open Monday through Saturday. It thus would appear that cats who are either injured or become sick on a Sunday are out of luck in Reading.

It accordingly is entirely possible that Churchill was forced to go without treatment until the following day and during such a long interval he easily could have died from an infection or lost his eyesight. Even as things eventually turned out, the pain and torment that he was forced to live with were bad enough.

Once staffers at the ARLBC belatedly got around to treating him, they discovered that in addition to the ugly gash in his neck, he also was suffering from a foggy eye and an untreated ulcer. No details of the type of care that he received have been divulged but staffers apparently were able to shampoo the paint out of his fur because he does not appear to have been shaven in photographs of him that later were released to the press.

His eyes likely were flushed with water and treated with medicated drops whereas the wound to his neck had to be cleansed, medicated, and bandaged. Afterwards he in all probability was administered antibiotics, painkillers, and fitted with an Elizabethan collar.

Hopefully, the veterinarians were able to have saved his eyesight and his neck should heal in time. Even so, his recuperation is expected to take several months and that admission thinly suggests that his injuries may have been even more severe than the ARLBC is willing to publicly acknowledge.

He was placed in foster care on April 14th with one of the charity's volunteers and is said to be adjusting as well as possible to his new surroundings. "He's definitely been through the ringer for his young age, but he's a sweetheart; a super-great cat," ARLBC's shelter manager Sarah McKillip testified to the Reading Eagle on April 20th. (See "Cat Spray-Painted, Suffers Burns in Reading.")"For everything he's been through, he has every right to hate mankind. But he doesn't."

Even individuals who work with them on a daily basis, such as McKillip, always seen to be surprised by cats' total lack of malice and that in itself tends to suggest that they fail to fully appreciate them. First of all, cats are not people; in fact, they are far superior to them. Secondly, there simply is not any way that any of them ever could get even at a monster as vile as man so holding grudges would be a waste of time and cats are smart enough to realize that.

Given Churchill's friendly nature, he likely at some point previously had a guardian in Reading but, for whatever reason, that individual has not attempted to reclaim him. While it is always conceivable that an unwillingness to pony up for his veterinary care could very well be at the heart of that utterly shameful abdication of moral responsibility, it also is possible that one or more of his attackers were family members.

Press reports have not broached the subject of whether he was wearing a collar or had been microchipped but the inference is that neither were the case. It likewise has not been disclosed if he had been sterilized.

His right ear does not appear to have been mutilated and that, in most instances, forecloses the notion that he could have belonged to a managed TNR colony. Consequently, not only is his past a mystery but also how that he wound up in Essick Park.

The ARLBC claims to have interviewed several potential witnesses in the area surrounding the park but that, as far as it is known, constitutes the sum total of the effort that it has invested in attempting to bring those responsible for attacking Churchill to justice. Accordingly, no arrest has been made and none is expected.

Instead, the public has been treated to the customary outpouring of crocodile tears and expressions of moral outrage. "We'll do everything we can to stop (abuse), but somebody has to speak up," McKillip pontificated to the Reading Eagle."Every time when you think you've seen it all, you're wrong."

Whereas there is not any doubting the veracity of her last statement, she is living in a dream world if she truly expects the public to do the ARLBC's and the Reading Police Department's jobs for them. Besides it being outrageous of her to fob off responsibility for enforcing the anti-cruelty statutes onto ordinary citizens, they are not about to take up that gauntlet in a million years.

They do not possess either the expertise, resources, or the authority to investigate crimes of this nature and thus to make arrests. Only humane groups and the police are equipped to do that but neither of them have much interest in doing so.

Churchill Is Facing a Lengthy Recuperation Period in Foster Care

Her colleague, Parks, was equally long on the rhetoric but disturbingly short on action. "This is something that is wrong," she declared to WFMZ-TV. "It's inhumane and we really want justice for Churchill."

Even in uttering those sentiments, she has grotesquely understated the magnitude of the problem that exists in Reading. For example, earlier on April 4th a brown, one-year-old cat named Miracle Maisy barely escaped with her life after she was doused with petrol and thrown out with the trash. (See Cat Defender post of May 12, 2017 entitled "Miracle Maisy Is Bound and Tied, Soaked in Petrol, Sealed Up in a Plastic Bag, and Then Run Through a Trash Compactor but, Amazingly, Is Still Alive Thanks to a Pair of Compassionate Garbagemen.")

Furthermore, it is not only cats are being preyed upon in Reading but dogs as well. For instance, a Chihuahua dubbed Lady Luck was plucked from a garbage can in the 1000 block of Penn Street on April 19th. Like Maisy, she since then has been placed in a new home.

Clearly, there is a lot that is rotten in Reading but given the intransigence of both the law enforcement community and humane groups, those individuals and organizations that truly care about cats need to seriously consider new approaches to this age-old dilemma. One option would be to hire private dicks in order to investigate cases of animal cruelty.

Fully cognizant of the futility of relying upon the authorities to investigate such cases, a number of individuals already have turned to these professionals but results have been mixed. The principal drawback is that even when gumshoes locate and identify cat killers that, quite often, is still not enough in order to persuade the police and humane groups to make arrests. (See Cat Defender post of April 2, 2015 entitled "Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and the RSPCA.")

A second alternative would be for rescue groups to recruit and train volunteers to do this long-neglected job. Just the mere presence alone of an army of dedicated volunteers prowling the streets for cat abusers might be sufficient in itself in order to deter some would-be abusers.

Merely accepting cruelty to cats as an unalterable fact of life should not be an option but that is precisely the position that the ARLBC has adopted in regard to what was done to Churchill. "You're never happy to see abuse, you're never happy to see these things go on, and it breaks your heart to see it," McKillip philosophized to the Reading Eagle."But at least he's with us, and I knew he'd be okay."

That is not necessarily the case in that one day he is going to leave foster care and then he will be subject to same dangers as before. Consequently, temporarily safeguarding the life of a solitary cat is tantamount to attempting to stop up a gaping hole in a ship the size of the Titanic with chewing gum.

The objective should be to ensure the safety and well-being of all cats at all times and in order to do so it is paramount that abusers and killers be apprehended and severely punished. Anyone or group that is unwilling to commit the time, effort, and resources that are required in order to transform that worthy goal into a reality might just as well shut up and thus spare the world from having to listen to their phony-baloney excuses.

If that were the whole story it would be bad enough in its own right, but many humane organizations exploit acts of cruelty as a means of raising cash for other activities. Whereas it is readily acknowledged that all of these cash-strapped organizations desperately need money for, inter alia, veterinary care, adoption services, and general operating expenses, there nonetheless is something inherently dishonest about accepting money under false pretenses.

Even if humane groups somehow could be prevailed upon to take cruelty to cats seriously, that would constitute merely the first baby step on a long and difficult road toward holding their attackers accountable under the law. That is because district attorneys do not have any interest whatsoever in prosecuting anti-cruelty cases, juries refuse to convict, and even when they do judges will not punish the guilty.

Given that is the case with adult offenders, it is even more the norm with juveniles who are permitted by societies all over the world to injure and kill cats with impunity. In furtherance of sating their perverse desires, they have appropriated for their use practically every known means of killing cats imaginable.

First of all, they simply adore setting cats ablaze. (See Cat Defender posts of September 23, 2005, October 5, 2006, and July 12, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Two New Zealand Teens Douse Three Caged Cats with Glue and Burn Them to Death,""New Jersey Teens' Idea of Fun: Beat Up a Defenseless Kitten and Then Burn It to Death," and "Burned Nearly to Death by Laughing Teenage Girls, Two-Month-Old Kitten Named Adam Is Fighting for His Life in Santa Rosa.")

Closely associated with burning cats and kittens to death, juvenile also get a big kick out of attaching firecrackers to their tiny bodies and then lighting the fuses. (See Cat Defender post of November 30, 2006 entitled "Yobs Celebrating Guy Fawkes Day Kill Twelve-Year-Old Cat Named Tigger with Fireworks; Cat Named Sid Is Severely Burned.")

Crossbows are another of their favorite weapons. (See Cat Defender post of December 18, 2009 entitled "Teenage Wino Who Gunned Down Her Neighbor's Cat, Trouble, with a Crossbow from Her Bedroom Window Cheats Justice.")

They also drown cats. (See Cat Defender post of October 2, 2008 entitled "Sixteen-Year-Old London Girl Is Finally Arrested in the Horrific Drowning Death of Kilo from the HMS Belfast.")

The siccing of large, vicious dogs on cats and kittens is another of their delights. (See Cat Defender post of March 24, 2010 entitled "Seven-Month-Old Bailey Is Fed to a Lurcher by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland.")

They even bind cats with tape and beat kittens to death with sticks. (See Cat Defender post of November 25, 2015 entitled "A Cruel Teenage Drunkard and Dope Addict Who Bound a Cat and a Dog with Tape Before Killing Them Is Let Off Easy by a Calgary Court" and the Belfast Telegraph, August 17, 2013, "Anger over Council and Police 'Inaction' as Children Torture and Kill Kittens.")

Their preferred choice of weapons are, however, air guns. (See Cat Defender post of May 7, 2007 entitled "British Punks Are Having a Field Day Maiming Cats with Air Guns but the Peelers Continue to Look the Other Way.")

On those rare occasions when they get bored with sticking it to cats, they train their bottomless fountain of evil upon other animals and, especially, homeless men. Since societies do not have any more regard for those two groups than they do for cats, juveniles are likewise allowed to assault them with impunity.

Those individuals responsible for that litany of crimes as well as those who so hideously abused Churchill should be treated as adults under the law and dealt with accordingly. That is not about to happen, however; instead, they are allowed to remain free and to grow into adults where they commit even more dastardly crimes against both cats and society at large.

The only alternatives are private initiatives. Mindless jawboning is not accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Even damaged as he is, Churchill is awfully lucky to still be alive but if something is not done soon in order to make Reading a far safer city for cats, he may not be able to stay that way for much longer. The same holds true for countless other felines who sans doute are being abused, maimed, and killed but whose plights never have seen so much as the light of day.

Photos: Animal Rescue League of Berks County (Churchill's burned neck) and the Reading Eagle (Churchill asleep on a mat).

Martha Gellhorn Is Back Home at the Museum

"It was the first time ever and the woman was aggressive with the cat."

-- Jacque Sands of the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum

The much maligned and litigated polydactyls that reside at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West have once again run afoul of the long arm of the law. This time around the culprit is a brown female of unspecified age known as Martha Gellhorn who at around 4 p.m. on July 20th of last year bit the left hand of seventy-six-year-old Mary Ann Law of New Port Richey, seven-hundred-eighteen kilometers to the north on the Gulf of Mexico.

No details have been released as to either the severity of the bite or what type of medical attention that it required. Whereas scratches are not normally anything to be overly concerned about, bites are an altogether different matter owing to the potentially harmful bacteria that lives in a cat's mouth.

It therefore is imperative that such wounds to immediately cleansed with water and that any blood that has pooled on the surface be removed. The wound next needs to the irrigated with either hydrogen peroxide or iodine before common, over-the-counter antibiotics, such as bacitracin, neomycin sulfate, and polymyxin b. sulfate are applied. The bite then needs to be bandaged so that the antibiotics can remain in situ and work their magic.

In most instances, such remedial efforts are sufficient in order to ward off the onset of further difficulties. The wound may be sore for a few days and there might even be some slight swelling but that usually is the extent of the damage.

Time is of the essence, however, in that cat bites must be dealt with promptly. If that is not the case, severe inflammation may ensue and professional intervention may be warranted. Even under the worst of circumstances, however, the swelling normally subsides in a few weeks with the infected area returning to its normal size and function.

Given that polydactyls have resided at 907 Whitehead Street ever since 1935, staffers should be well versed by this time on how to treat cat bites and scratches and have, at the very least, a first aid kit on the premises. It also would be helpful if they possessed the prerequisite savoir-faire in order to calm victims and, if necessary, were willing to financially compensate them on the spot so as to foreclose on the prospect of any future legal problems.

In this instance, Law reportedly did not want to make a stink about the matter but her meddlesome daughter insisted upon calling in the Key West Police Department. While it is true that there is a law on the books in Florida that stipulates that all animal bites must be reported to the authorities, Americans have a long history of observing such edicts much more in the breach than in the spirit in which they were intended. Besides, considering how trigger-happy cops have become of late any thinking individual would be wary of asking any of them for so much as the time of day.

No harm ensued in this instance however because the cops, predictably, did not want anything to do with the matter and instead handed off the baton to the Florida Keys SPCA in Key West. That which followed was an all-too-familiar refrain from a song that never seems to change.

Specifically, the SPCA dispatched its Animal Control officer, Lindsey Thompson, who arrived johnny-on-the-spot and promptly took Martha, who was so named in honor of Hemingway's third wife, into custody. She then transported her to the All Animal Clinic on Stock Island, five kilometers north of Key West, where she was placed under lock and key.

After serving a ten-day sentence for allegedly being rabid, Martha was released from custody on July 30th and returned to the museum. "No sign of rabies," Thompson concluded according to The Keynoter of Marathon's August 17th edition. (See "Hemingway Cat 'Jailed' after Tourist Complains of Bite Returns Home.")

Rocky and Samantha Davies

Even though such behavior is patently unfair and mindlessly absurd, every time that a cat either bites or scratches someone the authorities immediately start screaming their bloody heads off about rabies. For example back on August 20, 2014, members of the Gorham Police Department in Maine even went so far as to anoint themselves as judge, jury, and executioner of an elegant tuxedo named Clark. Every bit as outrageous, they based that decision solely upon the uncorroborated testimony supplied by a member of the public who swore that he was rabid. (See Cat Defender post of September 27, 2014 entitled "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun.")

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed in Martha's case but even then she did not receive so much as a scintilla of due process of law. Rather, she was assumed to have been guilty from the outset and brusquely carted off to the clink in order to serve her time. If she had not been up-to-date on her rabies' vaccination, however, she very well could have been left to languished for even longer in the sneezer.

By contrast, individuals and groups that perpetrate all sorts of heinous crimes against cats only rarely receive harsher sentences. For instance, Larry Negard of Bossier City, Louisiana, received only ten days in jail even though he had been implicated in the brutal murders of nine of his next-door neighbor's cats. (See the Bossier City Press, March 4, 2016, "Bossier City Man Jailed for Killing Neighbor's Cat.")

Every bit as unfair, owners such as Sylvain Brunette of Franklin, Quebec, are sometimes sent to jail for simply owning too many cats. (See Cat Defender post of December 15, 2016 entitled "A Quebec Man Risks His Own Life by Electing to Spend Four Days in a Hellhole Prison Rather Than to Give Up His Six Elderly Cats.")

The unjust punishment meted out to Martha was all the more revolting in that she only bit Law in self-defense. "It was the first time ever and the woman was aggressive with the cat," the museum's manager, Jacque Sands, later protested to The Keynoter.

It has not been publicly divulged exactly what it was that Law did in order to provoke Martha's ire but, generally speaking, cats do not appreciate strangers getting too close to them and that is especially the case if they attempt to either corner or manhandle them. For instance, when Larry arrived at 10 Downing Street on February 11, 2011, ITV-News reporter Lucy Manning forcibly attempted to get him to pose for her and was rewarded for her bad manners with a scratch on her arm. (See Cat Defender post of July 21, 2011 entitled "Larry Faces Many Challenges and Dangers in His New Rôle as 10 Downing Street's Resident Feline.")

It also is illuminating that Martha used her teeth as opposed to her claws on Law. That in itself is a rather strong indication that her nemesis was either holding her front paws or had her cornered in that a cat's first line of defense is always her claws.

It accordingly is usually only their trusted owners who are able to get close enough in order to be bitten. Such incidents normally occurs when an owner is attempting to either medicate their eyes, force-feed them when they are sick, or to remove parasites from around their faces. Kittens, as soon as they acquire a fang or two, are the ones who are the most inclined to bite and their little teeth are every bit as sharp as razor blades.

"Those who will play with cats must expect to be scratched," Miguel de Cervants once observed and that admonition is equally applicable to being bitten.

Even though the museum was, thankfully, not only able to save Martha's life but to retain custody of her as well, the incident nonetheless ended up costing it a pretty penny. First of all, it had to pony up for Law's treatment. Secondly, it was on the hook for Martha's hefty quarantine bill as well as any treatment that she may have received while at the All Animals Clinic.

Shiny Is a Wanted Tom in Little Treviscoe

If Law should decide at some point in the future to sue the museum, such an action would further deplete its coffers. In its nine-year running battle with the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the museum already has spent in excess of US$200,000 in attempting to appease it plus another US$600,000 in legal fees.

As the result of that titanic struggle, APHIS now mandates that each of the museum's fifty or so resident felines be tagged and individually caged each night. It also has been forced into hiring a nightwatchman as well as to fortifying the perimeter wall around the mansion. (See Cat Defender posts of August 3, 2006, January 9, 2007, July 23, 2007, and January 24, 2013 entitled, respectively, "The USDA Fines Hemingway Memorial in Key West $200 a day for Exhibiting Papa's Polydactyl Cats Without a License,""Papa Hemingway's Polydactyl Cats Face New Threats from Both the USDA and Their Caretakers,""Cat Behaviorist Is Summoned to Key West in Order to Help Determine the Fate of Hemingway's Polydactyls," and "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.")

It is not known what, if any, punitive action the overzealous bureaucrats at APHIS are planning to take against the museum in the wake of Martha's run-in with Law, but is seems unlikely that they are going to be willing to pass up such a golden opportunity to once again sock it to the cats.

In the October 24, 2010 panels of Darby Conley's "Get Funny," Bucky Katt famously defined heaven as "lying in a laundry basket (and being) massaged by a polydactyl." While there is sans doute considerable truth in that observation, at least from a cat's perspective, the machinations of both APHIS and Law have made life for Hemingway's polydactyls anything but paradisaical.

On a much broader level, it has become a popular pastime of late for many individuals, groups and, above all, the capitalist media to portray diminutive and peace-loving cats as savage beasts that attack without provocation much larger and powerful humans and dogs. A review of some of these causes célèbres that have made the news in recent years points to an entirely different conclusion, however.

First of all, the overwhelming majority of those individuals who have been either scratched or bitten received their injuries while foolishly intervening in disputes between their cats and other felines. Even more unfairly, they escaped with only minor injuries whereas the consequences for their victims have been significantly costlier.

For example, a cat named Lewis from Fairfield, Connecticut, and one named Bingo from the Maihofquartier in Luzern were placed under house arrest all because idiotic neighbors were scratched when they stepped between them and their cats during standoffs. (See Cat Defender posts of April 3, 2006, June 26, 2006, and October 17, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Free Lewis Now! Connecticut Tomcat, Victimized by a Bum Rap, Is Placed Under House Arrest,""Lewis the Cat Cheats the Hangman but Is Placed Under House Arrest for the Remainder of His Life," and "Bingo Is Placed Under House Arrest for Defending Herself Against a Neighbor Who Foolishly Intervened in a Cat Fight.")

A few years back a stunningly beautiful four-year-old ginger and white tom named Rocky from Rotherham in South Yorkshire likewise was accused of scrapping with both cats and dogs as well as biting two individuals. That in turn prompted the Rotherham Council to issue his thirty-five-year-old owner, Samantha Davies, an Anti-Social Behavior Order (ASBO) which stipulated that he had to be confined on her property.

"It's just like an animal ASBO, and its completely ridiculous," she fumed to the Yorkshire Post of Leeds in West Yorkshire on July 25, 2014. (See "Safety Claws as Council Slaps ASBO on a Cat.")"How can a cat behave antisocially? It's an animal, it's a pet. He's not going to bite your leg off, drink alcohol in the street or try and rob your phone."

She also strenuously denied that he is a vicious and destructive cat. "The only time he has bitten someone was when they pulled its tail," she averred to the Daily Mail on July 25, 2014. (See "Must Be Feline Pretty Anti-Social: Cat Slapped with an 'Animal ASBO' for Biting People and Damaging Property in 'Campaign of Terror'.")"He has been accused of damaging property because he scratched a fence."

The Beloved Louis of Wells Cathedral

A large black cat named Shiny from Little Treviscoe in Cornwall also has felt the sting of the law for fighting with cats and dogs and for scratching their owners when they intervened in these skirmishes. That in turn has prompted some residents to call for his tiny head to be delivered to them upon a silver platter.

"The laws need to be changed so the same rules apply for cats as they do dogs," thirty-four-year-old Helen Wade moronically bellowed to The Plymouth Herald on December 14, 2013. (See "Shiny the Cat Branded Country's Most Ferocious Feline after Attacking Residents and Pets.")"If a cat attacks a person, they should immediately be put down."

In an effort to appease their irate neighbors, Shiny's owners, Mandie and Adrian Knowles, not only had him sterilized but also asked the RSPCA and animal psychologist Roger Mugford to examine him. Not surprisingly, both of them gave him clean bills of health. Best of all, his owners wisely have rejected Wade's absurd demand that Shiny be killed.

"We've taken the vets' advice and had him neutered but we're not going to put him down when he's perfectly healthy," Adrian defiantly vowed to The Plymouth Herald."But it's getting very unfair on Shiny. If we genuinely thought that this cat was attacking innocent people or children we would have him put down."

It was Mandie, however, who put his finger on the crux of the matter. "These people (Shiny's accusers) must have done something for him to act that way," he speculated to The Plymouth Herald."He wouldn't attack them out of the blue."

Unfortunately, homeless cats do not have loving and knowledgeable guardians like the Knowleses in order to defend their rights and lives and as a result they usually are forced into paying the ultimate price whenever disputes of this nature occur. For instance, a forever nameless cat from South Yunderup, a suburb of Perth in the state of Western Australia, was trapped and subsequently liquidated by the authorities in 2011 after it had bitten Sandy Williams when she intervened in a dispute between it and her cat, Tiger. (See Cat Defender post of August 24, 2011 entitled "Self-Defense Is Against the Law in Australia after a Woman Who Attacked a Cat Gets Away with Her Crime Whereas Her Victim Is Trapped and Euthanized.")

Even on those occasions when owners of Williams' ilk choose not to rat out cats to the authorities they instead take matters into their own hands. That is precisely what physician Peter Parkinson from the Auckland suburb of Westmere did on July 26, 2007 when he abducted a six-year-old cat named Max, drove him across the Auckland Harbor Bridge, and then dumped him in Northcote.

He undertook that drastic action because Max allegedly had been entering his house and fighting with his resident feline, Chiquita. He also was accused of helping himself to her rations and leaving behind the telltale byproducts of his repasts.

Once the police began to close him, Parkinson got scared and sent Max's owner, Lisa Morice, an anonymous letter informing her that her cat had been treated to "a vacation overseas." He also enclosed a map describing where that he had dumped him as "Max's Hilton."

It took her a fortnight of looking high and low but Morice eventually was able to locate Max and to bring him home. Despite having the goods on Parkinson, the authorities steadfastly refused to bring any charges against him. (See Cat Defender post of December 24, 2007 entitled "A Prominent New Zealand Physician Who Ludicrously Claims to Be an Ailurophile Gets Away with Stealing and Dumping His Neighbor's Cat.")

Sam's Disgraceful Owner Dumped Him at a Shelter

Even on those occasions when cats manage to escape with their lives after having been attacked by humans that does not necessarily mean that they will be as fortunate the next time around. Besides, the verbal complaints lodged against them by their accusers often irreparably tarnish their reputations in an unflattering and unjust manner.

That is precisely how that seamstress and part-time nanny Patti Talbot of Kennington in Oxfordshire got back at a nameless tom after he had bitten her while visiting two cats that are owned by her common law husband, Paul Taylor. Much more importantly, the cat was only defending itself in that she had blasted it with a water pistol in the course of chasing it off of her property. (See the Oxford Mail, March 14, 2011, "Woman Claims She Is Being Terrorized by a Feral Cat.")

As everyone knows, cats and canines are a volatile mix under just about all circumstances so it is patently dishonest and unfair to malign and blame the former whenever the fur starts to fly between these age-old antagonists. Nevertheless, that is all-too-often precisely what transpires. (See Cat Defender posts of October 18, 2009 and October 23, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Minneapolis Is Working Overtime Trying to Kill an Octogenarian's Cat Named Hoppy for Defending His Turf Against Canine Intruders" and "An Essex Welfare Bum Who Sicced His Dog on Cats and Beat Them with His Cane Is Now Pretending to Be the Victim of an Assault.")

Even the world renowned seventeen-year-old Louis of Wells Cathedral in the city of the same name in Somerset has been accused of assaulting a trio of dogs. Those charges could have been cases of mistaken identity, however, in that at least two other ginger-colored cats reside in the same neighborhood.

By conceding even that much the church has been far too generously inclined toward his accusers because, even if the attacker were him, he most likely was only acting in self-defense. "For an old guy who spends most of his day sound asleep in the cathedral shop, it must have taken an event of magnitude to have caused such a reaction," an unidentified member of Fans of Louis speculated to the Daily Mail on March 16, 2015. (See "Mew-Dunnit! Can This Cuddly Moggy Really Be the Beast of Bath and Wells?")"Be honored (because) we may not see such an event again in our lifetime."

Even if a cat on occasion should scratch a dog, such infractions pale in comparison to the large number of cats and kittens that canines maim and kill each year. Moreover, in most such cases these vicious maulings are instigated by the dogs' owners. (See Cat Defender posts of March 24, 2010, October 28, 2013, July 2, 2015, and July 18, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Seven-Month-Old Bailey Is Fed to a Lurcher by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland,""Slow to Recuperate from Life-Threatening Injuries Sustained in a Savage Mauling by an Unleashed Dog, Stubbs Announces His Intention to Step Down as Mayor of Talkeetna,""After Allowing One of Their Dogs to Maul McGuire to Within an Inch of His Life, the Toronto Police Do Not Have Even the Common Decency to Summon Veterinary Help for Him," and "Blackpudlian Thrill Seeker Who Sicced Her Pit Bull on Regi and Then Laughed Off Her Fat Ass as He Tore Him Apart Receives a Customary Clean Bill of Health from the Courts.")

Cases of alleged violence that involve other cats, dogs, and individuals who have confessed, either voluntarily or inadvertently, as having been the instigators can be safely dismissed as slanders and libels directed against the species. The problem of separating fact from fiction arises when there are not any other cats, dogs and unbiased third-party witnesses involved in these fracases.

For example, twenty-eight-year-old Karen Costa of Astoria in Queens claims that on May 30, 2007 she was bitten by a cat named Harry that she recently had adopted from a shelter in Manhattan. (See the New York Daily News, May 11, 2010, "Queens Woman Karen Costa Sues Petco after Cat with Lion-Sized Temper Takes Bite Out of Her Finger.")

Seventy-one-year-old Barbara Pinchbeck of Mahopac in upstate New York claims that a black cat named Wheezer did likewise to her after she had adopted him from a shelter in April of 2010. (See the New York Daily News, November 21, 2010, "Woman Sues Shelter for $2 Million after She Says 'Crazed' Hellcat Attacks Her.")

In November of 2010, Cheryl Sibley of Hasbruck Heights in New Jeresey filed a lawsuit against McSorley's Old Ale House in the East Village, where Abraham Lincoln used to drink, alleging that its resident feline, Minnie II, had attacked her in October of 2009. Despite the public nature of the establishment, there apparently were not any witnesses to this alleged assault. (See the New York Post, December 5, 2010, "Is This the Face of a Killer?")

Even though a twelve-year-old cat named Blackie from Ramsgate in Kent has been accused of multiple assaults over the years, as far as it is known none of those incidents have been independently corroborated. (See Cat Defender post of March 8, 2007 entitled "Blackie the Cat Has Postmen, Bobbies, and Deliverymen Looking over Their Shoulders in Ramsgate, Kent.")

The Unidentified Cat That Was Attacked by Bruce and Eileen Gough

Some of the charges leveled against allegedly aggressive felines are so fantastic as to be totally lacking in so much as a scintilla of credibility. For example, thirty-five-year-old Aydan Ulugun of Walthamstow in the East London borough of Waltham Forest claims that her two-year-old resident feline Sam who up until then had been as "good as gold" one day out of the blue went wild and viciously attacked her without provocation.

"...when I walked into the spare room he was looking very odd. His hair puffed up and his tail seemed far larger than normal," she related to the Daily Mail on December 13, 2013. (See "Attack of the 'Feline Ninja'.")"His facial expression changed and became menacing and he started making strange, aggressive noises, when he is normally quiet."

In the aftermath that followed she wasted no time in dumping him at the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London. "It's going to be for his best interests and mine," is how that she rationalized that heartless and irresponsible decision to the Daily Mail.

The ne plus ultra of tall tales concerning allegedly vicious cats comes courtesy of a pair of addlebrained old farts from Chartham in Kent named Bruce and Eileen Gough. In particular, back in 2014 they claimed to have been held hostage in their flat at Tower View for two days by a cat that had made its way inside through a window that had been left open.

By their own inadvertent admission, however, that which followed could not possibly have been anyone's fault but their own. "When I got up, it dashed off into a spare bedroom and I found it hiding under the bed. I tried to coax it out but it wouldn't budge, so I got a broom to ease it out," seventy-four-year-old Bruce admitted to The Telegraph of London on July 3, 2014. (See "RSPCA Refuses to Remove Feral Cat Destroying Couple's Home.")"But when I went to pick it up, it just flew at me and sank its teeth and claws into my forearm. It was going berserk and flew around the room, knocking things over, including a Victorian ewer on the mantelpiece, which shattered."

Even though it may have been expensive, the broken water jug was not of any consequence. As things eventually turned out, what the Goughs desperately needed was not it but rather a pot de chambre."Unfortunately, the cat defecated and urinated in the room, which now stinks," seventy-seven-year-old Eileen testified to The Telegraph.

The cat, quite obviously, had wandered in looking for sustenance and shelter only to have been confronted by the hostile and moronic Goughs yelling and screaming, attacking it with a broom, and idiotically attempting to corral it barehanded. What this pair of blooming idiots should have done was to either have left it alone or offered it some food and water and it soon enough would have vacated the premises on its own accord.

Given what is already known about how that cats sometimes interact with both each other and dogs, coupled with the admissions made by their human accusers, it thus seems clear that unsubstantiated allegations made against members of the species by the likes of Costa, Pinchbeck, Sibley, Ulugun, and Blackie's detractors cannot be accepted at face value. C'est-à-dire, no punitive action ever should be taken against any cat without such allegations first having been independently corroborated.

That is imperative given the legions of cat-haters in this world and man's penchant for telling nothing but lies. Besides, cats cannot speak for themselves.

None of the foregoing is meant to deny that cats do not occasionally get frightened and agitated and that is especially the case whenever humans commence running around like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming, bandying objects about and, generally speaking, behaving like possessed demons themselves. Under such stressful, frightening, and confusing circumstances, cats occasionally will inadvertently scratch and bite even their owners, especially if they accidentally should step on their tails or sit down on top of them.

Like everything else connected with cats, what is needed from the public is considerably more honesty as well as a modicum of intelligence. It does not require a great deal of the latter in order to know how to deal with a cat but it nonetheless does require some and that glaring deficiency is a big problem for both the so-called intelligentsia as well as for commoners. It additionally would be refreshing if the capitalist media were for once to stop disseminating unsubstantiated rubbish about the species.

Photos: The Keynoter (Martha Gellhorn), The Mirror (Rocky and Davies), The Plymouth Herald (Shiny), Wells Cathedral (Louis), Bradley Page of the Daily Mail (Sam), and The Telegraph (the cat that was attacked by the Goughs).

A Grinning Barack Obama

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

-- Barack Obama

He has long since sacked up his loot and hightailed it out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and now is residing in the Kalorama section of Washington where he is raking it in with both fists on the rubber chicken circuit. As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr so aptly put it in the January 1849 edition of Les Guêpes, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." (See the New York Post, May 1, 2017, "Notorious Banker Hosts O.")

Much like an old firehouse dog who although no longer able to make it to any major conflagrations nonetheless still delights in the bells, whistles, and hustle and bustle that accompany every new alarm that is sounded, he has kept a hand in politics. Most recently he stuck his schnoz into the presidential election in Frankreich and after that he was off to Deutschland where he was the beneficiary of a welcome worthy of the one that Jack Kennedy received in 1963 when he delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner"speech. The most logical conclusion to be drawn from all of that is that ignorance is every bit as blissful on the continent as it is in the Vereinigten Staaten.

Even if the sun finally has gone down on the Obama Administration and the dust all but settled, it is never too late in order to take a look back in the rearview mirror as to how that he and his minions treated cats during his seemingly interminable eight years in office. Given the enormous complexity and breadth of the issue, it is impossible to delve into every action that he either took or refused to take that impacted, directly or indirectly, upon the lives of cats but, to say the least, he was anything but a friend of the species.

1.)  The United States Fish and Wildlife Service Slaughtered One-Hundred-Fifty Cats on San Nicolas.

Two Cats That Were Allegedly Rescued from San Nicolas

Obama's most egregious crime against cats was, arguably, turning loose the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), a division of the Department of the Interior, to massacre an estimated one-hundred-fifty cats on San Nicolas Island, located in the Channel Islands off the coast of Los Angeles. The gory specifics have not been publicly divulged, but initial plans called for the cats to be snared in leghold traps and then blasted to kingdom come by USFWS marksmen armed with shotguns.

Those that proved to be too wily to be trapped were to have been hounded down at night by bloodhounds and then shot by assassins carrying battery-powered torches. The USFWS and its cohorts originally wanted to infect the cats with the Feline Panleukopenia Virus (FPV), as Professor Marthán Bester of the University of Pretoria had done with a lion's share of the more than thirty-four-hundred cats and he and his accomplices killed on Marion Island between the late 1970's and the early 1990's, but they ultimately were dissuaded from doing so out of concerns, not for the prolonged and excruciating suffering that such a measure would have inflicted upon the cats, but rather in order to spare other species on the island.

Regardless of the methodologies that ultimately were adopted, the USFWS was determined from the outset to kill every cat on San Nicolas. "We have to make sure we have every one of them," the agency's Jane Hendron declared in April of 2009.

The only token opposition that this outrageous slaughter provoked came from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in Washington. "This is not humane. I would not say shooting cats or leaving them in leghold traps for up to fourteen hours is humane," its Nancy Peterson protested in June of 2008. "This is proposed by wildlife biologists who are treating cats like wildlife...These are like the domestic pussy cats we have at home, but they're living a wild lifestyle."

No sooner than those words had escaped her forked tongue, Peterson and the HSUS did an abrupt about-face and sold out the cats living on San Nicolas by joining forces with their killers. Specifically, this Faustian bargain involved the USFWS allowing the HSUS to remove a handful of cats and kittens from the island in return for the latter's support for its extermination of the remainder of them.

Consequently, somewhere between fifty-two and fifty-four cats and kittens were trapped and removed from the island. They in turn were taken to the HSUS's Fund for Animals Rehabilitation Center in Ramona, fifty-six kilometers north of San Diego. Even in sparing the lives of those cats and kittens, the USFWS forced the HSUS into agreeing to confine them indoors for the remainder of their lives and that covenant even was made binding upon those individuals who either fostered or later adopted them.

The world has long forgotten about these cruelly uprooted, marooned, and incarcerated in a foreign land cats and it accordingly is not possible to say whatever became of them. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine that there ever could have been many happy endings to their already sad stories.

As, most likely, the descendants of cats brought to the island and soon thereafter cruelly abandoned by the United States Navy, they had spent their entire lives without shelter, veterinary care, and human contact. Their diet likewise consisted entirely of whatever they were able to eke out a forbidding and and almost barren landscape. Consequently, their health could not have been all that great.

On top of that, they were trapped, roughly handled, bandied about, and finally given life imprisonment sentences. The trauma as well as the new diseases that they were exposed to very well could have been sufficient in order to soon have put an end to them. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock. Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Proposed Remedy? Keep Them Out.")

With between two and three million simoleons at its disposal, those cats that remained on San Nicolas were quickly disposed of and by early 2012 the island was declared to be cat-free. Bursting at the seams with glee, the USFWS, the Navy, HSUS, and the Institute for Wildlife Studies (IWS) of Arcata held a party in February of that year in order to celebrate their slaughter of the cats.

"This project is a testament to the commitment of multiple agencies to find common ground and develop solutions for feral cats in areas with threatened or endangered species," Peterson's colleague at the HSUS, Betsy McFarland, earlier had crowed. "The cats from San Nicolas deserve the opportunity to live a full and happy life, and we're proud to provide that at our sanctuary."

She was right about that but most definitely not in the way that she would have the general public to believe. C'est-à-dire, the only thing that ententes between phony-baloney animal protection groups, such as the HSUS, on the one hand and wildlife biologists and ornithologists on the other hand ever have resulted in is more dead cats.

If the HSUS's despicable sellout of those living on San Nicolas were the end of the story that in itself would have been bad enough but that is hardly the case. "This is a great conservation story," the IWS's David K. Gorcelon rejoiced at the soirée mentioned supra."The size and scope of this project set the bar for similar ones."

Translated into shirtsleeve English, that means that it is the intent of Gorcelon, the USFWS, and ornithologists to transform the United States from sea to shining sea into the killing fields of Australia and New Zealand where it is no longer safe for any cat to so much as walk the streets. (See Cat Defender post of November 18, 2016 entitled "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

In spite of this simply horrendous slaughter of totally innocent cats, not a solitary feline protection group has been able to muster the willingness to demand justice for those killed and that is a black mark that is destined to haunt them for as long as they continue to pretend to be looking after the interests of cats. The first step in that process would be the filing of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the USFWS and the Navy.

Such a lawsuit would demand that those two criminal agencies disclose, inter alia, the exact number of cats murdered, the methods of execution employed, the names, addresses, and affiliations of their killers, and the disposition of their remains. A second lawsuit under the act should be directed against the HSUS and demand that it release the exact number of cats and kittens that it removed from the island and what happened to them afterwards.

Although the USFWS's and the Navy's devilry was hatched during the waning days of Bush Bird II's reign, Obama could have intervened at any time and stopped the slaughter but since he chose not to do so that makes him every bit as guilty as the killers themselves and the HSUS. It obviously is way too late to help the cats now but it yet still might be possible to secure a small measure of justice for them.

Above all, they never must be forgotten and all planned future eradications must be thwarted. (See Cat Defender posts of June 27, 2008, July 10, 2008, April 28, 2009, November 20, 2009, and February 24, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island,""The Ventura County Star Races to the Defense of the Cat-Killers on San Nicolas Island,""Quislings at the Humane Society Sell Out San Nicolas's Cats to the Assassins at the Diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service,""Memo to the Humane Society: Tell the World Exactly How Many Cats You and Your Honeys at the USFWS Have Murdered on San Nicolas Island," and "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

2.) The USFWS Had a Field Day Stealing and Killing Cats in the Florida Keys.

Anne Morkill and Ken Salazar Plot to Kill Cats in the Florida Keys

Obama Bird kept the USFWS as busy as a bee during his tenure by not only approving the atrocities that it committed against cats on San Nicolas but also by allowing it to continue to commit its horrendous crimes against those residing in the Florida Keys. Accurate statistics are almost as rare as hens' teeth, but it is estimated that over the course of the past dozen or so years that the USFWS in conjunction with the USDA's Wildlife Services have trapped and killed thousands of cats in the Keys.

In addition to those that the feds have killed, just about all of the remainder that they dump at shelters also are immediately killed. "Rarely has anyone wanted to adopt a feral cat," Connie Christian of the Florida Keys SPCA in Key West admitted in 2011.

In addition to all the homeless cats that the USFWS and shelters kill, innumerable domestic cats also get caught up in their webs of intrigue and as a result suffer the same cruel and unjust fate. Contrary to what many of those involved in these eradications claim, it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between homeless and domesticated cats.

Plus, collars can easily come off and get lost and microchips are sometimes both difficult to locate as well as to decipher. An appalling lack of information concerning those that have been confiscated additionally prevents many owners from locating and reclaiming them. Time also is of the essence in that most shelters in the area only hold cats for seven days or less.

As best it could be determined, the USFWS's most recent killing sprees have been primarily concentrated in the National Key Deer Refuge and the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge, both located on Big Pine Key, the Key West National Wildlife Refuge, and Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in North Key Largo. Earlier in 2005 and 2006, however, at least twenty cats were trapped, removed, and presumably killed at the United States Naval Air Station of Boca Chica.

In support of these exterminations, the United States Congress is known to have appropriated $50,000 in 2006 and another $50,000 in 2011. Given the scale and duration of the USFWS's atrocities in the Keys, it undoubtedly has received further appropriations either from Congress or other unidentified sources.

As was the case with its carnage on San Nicolas and elsewhere, the USFWS is relying upon a pack of blatant lies and a massive propaganda outreach initiative in order to sell its diabolical crimes to a skeptical public. "The plan is based on a deeply flawed interpretation of TNR research, and several studies were omitted," Becky Robinson of Alley Cat Allies of Bethesda, Maryland, complained in 2011. "Similar plans by the agency have already killed feral, stray and pet cats with no benefit whatsoever."

None of that deterred Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar from making a much publicized visit to the Keys in early 2011 where he held at tête-à-tête with the USFWS's Anne Morkill in order to put the finishing touches on their cat stealing and killing strategies. "Due to extensive habitat loss from human development, these species (rabbits and rats) have declined to such low numbers that management intervention is necessary to ensure their survival," she blowed long and hard to The Keynoter of Marathon on December 29, 2010. (See "Keys Refuges to Target Animal Predators.")"Secondary impacts from development include the introduction of non-native predators. While we can't turn back the clock to return the Keys to its once pristine condition, we can take action now to control current threats from cats and other exotic animals."

First of all, that is a blatant admission on her part that cats once again have been made the scapegoats for a million and one offenses committed by their human counterparts. It additionally is a public acknowledgement that the feds in general and the USFWS in particular are little more than a gang of thugs and bullies who go after innocent animals with malice aforethought while simultaneously being too cowardly to even take on those guilty individuals, groups, and interests that are capable of defending themselves.

Secondly, it is quite a hoot to hear a fat-ass, honky-donkey such as Morkill label cats as "non-native predators" and as "exotic" animals. Au contraire, it is precisely her and her fellow wildlife biologists and ornithologists who are the poster boys and girls for exotic and non-native predators. Furthermore, any individual or group that is willing to spout such balderdash should be willing to lead by example and accordingly take the very next boat back to Italy, England, or wherever their ancestors came from and in doing so return the New World to its rightful owners, i.e., the Native Americans.

Individuals and organizations of Morkill's and t he USFWS's ilk love to bandy about such nonsensical terms as if they were privy to some stupendous insight that somehow has miraculously eluded the remainder of mankind, but rather than establishing their intellectual and moral superiority all that such reductiones ad absurdum succeed in accomplishing is to demonstrate writ large their abject dishonesty and ruthlessness.

Such ratiocinating also is getting to be rather old and tedious in much the same vein that inspired Bob Dylan to pen the following lyrics to his 1965 song, "Positively Fourth Street:"

"Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
"To see you."

While she had the wind up, old bigmouthed Morkill cavalierly belittled the legitimate concerns expressed by Robinson and other cat advocates. "...some people believe any animal has a right to live," she sneered down her long, dirty schnoz to the Miami Herald on January 2, 2011. (See "Feds Hope to Rid Keys' Refuges of Exotic Predators, Including Cats.")

If the USFWS, Wildlife Services, and their cohorts were confining their stealing and killing of cats to federal lands that would be bad enough in its own right, but they have appropriated for themselves the right to do likewise on state and municipal properties as well. For example, they have decreed that TNR feeding stations must be removed from all public areas that are either adjacent or near refuge lands.

Secondly, they have been pressuring local municipalities to erect not only anti-roaming statutes but to require the mandatory microchipping and tagging of all cats. Most egregiously of all, they have been venturing into purely residential neighborhoods where they have illegally trapped, stolen and, in all likelihood, even killed an unspecified number of domestic cats.

When the USFWS illegally trapped a brown and white cat named Rocky back in 2014 it finally got its long overdue comeuppance. That is because he is owned by world famous scuba diver Captain Spencer Slate who resides on Loquat Drive in the Garden Cove section of North Key Largo.

The first inkling that he had of what was afoot came when a representative of the USFWS showed up on his doorstep in order to issue him a US$75 citation for allowing Rocky to stray into nearby Crocodile Lake. Slate also was warned that if it happened again he would be arrested and locked up in jail. To make matters even worse, the thief did not even have the common decency to return Rocky to him and that necessitated in Slate being forced to drive twenty-four kilometers to a shelter in order to reclaim him.

It has not been disclosed how much that it cost Slate to ransom him off of death row but it is exceedingly unlikely that the shelter issued Rocky a get out of jail for free card. Plus, his face had been badly injured and bloodied by the trapping and that doubtlessly required veterinary intervention which Slate had to pay for out of his own pocket.

Proving that he is one cat owner who is not about to be cowed by an out of control gaggle of criminal bureaucrats, Slate refused to pay the fine and the case ultimately was dismissed by a federal district court judge sitting in Key West. "Simply, when I presented the truth and facts, it was easy to see who was telling the truth," he afterwards confided to the Keys News of Key West on June 18, 2014. (See "Cat Owner Avoids Fine in Trapping Case.")

In Rocky's case, he was trapped within fifty feet of Slate's house. "Just because cats are fed outside doesn't mean they're feral," he told The Keynoter on November 12, 2014. (See "Feds Defend Cat-Trapping Policy.")

It is rather difficult to keep abreast of the rapidly unfolding events in the Keys, but hopefully Slate will file a civil lawsuit for damages against the USFWS for what its goons did to Rocky. Whether he does so or not, he is not about to either be intimidated or to back down. "The murder of our beloved pets must be stopped," he declared to The Keynoter.

Even in death, the USFWS's victims are denied any peace in that as soon as they depart this vale of tears their remains are cut up so that their stomachs can be inventoried. The data gleaned from these post-mortem mutilations are in turn used in order that the USFWS's highly-paid, with welfare dollars no less, propagandists can churn out broadsheets designed to justify not only their cruel liquidations but that of countless cats to come as well. (See Cat Defender posts of May 24, 2007 and June 23, 2011 entitled, respectively, "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA's Wildlife Services Commence Trapping and Killing Cats on Florida's Big Pine Key" and "Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys.")

3.) APHIS Won a Major Victory over Ernest Hemingway's Polydactyls.

Patches Has a Go at Hemingway's machine à écrire portative

The Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a division of the USDA, is charged under the weak-as-water Animal Welfare Act (AWA) of 1966 with regulating, inter alia, animal research laboratories, zoos, and circuses. If it ever were to take that mandate even so much as halfway seriously it would have more than enough on its plate in order to keep itself busy, but like all power-hungry governmental agencies it is always on the prowl for new opportunities to expand its dominions and in the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West it finally found a victim to its liking.

The trouble all began in 2003 when Michael Morawski, owner of the museum, mindlessly hired Debbie Schultz, formerly of the Florida Keys SPCA in Key West, to sterilize some of the forty to fifty polydactyls who reside at Hemingway's stately old mansion. She in turn did such a bang-up job that she nearly succeeded in putting an end to a line of cats whose lineage is believed to go all the way back to 1935.

Once he fully realized the extent of the damage that she was doing, Morawski fired her and she retaliated by ratting out the museum to APHIS which responded by dispatching agents to Key West in order to spy on and videotape the cats' activities. About all that they uncovered were cats leaving the compound in order to roam and one of them, Toby, actually being run down and killed by a motorist.

Nevertheless, that was more than sufficient, however, for the agency to demand that the museum either raise the six-foot retaining wall that surrounds the compound or to string an electrified wire across the top of it. It also demanded that the museum either cage or confine the cats as well as to hire a nightwatchman.

Although the museum did spend US$15,000 on a sprinkler system as well as to install a net across the top of the wall, it refused to cage the cats. APHIS responded by refusing to issue it an exhibitor's license and immediately began to fine it US$200 a day for failing to knuckle under to its demands. The exhibitor's license was required because the agency earlier had decreed that the museum was exhibiting cats within the meaning of the AWA.

"They're (APHIS) comparing Hemingway House to a circus or a zoo because there are cats on the premises," the museum's attorney, Cara Higgins, responded in 2006. "This is not a circus. These cats have been here forever."

With the battle lines now drawn, what ensued was nine years of multiple federal court rulings, a hearing before an administrative judge, and an examination of the cats by Dr. Terry Marie Curtis, a cat behaviorist from the University of Florida in Gainesville. As if all of that were not enough for the museum to contend with, the cats and their caretakers were forced to live with the constant threat of even worse punitive action that could have come down upon their heads at almost any moment.

"There's always a possibility of confiscation," APHIS' Darby Halladay told USA Today on December 26, 2006. (See "The Plot Thickens for Hemingway Cats.")"The likelihood of that occurring, I can't state. But that is a remedy."

The issue finally came to a head on December 7, 2012 when a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta ruled unanimously in favor of, not surprisingly, the government in a case entitled 907 Whitehead Street doing business as the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum versus the United States Department of Agriculture, Chester A. Gipson, Deputy Administrator of the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service. The case turned on how such nebulous terms as "exhibitor" and "distribution" contained in the AWA were to be interpreted and how that they in turn affected interstate commerce.

For its part the museum steadfastly maintained that it was not exhibiting cats and since they are not transported across state lines it most definitely was not involved in interstate commerce. It also argued that the AWA does not authorize federal preemption of a field already regulated by local and state animal protection groups.

One-by-one Chief Judge Joel Frederick Dubina rejected all of the museum's contentions. "The statute is ambiguous on the question of whether 'distribution' includes the display of animals by a fixed-site commercial enterprise," he did concede. "And, given Congress's intent to regulate zoos, which are notably stationary and which could potentially exhibit animals that are neither purchased nor transported in commerce, we cannot see how the Secretary's (of the USDA) interpretation of "exhibitor" is unreasonable."

From there Dubina went on to conclude that the museum was "substantially" involved in interstate commerce because the cats are prominently featured in its advertising materials and that it charges admission to its premises. If Dubina had had the bon sens to have stopped there that would have been god-awful enough but he could not resist the temptation to lay it on even thicker.

"Not withholding our decision, we appreciate the museum's somewhat unique situation, and we sympathize with its frustrations," he gassed. "Nevertheless, it is not the Court's role to evaluate the wisdom of federal regulations implemented according to the powers constitutionally vested in Congress."

Therein lies the rub, however, in that the authors of the AWA and those members of Congress who voted it into law never in their wildest dreams ever imagined that one day it would be used by the feds as a legal pretext for them to invade the homes of cats and to regulate the minute details of their everyday lives. Therefore, Dubina's tour de force was strictly a case of judge-made law.

The ruling, quite understandably, left Morawski apoplectic. "I'm still dumbfounded. This is overreach by the federal government," he later said. "We are a local business. Our goods don't go outside of Key West. So how could we be involved in interstate commerce?"

A year earlier on August 12, 2011, Dubina and his colleagues on the bench were not nearly so deferential to congressional intent when they struck down as unconstitutional the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in a case entitled State of Florida et al. versus United States Department of Health and Human Services. Taken together, the import of the two rulings is that although Congress cannot force individuals to purchase health insurance, it can regulate the minute care and activities of their cats. So, in the final tally, Obama and his minions won one case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and lost one.

In practical terms, the ruling meant that the museum was forced into purchasing an exhibitor's license and that its cats had to be tagged and individually confined each night in cages with elevated resting areas. It also was forced into hiring a nightwatchman as well as securing the perimeter fence.

"We (the museum and its cats) are now at the whim of the agency (APHIS). It's silliness; it just got insane," Higgins exclaimed in the wake of her humiliating defeat in court. "This is what your tax dollars are paying for. The agents (of APHIS) are coming down here on vacation, going to bars and taking pictures of cats."

On a much broader level, the feds now have a legal mandate to abuse, confiscate, and even possibly kill cats that reside in businesses and, possibly, private homes. Of particular concern are bloggers, authors, veterinarians, breeders, groomers, street performers, libraries, and all other individuals, businesses, and entities that have any dealings with cats while simultaneously taking in any kind of monetary compensation for their activities.

Fortunately, this ruling applies only to the states of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama which make up the Eleventh Judicial Circuit. Should the museum appeal this outrageous verdict to the United States Supreme Court in Washington and lose it then would be the law of the land and apply everywhere.

Having already spent in excess of US$200,000 in order to bring the museum into compliance with APHIS's demands plus another US$600,000 in legal fees, the museum at last word had not expressed any appetite for additional legal wranglings but instead was looking into pursuing a legislative remedy. Finally, although Obama was not the president who instigated this insane attack upon Hemingway's polydactyls, he could have put an end to it at any time by reigning in APHIS but since he chose not to do so he is every bit as much to blame for its actions as the agency itself. (See Cat Defender posts of August 3, 2006, January 9, 2007, July 23, 2007, January 24, 2013, and June 2, 2017 entitled, respectively, "The USDA Fines Hemingway Memorial in Key West $200 a Day for Exhibiting Papa's Polydactyl Cats Without a License,""Papa Hemingway's Polydactyl Cats Face New Threats from Both the USDA and Their Caretakers,""Cat Behaviorist Is Summoned to Key West in Order to Help Determine the Fate of Hemingway's Polydactyls,""The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West," and "Martha Gellhorn Is Locked Up for Ten Days after Biting a Tourist in the Latest Calamity to Befall Ernest Hemingway's Star-Crossed Polydactyls.")

4.) The Smithsonian Institution Got Away with Attempting to Poison a TNR Colony.

Nico Dauphiné

On May 11, 2011, agents of the Washington Humane Society (WHS) caught Nico Dauphiné, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Zoo's Migratory Bird Center, putting antifreeze and rat poison in the food dishes of cats belonging to a TNR colony in Washington's Meridian Park. Her arrest came after poison first had been found in the cats' food dishes in March but it inexplicably never has been publicly acknowledged how many cats that she may have killed.

There never was any doubt about her guilt because she had been captured on video surveillance cameras putting out the poison. Nevertheless, she steadfastly refused to resign and the zoo stood firmly behind her all the way to the bitter end of the road.

"We know what she's doing would in no way jeopardize our animal collection at the National Zoo or jeopardize wildlife, so we feel perfectly comfortable that she continue her research," the zoo's Pamela Baker-Masson said in the aftermath of Dauphiné's arrest. C'est-à-dire, the Smithsonian Institution, of which the zoo is an integral part, fully supported her poisoning of the cats.

The WHS's Scott Giacoppo so not so easily convinced, however. "If she did this, then we naturally would be concerned about her being around all animals. Whoever would do such a thing is a threat to animals," he declared. "It's (poisoning) a slow and painful death. It was callous and complete disregard for animals' well-being."

On October 31st, she was convicted in a bench trial presided over by Judge Truman A. Morrison III of the District of Columbia Superior Court. That turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for cat-lovers, however, because on December 14th he sentenced her to a measly US$100 fine, which is about what a parking ticket costs nowadays in the nation's capital.

Even in meting out that very polite tap on the wrists Morrison was far more concerned about jeopardizing her budding career as a cat killer than he was with either dispensing justice or protecting the lives of innocent cats. "This is a serious offense, more serious than many misdemeanors," he mindlessly gassed before demonstrating writ large his true sentiments. "Her career is now in grave jeopardy and will never be what it was before she was prosecuted and convicted."

In making such an asinine proclamation Morrison quite obviously was lamely attempting to put a pretty face on a simply outrageous miscarriage of justice. First of all, no one even remotely connected to the Smithsonian ever uttered so much as a contrary word against Dauphiné.

Secondly, not a solitary ornithologist or wildlife biologist ever condemned her criminal behavior. Au contraire, they wrote letters to Morrison proclaiming to the high heavens her total innocence and likely also donated money for her defense. The bulk of the enormous legal tab that she ran up at two high-powered law firms, however, most likely was footed by the taxpayers.

She has been keeping a low profile since her conviction but it would be a shock if she had not returned to either academia or an institution similar to the Smithsonian. She is, after all, a hero to ornithologists and wildlife biologists and birds of a feather normally flock together.

The capitalist media and just about everyone else soon forgot all about this cause cèlébre and that was a huge mistake because its dénouement left unanswered a slew of issues concerning how that the Smithsonian treats cats. In particular, at the National Zoo Dauphiné was fitting domestic felines with video cameras in order to record their interactions with birds and other wildlife.

It never was explained, however, where that the National Zoo gets the cats that it turns into guinea pigs, how that it treats them and, most importantly of all, what happens to them once Dauphiné and her cronies have sucked all the blood that they can out of them. The most probable answer to the first question is that they are supplied by the same firms that peddle cats to vivisectors.

As far as their treatment is concerned, Dauphiné and her colleagues most likely horribly abuse them and may even starve them so that when they are turned loose they are eager to hunt and thereby unwittingly supply their gaolers with enough data in order to hang the entire species. It therefore goes almost without saying that it is highly unlikely that any cat ever has escaped from the Smithsonian alive because any institution that would poison them in the street is not about to spare any of them that it already has securely locked up in a cage.

Besides, Dauphiné is an old hand when it comes to killing cats. For instance, while she was studying at the University of Georgia in Athens she trapped dozens, if not indeed hundreds, of cats that she in turn gave to shelters in order to kill. Furthermore, it is a good bet that she was poisoning cats there just as she was doing in Washington.

"Wild animals are just as important as companion animals," Giacoppo declared. "This case shows that whether or not an animal is in someone's lap or in the alley, they are entitled to the same protections."

Regrettably, his highfalutin rhetoric has not been matched by any corresponding action. In particular, the WHS has adamantly refused to investigate how that the zoo treats not only cats but the other two-thousand animals that it has unjustly incarcerated not only in Washington but Front Royal, Virginia, as well.

In recent years, for example, its head veterinarian has been accused of falsifying records and it is known that, inter alia, a red panda died after it accidentally ingested rat poison, a red fox killed a bald eagle, a three-year-old Sulawesi macaque named Ripley was killed by an hydraulic door, and as Asian elephant named Toni was intentionally killed off. Moreover, zoos all over the world are notorious for promoting inbreeding as well as trafficking in their so-called surplus species.

Those that are aged, sickly, and simply of no longer any monetary value to them are either publicly dissected or systematically killed off and the National Zoo is most assuredly guilty of those and other offenses as well. (See the Ottawa Citizen, February 20, 2014, "Killing of Marius the Giraffe at Danish Zoo Too Much to Stomach," The Independent of London, February 27, 2014, "Zoos in Europe 'Kill Five-Thousand Healthy Animals a Year'," the BBC, March 25, 2014, "Danish Zoo That Culled Giraffe Kills Family of Lions," and the Daily Mail, October 15, 2015, "Children Gasp in Shock (and Hold Their Noses) as Lion's Intestines Are Removed During Controversial Public Dissection at Danish Zoo.")

Dauphiné's boss at the Migratory Bird Center was Peter P. Marra and last year his comrades-in-arms at Princeton University published his scurrilous new tome,Cat War: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer. In that long-winded piece of unabashed drivel and outright lies, he argues that all cats that venture outdoors should be killed by "any means necessary" and that in turn makes it all but conclusive that he not only was aware of Dauphiné's nefarious activities but approved of them as well. (See WABE, 90.11 FM of Atlanta, September 29, 2016, "Stakes Grow Higher in Cat-Bird Wars.")

This egomaniac even had the unmitigated gall to go on a book tour, financed by the taxpayers no doubt, to England last year but he did not receive the kind of welcome that he had anticipated. "To pick on cats for killing birds is speciesism and elitism, a very dangerous cocktail indeed," Liz Jones warned in the Daily Mail on September 24th. (See "It's Not Just Cats That Should Be Culled -- It's Ignorant Men.")"Dr. Marra sounds about as intelligent as the designer Michael Kors who, when I asked how he could countenance using fur in his designs, told me he had just been on safari and seen big cats killing prey. He couldn't differentiate between humans causing immense suffering in the name of vanity and a wild animal feeding her family..."

Cat activist Celia Hammond was even blunter. "Go away, Dr. Marra," she told the Daily Mail."Cats bring pleasure to the majority of people in this country. We are not interested in your ailurophobic views."

It is just too bad that there are not any individuals or groups in the United States with the guts to tell Marra and the Smithsonian, the American Bird Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, and the feds the same thing. It certainly is long overdue.

In addition to Marra, the Smithsonian's department of agit-prop boasts the services of Abigail Tucker who likes to pass herself off as somewhat of a savant when it comes to cats. Even so much as a cursory glance at her unctuous scribblings, however, reveals her to be nothing more than an outrageous liar who, like Marra, has absolutely no use whatsoever for the truth.

"Ten-thousand years after their ancestors invaded our Fertile Crescent settlements, house cats -- trailing our armies and sailing on our ships -- have spread like dandelion fluff," she bellowed in defense of the woodrats in the Florida Keys in an article written for the Smithsonian Magazine in October of 2016. (See "To Save the Woodrat, Conservationists Have to Deal with an Invasive Species First: House Cats.")

First of all, according to most archaeologists cats are indigenous to the Middle East and surrounding areas. Consequently, Old Thingumajig Tucker cannot have it both ways; that is, she cannot claims that they are an invasive species everywhere.

Secondly, the Fertile Crescent never has belonged to her, the Smithsonian, or Americans. Thirdly, it is utterly preposterous for her to claim that cats voluntarily vacated their homelands in order to dutifully follow their imperialistic and capitalistic exploiters. On the contrary, they were forcibly uprooted from their homes and forcibly transported to the far corners of the globe.

They accordingly are the victims of militaristic and economic imperialism and Tucker, who looks like something that has been squeezed out of a tube of hemorrhoidal ointment and then pissed on by a mule, can lie her ugly little face off until the cows come home but it is not going to change that incontrovertible fact. The Australians, New Zealanders, and the South Africans long have gotten away with their despicable crimes against cats by spouting such rubbish but it is not about to pass intellectual muster in this country.

Fourthly, Tucker claims that cats are so fertile that just a pair of them is capable of producing three-hundred-fifty-four-thousand-two-hundred-ninety-four descendants within the short span of five years. That is another of her outrageous lies that has been around for seemingly forever.

For instance, the Math Department at the University of Washington in Seattle puts that number at closer to between one-hundred and four-hundred over a seven-year period. (See The Feral Cat Times, February of 2006, "How Many Kittens in Seven Years?")

That number would be higher if it were not for birds of prey, wildlife, ornithologists, and wildlife biologists killing them. Fifthly, while she busily was laying on the lies with a trowel Old Talkative Tucker endorsed the Smithsonian's widely discredited 2013 study that ludicrously claimed that American cats kill between two and four billion birds as well as between seven and twenty-one billion mammals each year.

Sixthly, this self-professed authority on cats ludicrously claims that even tiny kittens are mega predators. "Even kittens know how to kill. Diligent feline mothers teach kittens to hunt starting at just a few weeks of age by bringing them live prey, if it's available," she wrote in the Smithsonian Magazine article cited supra."But if no mother is around, kittens still figure out how to stalk and pounce."

Rarely has such a load of absolute crap ever been passed off as the unvarnished truth! To begin with, kittens do not even open their eyes until they are at least ten days old and it is several weeks later until they are able to use their legs. More to the point, they do not start to acquire teeth until they are around two months old and even then they do not get all thirty of their adult teeth until they reach the age of six months or so. They accordingly are unable to eat anything of substance, let alone meat, even if their mothers were to be foolish enough to present it to them.

Cats therefore rely upon their mothers' milk in order to survive for the first eight to twelve weeks of their lives. Moreover, some cats do not wean their kittens until a full twelve months after they were born. Once their mothers wean them however, they transfer that dependence to their human caretakers; no hunting is involved. If their mothers should be either trapped or killed by the likes of Tucker and her colleagues at the Smithsonian, they do not magically learn "how to stalk and pounce" but rather they die of starvation usually within forty-eight hours.

Furthermore, mother cats, whether in the wild or in a domestic setting, do not teach their kittens how to hunt; rather, that skill is innate. To be more precise, it is not so much a hunting skill as it is a love of chasing things that move. On the other hand, if what Tucker and others claims were true cats certainly would possess more intelligence than to waste time and energy chasing strings and the light emitted by lasers and other objects.

It strains credulity that someone who claims to have graduated summa cum laude from Harvard could possibly be as bloody stupid as Tucker lets on to be and that in turn leads to the alternative conclusion that she is rather an outrageous liar. On the other hand, since reportedly ninety-four per cent of the students at her old Bean Town degree mill are rewarded with A's by their professors, it is entirely possible that almost any halfwit on campus would be recognized as a genius. Au royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont roi.

Finally, there cannot be any doubt that Obama not only was aware of the Smithsonian's crimes against cats but approved of them as well. For instance, Morrell John Berry not only worked at the Smithsonian during the 1990's but returned as director of the National Zoo from 2005 to 2009.

Obama later appointed him as United States ambassador to Australia in 2013 and he served in that capacity through 2016. While doing so, he not only wholeheartedly endorsed Greg Hunt's mass eradication of cats but praised his "leadership position" on wildlife preservation. (See Town Hall of Salem Communications, August 17, 2015, "Environmentalists Kill Millions of Cats and Birds" plus Cat Defender post of November 18, 2016 entitled "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

Berry most recently parlayed that experience into getting himself appointed as president of the American Australian Association in New York. Proving that he is man for all seasons, he joined Donald John Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull May 4th aboard the USS Intrepid, a museum ship moored in the Hudson River, in order to commemorate the 1942 Battle of Coral Sea.

In human affairs, it is seldom the crème de la crème that rises to the top but rather the flotsam and jetsam of the human race. (See the New York Post, May 4, 2017, "Teens Who Joined Forces Seventy-Five Years Ago Reunite in New York for Salute by Prez and PM.")

Finally, the Smithsonian receives around a billion dollars each year from the taxpayers and part of that goes toward abusing, killing, and defaming cats. That, along with its huge appropriations for operating two zoos, desperately needs to be eliminated. In May of this year, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus finally went out of business and it accordingly is long overdue for Congress to get out of the business of operating zoos.

If the institution wishes to engage in such criminal activities it should be willing to finance them out of its own pockets. Even more importantly, if the WHS had any backbone it would hold it accountable under the anti-cruelty statutes. (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2011, November 18, 2011, and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals,""Nico Dauphiné, Ph.D., Is Convicted of Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats but Questions Remain Concerning the Smithsonian's Role" and Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

5.) The National Park Service Cruelly Evicted Thirty-Three Cats from Plum Beach.

The NPS' Eviction Notice

Of all the dirty, spiteful, and underhanded deeds that Obama and his fellow criminals committed against cats none perhaps was more repulsive than the National Park Service's (NPS) cruel eviction of a TNR colony from Plum Beach, Brooklyn, in June of 2014. The eviction was served June 8th in the form of signs posted at the entrance to the area.

The NPS gave the cats' caretakers five days in order to remove their feeding stations and winterized shelters and if that was not done it vowed to steal them. Likewise, if the cats were not removed it pledged to trap and dump them at a shelter.

"At this point, our plans are to take those structures down and try to round up the cats and take them to a city shelter," the agency's Daphne Yun threatened in no uncertain terms. Quite obviously, neither she nor anyone else connected to the NPS has any use whatsoever for the just compensation clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution which explicitly bars the federal government from seizing private property without first obtaining a legal mandate from the courts and even then only after paying the injured party just compensation.

Far more importantly, if the cats had wound up at a shelter they almost certainly would have been killed. "They (the cats) get five days before they put them down," Nancy Rogers of K9 Kastle of Brooklyn, which cared for them, pointed out the obvious.

In defense of its outrageous edict, the NPS trotted out the old familiar and time-worn litany of lies that have become the bread and butter of seemingly all ornithologists and wildlife biologists. First of all, it claimed that they were a threat to shorebirds, small mammals, and reptiles. Secondly, it claimed that they are an invasive species. Thirdly, it alleged that their presence on all federal lands is illegal.

"For a national park to have any exotic species that could pose a threat to native wildlife is a direct conflict with national law," the NPS' Doug Adamo bellowed. "It is conservatively estimated that one billion birds (are) killed by domestic cats in the United States alone."

While it is true that as a part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, Plum Beach falls within the NPS' legal mandate to govern fifty-nine parks as well as three-hundred-forty-two national monuments, conservation areas, and historical sites, Congress never has explicitly declared cats to be either an invasive species or to have ordered their ouster from all public lands. The decision to remove those living in Plum Beach therefore was made by the NPS and Obama without so much as a scintilla of legal authority.

The timing of the cats' ouster also is peculiar in that they had been living in Plum Beach for eleven years. Although the NPS ludicrously claimed that it only recently had learned of their presence, it quite obviously was either lying or blind. For instance, the United States Army Corps of Engineers certainly was not only well aware of their presence but made sure that their caretakers had access to parts of Plum Beach that had been fenced off while it was rebuilding areas of it that had been damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The volunteers fed and watered the cats every day, provided them with shelters, and Carolyn Euvine even spent US$30,00 of her own money in order to have them sterilized. Every bit as importantly, there never had been any complaints from residents concerning their presence.

"These cats have been here for years," Rogers summed up. "They bother no one."

They additionally performed a valuable public service free of charge. "Do you know there's a rat problem in New York City?" Janelle Barabash of Midwood asked rhetorically. "(Do) you know where there's not a rat problem? Plum Beach."

Merely attending to their everyday needs proved to be beneficial for some of their dedicated caretakers. "It's like therapy for me -- I was in Vietman," Joe Destefan of Bay Ridge testified. "I still go to group (therapy), but this helps a lot."

Rogers and K9 Kastle did what they could in order to defend the cats but in the end they proved not to be much of a match for an enemy as well financed, armed and, above all, thoroughly ruthless and unscrupulous as the NPS. "We all came down to the reality that no matter how much we fought, these cats are not going to be able to stay where they are," she concluded.

It therefore became crystal clear to her that if the cats were to go on living they had to be relocated elsewhere but even that was impossible under the tight deadline set by NPS. "It took a year and a half to trap and spay or neuter the population," she protested. "I don't know how Doug (Adamo) thinks we'll do this in eight (sic) days."

Like an old miser counting his precious pennies, Adamo at first decided to extend the eviction mandate until June 20th. When that proved not to be insufficient, he grudgingly advanced his eviction timetable until June 30th.

Even with the extra time allotted them, the enormity of the task that confronted Rogers and her helpers cannot in any way be underestimated. First of all, each of the cats had to be trapped and then temporarily warehoused in Rogers' garage.

Some way and somehow she was fortunate enough to locate a farm "south of the city" that was willing to accept the cats provided that they were up-to-date on their vaccinations and that necessitated a trip to a local veterinarian for all of them. Finally, they had to be driven to their new home.

The entire exercise was expected to have cost K9 Kastle US$3,000 but the charity was able to raise US$2,535 of that amount via an online appeal. It is not known for certain, but more than likely it is still on the hook for the cost of the cats' continued care in their new home.

Hopefully, Rogers was able to remove all thirty-three of the cats but press reports at the time could only confirm that twenty of them had been successfully trapped and spirited to safety. Needless to say, any that were left behind were promptly killed by the NPS and that also is destined to be the fate of any newcomers that are dumped there in the future by their equally unconscionable owners.

Absolutely nothing has been disclosed about how that the cats are getting on at their new home but every day that they persevere serves as a rather poignant repudiation of the NPS and its cat-killing agenda. In that same vein, not enough can be said about the herculean job that Rogers and her colleagues did in getting them out of Plum Beach alive.

Finally, the cavalier fashion with which the NPS treated the cats and their caretakers stands in stark juxtaposition to how that it and its sister agency within the Interior Department, the Bureau of Land Management, dealt with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy in April of that same year. Most memorably, when agents from both services showed up in order to seize his cows in settlement of the millions of dollars that he owed them in unpaid grazing fees dating back to the 1990's, they quickly turned tail and ran like scalded hounds when he and his militiamen drew down on them.

By 2016, however, the feds had regained some of their nerve as they amply demonstrated by training their dogs, rubber bullets, and water cannons on members of the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters who were protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. It accordingly can be safely concluded that the feds are not only inveterate liars and criminals but rank cowards as well.

That is to say, those animals and individuals that are unable to defend themselves and their interests, such as cats, their owners, and Native Americans, are fair game for almost any form of abuse and tyranny whereas armed criminals and well-heeled crooks, such as Bundy and the Wall Street crowd, are given a wide berth by the feds. (See Cat Defender post of August 7, 2014 entitled "The National Park Service Racks Up a Major Victory by Expelling the Plum Beach Cats but It Is Thwarted in Its Burning Desire to Dance a Merry Little Jig on Their Graves.")

6.) Wildlife Services Killed Thousands of Cats in 2016.

A Rare White Wolf with a Radio Collar

Few individuals ever have so much as heard of it but nonetheless the USDA's Wildlife Services is the nation's designated death squad in that it annually exterminates between two and five million animals. In fulfillment of its congressional mandate, it has appropriated for its use seemingly every hideous method of killing imaginable.

For example, it guns down animals not only on the ground but also from airplanes and helicopters. Both leghold and body-gripper traps are integral parts of its arsenal of death. So, too are poisons such as sodium monofluoroacetate (1080), drowning, asphyxiation, and starvation. It even has spring-loaded, sweet-smelling M-44 cyanide land mines at its disposal.

The principal beneficiaries of the agency's professional killers are farmers, ranchers, airports, golf course operators, and municipal, county, and state authorities. At times when it is not busy doing the bidding of the capitalists it lends its expertise to ornithologists and wildlife biologists aligned with the USFWS in order to extirpate cats and other species that it either does not like or can get away with killing. (See Cat Defender post of September 14, 2005 entitled "The USDA's Wildlife Services Exterminates Millions of Animals Each Year at the Behest of Capitalists.")

In 2016, for instance, it exterminated two-million-seven-hundred-thousand animals including one-million-six-hundred-thousand native species. That in itself puts the lie to feds' often repeated mantra that they only kill exotic species and dearly cherish those that are native. If the truth dare to be told, they will kill any most animal.

The data supplied by the agency are believed to be not only gross underestimates but they are difficult to decipher as well. For instance, in its Program Data Report for G-2016, Wildlife Services admits to killing five-hundred-sixty-six cats. It also claims to have trapped and freed six-hundred-eighty others but the report neglects to define what that entailed. In particular, "freed" could mean only that they were turned over to shelters to be killed.

It likewise claims to have dispersed four-hundred-sixty-seven more but, once again, the agency fails to disclose what it means by that. More importantly, it does not disclose where that they were relocated.

Considering just how ingrained hatred of cats is within the entire federal bureaucracy, it is difficult to believe that Wildlife Services ever would spare the life of any cat that it had successfully trapped. Taken altogether, the agency in all probability killed in excess of seventeen-hundred cats last year.

It additionally admits to killing nine-hundred-ninety-seven bobcats, trapping and releasing twenty-four as well as dispersing nine others. It also mowed down three-hundred-thirty-four cougars.

Other than cats, Wildlife Services killed four-hundred-fifteen wolves. It also liquidated seventy-six-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty-three coyotes, four-hundred-seven black bears, twenty-one-thousand-one-hundred-eighty-four beavers, three-thousand-seven-hundred-ninety-one foxes, and fourteen-thousand-six-hundred-fifty-four prairie dogs.

Ever since Chesley Sullenberger ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River back in 2009 it has been open season on Canadian geese and that deadly and utterly barbaric trend continued during 2016. Specifically, Wildlife Services rounded up and gassed twenty-two-thousand-three-hundred, eighty-eight of these majestic birds. It also trapped and freed two-thousand-five-hundred-eighteen more of them as well as having dispersed an astounding five-hundred-seven-thousand-fifty-four additional members of the species.

Pigs also were on the receiving end of the agency's unquenchable thirst for innocent blood in that it killed fifty-six-thousand-eight-hundred-fifty-five of these highly intelligent animals. Three-hundred-fourteen of them were trapped and freed while an additional eighty-nine were dispersed.

Once again, Obama either could have directed the service to have ceased with these senseless slaughters or simply stripped it of its funding but he, typically, sat idly by and did absolutely nothing. He also could have leaned heavily on the states, which also have their own animal killers, to have put away their guns and poisons as well as to have outlawed all recreational hunting.

7.) The United States Military Continued to Kill Thousands of Cats Each Year.

A Young Boy Attempts to Save His Animals from the Fighting in Mosul

"...the cruelest, most terrible, most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed," is how former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez described the United States a few years before his untimely death. By even saying that much he grossly understated the case in that he failed to take into consideration the simply abominable crimes that Americans inflict upon cats, other animals, and Mother Earth.

As everyone already knows, the United States is currently engaged in armed conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia but that is far from being the complete story. In particular, it is believed to have Special Operations Forces, primarily Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, on the ground in another one-hundred-twenty-eight countries. (See The Nation, September 24, 2015, "How Many Wars Is the United States Really Fighting?"

The greatest damage is done, however, by the bombs and missiles that the Air Force and Navy indiscriminately and criminally drop on the heads of civilians, such as those recently killed in Mosul, groups such as Medicins sans frontiére, and umpteen scores of cats and other animals. Given that human lives count for absolutely nothing as far as the bloodthirsty American imperialists are concerned, it is almost superfluous to point out that the lives of cats and other animals count for even less than that; instead, all of them are lumped under the rubric of collateral damage and then conveniently assigned to the dust bin of history.

Even far removed from the combat theatres, the lives of just about all cats are not worth so much as a plugged nickel. At the more than six-thousand military bases at home as well as the more than eight-hundred of them that operate on foreign soil, cats are routinely trapped and killed and it makes little difference whether they have been cruelly abandoned by military personnel, wander in on their own, or are dumped outside the gates.

Still others are shot on sight. For example, on April 28, 2009 a one-year-old bobtailed tom named Yellow Two was shot by a pest control officer and left for dead when he unknowingly wandered into Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.

If his owner, Herman Wright, had not overheard the report of the gunshot and raced to the scene he surely would have died of his injuries. Even as things eventually turned out, the damage inflicted upon him was debilitating enough in its own right. (See Cat Defender post of July 16, 2009 entitled "Yellow Two Is Shot and Maimed for Life in the United States Army's Latest Criminal Offense Against Cats.")

In late 2001, Central Command issued General Order 1-A (GO-1A) mandating that all non-working animals in combat zones be exterminated and at along about that same time Chief of Naval Operations Vern Clark ordered that all bases under his purview promptly get rid of their cats and dogs. (See the Humane Society of the United States' press release of May 27, 2005, "United States Military Treats Stray Dogs and Cats Befriended by Troops as Enemies of State.")

Whenever the military wearies of killing them itself, it outsources their extermination to mercenaries such as the Haliburton subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown, and Root as well as the Filipinos. In places like Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers gun down dogs, and presumably cats as well, on sight.

At the United States naval base in Rota, Spain, sailors poison cats with antifreeze and suffocate kittens in plastic bags. (See the Stars and Stripes, April 28, 2004, "Navy Policy Has Compounded Problem of Stray Cats at Rota, Some Say" and RT Television of Washington, June 7, 2016, "United States Navy Accused of 'Disappearing' Cats in Spain.")

At the long-running gulag that the Navy operates at Guantánamo Bay, one-hundred-eighty-six cats were killed during 2016. It is not known, however, if that tally is indicative of the average number of them that are killed each year because the Navy only grudgingly coughed up that information after it was served with an order to divulge under the Freedom of Information Act. (See the Miami Herald, April 19, 2017, "Guantánamo Base Kills Plan to Save Feral Cats.")

As if the Pentagon did not have enough firepower and poisons at its disposal in order to eliminate every cat from the face of the earth, it also counts among its hired guns the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Already charged with managing two-hundred-eighty-four lakes and reservoirs, six-hundred-nine dams, two-hundred-fifty-seven navigational locks at two-hundred-twelve locations, nine-hundred-twenty-six coasts and inland harbors, and thirty-eight-thousand-seven-hundred acres of wetlands as well as various projects in ninety foreign countries, the agency in recent years has added evicting and killing cats to its mandate.

For instance, in March of 2008 it gave the managers of a TNR colony residing in West Bank Park at Lake Lanier, seventy-nine kilometers north of Atlanta, one week in order to remove the thirty to one-hundred cats under their care. As far as those that remained behind were concerned, the USACE vowed to trap and give them to a shelter to kill.

"From a health standpoint, from a safety standpoint, from a natural resources standpoint, a large colony of cats on a small twenty-eight-acre park that's the most visited recreational area on Lake Lanier, just doesn't work for us," the agency's Chris Lovejoy decreed.

That provoked a swift and spirited rebuttal from resident Bessie Lamica. "The cats, to me, are as much a part of the park as the squirrels, the birds, and the people," she declared. "I don't see them as any more of a threat, a danger, or nuisance than the geese that poop everywhere or the squirrels that get in the garbage and knock everything over."

Unpersuaded in the least, Lovejoy retailed by trotting out every libel and slander that he could think of about cats from off the top of his warped noggin. "The other side is they carry diseases that are harmful to pregnant women. They're a vector for rabies," he added. "Not to mention the fact that there are kids in the park by the hundreds on holiday weekend, any given weekend, and it takes just one time for that cat to get trapped or penned in some place and it attacks someone."

That load of absolute balderdash was just too much for Carmela Quinlan, one of the cats' longtime caretakers, to stomach. "They don't pose a threat to anyone," she retorted. "They're not a threat to humans. They're afraid of humans."(See Cat Defender post of April 17, 2010 entitled "Lake Lanier's Cats Face an Uncertain Future Following Their Ouster by the Liars and Defamers at the United States Army Corps of Engineers.")

Under the authority vested in him as commander and chief, Obama could have taken in interest in these matters and ordered the Department of Defense to have spared the lives of cats and other animals both at home and abroad but he instead deliberately chose to turn a blind eye to his soldiers' despicable crimes. That in turn makes him their accomplice and as such exposes him as just another morally bankrupt bum.

8. Cats Were No Longer Welcome to Use the United States Post Office in Notasulga.

Sammy

For more than a decade, an orange cat named Sammy was a regular feature at the post office in Notasulga, Alabama, where he would nap on a front table and greet patrons. All was fine until January of 2009 when an unidentified woman demanded that he be given the bum's rush.

In defense of her ultimatum, she argued not only that he does not pay taxes but that he also once assaulted her. Finally, she claimed that he had to go because she is allergic to cats.

In pursuance of that objective, she rang up postmistress Carolyn Hood and gave her a good raking over the coals. "She acted very ugly on the phone with me," the object of her ire later divulged. "I told her I'd do everything I could to keep the cat outside."

True to her word, Old Hood caved in quicker than a sod roof in a downpour. "Sammy (the post office cat) is no longer allowed in this building due to a customer complaint," she wrote in a notice that she posted on the front door. "Thanks for your help."

To their credit, Sammy's supporters remained loyal and refused to knuckle under to Hood's edict. In an effort to legitimize his presence, Elizabeth Averrett and Louise Pratt even went so far as to take out a post office box in his name. Once his plight had become known, letters of support, food parcels, toys, money, and gift certificates poured in from his numerous supporters around the country.

"Sammy's got more friends in Notasulga than any other individual I know," legendary Auburn University football coach Pat Dye declared. "We ain't worried about football. We're worried about the cat."

For a while it looked as if Sammy and his supporters might somehow be able to prevail. "But the town went crazy after the sign went up," Hood acknowledged. "They call (Sammy) in here more than ever now."

In the end, however, he had to go and the United States Postal Service's edict can only be viewed as another example of the feds' all-out war on cats, the first such step of which is to completely eliminate them from all federal properties. After that, they plan on eliminating them from state and private properties as well. (See Cat Defender post of February 11, 2009 entitled "The United States Postal Service Knuckles Under to the Threats and Lies of a Cat-Hater and Gives Sammy the Boot.")

9.) The USFWS and Its Associates Killed Off America's Last Jaguar, Macho B.

Macho B. Fitted with a Bulky Radio Collar

In addition to the large number of cougars and bobcats that Wildlife Services and others, both inside and outside of federal and state governments, liquidate each year, the USFWS killed off America's last remaining jaguar on March 2, 2009. The cat originally had been snared in a leghold trap south of Tucson and near the Mexican border on February 18th by agents of the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD).

On that occasion, he had been examined and bodily fluids and tissues were stolen from him for analysis. He also was fitted with a bulky radio collar and then released.

He shortly thereafter was darted again on March 2nd and the decision to end his life was made by the USFWS in consultation with the AGFD and the Phoenix Zoo where he had been taken after his second capture. Considering the financial bonanza that no less than nine institutions and individuals reaped by later trafficking in his fur, bones, and bodily fluids, he clearly was worth considerably more to the so-called conservationists dead than alive. (See Cat Defender post of May 21, 2009 entitled "Macho B., America's Last Jaguar, Is Illegally Trapped, Radio-Collared, and Killed Off by Wildlife Biologists in Arizona.")

In recent years, at least three jaguars, including one dubbed El Jefe, have been spotted in the Arizona-New Mexico area but their quest to reclaim the territory that was stolen from their ancestors long ago is being thwarted by, inter alia, motorists, hunters, the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine, and Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border. (See the Silver City Sun-News, July 5, 2016, "Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) Files Notice of Intent to Sue to Protect El Jefe's Territory" and the Arizona Daily Star of Tucson, March 2, 2017, "Another Jaguar Discovery in Southern Arizona Adds to Border-Wall Debate.")

In Maine, it is the rare Canada Lynx that is under threat. On November 4, 2014, the USFWS issued a permit to allow both private individuals as well as state agents to trap lynxes.

Although the cats are protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a total of seventy of them were trapped in Maine between 1999 and 2012. Some of them sustained injuries but it is not known if any of them were killed. (See CBD press release of November 4, 2014, "Feds Approve Maine Trapping Plan Allowing Rare Canada Lynx to Be Harmed, Killed" and the Portland Press Herald, August 17, 2015, "Wildlife Groups Sue to Stop Maine's Trapping Season to Protect Canada Lynx.")

Finally, the Obama Administration did little or nothing in order to protect the fewer than one-hundred ocelots that remain in Texas and Arizona. (See CBD press release of May 26, 2016, "Lawsuit Launched to Protect Endangered Cats in Arizona, Texas from Government Killing" and Cat Defender post of July 26, 2007 entitled "Tottering on the Brink of Extinction, Texas Ocelots Must Overcome a Myriad of Obstacles If They Are Going to Survive.")

The situation is even direr for the fifty or so Florida Panthers that remain in the wild and captive-bred lions that are slaughtered for the dinner table. (See The Ledger of Lakeland, June 19, 2017, "Endangered Florida Panther Killed by Car; Fifteenth Death This Year" and Living on Earth, May 20, 2011, "Lion Meat, Anyone?")

10.) Obama Reneged on a Pledge to Adopt a Shelter Animal.

The New York Times and National Public Radio Love Kitten and Puppy Killers

During the 2008 presidential campaign both Obama and his wife, Michele, pledged to adopt a shelter animal if elected. Once in office, however, they completely forgot about that promise and since then have never uttered so much as a syllable concerning the plight of millions of cats and dogs that are exterminated each year by shelters and veterinarians.

Furthermore, as far as it is known the only cat that Obama came face-to-face with during his eight years in office was Gli of Hagia Sophia whom that he met during a trip to Istanbul in April of 2009. He possibly could have run into Larry when he paid an ill-advised visit to 10 Downing Street last summer in an effort to mobilize support against Brexit but that is by no means certain. (See YouTube video, April 7, 2009, "Obama Visits Hagia Sophia Church.")

Even more egregiously, his much ballyhooed ACA completely omits any reference, let along offering any assistance, to ailing and injured companion animals. He, like everyone else on the planet, is surely aware that the exorbitant fees demanded by veterinarians are responsible for untold unnecessary deaths each year. Also, sky-high sterilization fees are, arguably, the number one force driving pet overpopulation.

There is not much to report on the positive side of the ledger but in April of 2015 the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, did belatedly issue a warning concerning Flurbiprofen but even that did not come until the topical analgesic had killed at least three cats and induced renal failure in two others. (See FDA press release of April 17, 2015, "Flurbiprofen Containing Topical Pain Medications: FDA Alert -- Illnesses and Deaths in Pets Exposed to Prescription Topical Pain Medication.")

Whereas the FDA under Obama is to be commended for finally alerting cat owners to the dangers posed by Flurbiprofen, it blotted its copybook by failing to look into the toxicity of implanted microchips. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007 and November 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs" and "Bulkin Contracts Cancer from an Implanted Microchip and Now It's Time for Digital Angel® and Merck to Answer for Their Crimes in a Court of Law.")

In May of 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally was able to prevail upon Reckitt Benckisor to stop selling d-CON to consumers. Over the course of several decades, the second-generation anticoagulent rodenticides contained in it have killed, both intentionally as well as unintentionally, countless cats, dogs, and wildlife. (See the Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2014, "Maker of Powerful Rat Poison Will Cease Production in July" and Earth Justice of San Francisco's press release of May 30, 2014, "d-CON Agrees to Pull Super-Toxic Rat Poisons from Stores.")

This poison was supposed to have been removed from retailers' shelves by the middle of 2015 but it still can be found to this very day at ShopRite and, presumably, other stores as well. While it is entirely conceivable that it has been watered-down in order to pass EPA muster, rat poison is still a deadly killer and contaminates the environment regardless of its potency.

That which is not in dispute is that the EPA has allowed Reckitt Benckiser to continue to market its original product to farmers, exterminators, landscapers, and real estate managers. As a consequence, cougars, coyotes, foxes, hawks, raccoons, black bears, and fishers are continuing to be poisoned to death by it.

In fact, the actual number of poisonings have increased, not decreased, since the EPA's ban went into effect. (See KCET-TV of Burbank, January 24, 2017, "Despite Ban, Rat Poison Still Sickening Mountain Lions.")

On December 9, 2010, Obama signed into law a bill that outlawed crush videos. Although these perverse videos depict all sorts of animal abuse, one of the more popular genres feature naked women in razor-sharp stiletto heels stomping to death kittens and puppies.

Legislative and executive action was needed because the numbskulls who sit on the United States Supreme Court earlier in United States versus Stevens, 559 US 460 (2010) had upheld their constitutionality under the First Amendment in an eight to one majority opinion. Not surprisingly, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Outdoor Writers Association filed amicus curiae briefs with the court in support of the kitten and puppy killers.

Ironically, Obama cannot even take credit for putting an end to that odious business because the bill, both in its original as well as amended form, was introduced by Elton Gallegly, a Republican congressman from California who represented Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Regrettably, he threw in the towel in 2012 and is no longer in politics.

11.) Obama Also Gave the Cold Shoulder to Wildlife, Lab Animals, and Livestock.

Mustangs Are Rounded Up for Eviction and, in Some Cases, Slaughter

The issues impacting upon the lives of wildlife, research animals, and livestock are so numerous and nuanced that is difficult to give them anything other than a cursory review. Even so, there can be little doubt that Obama could have cared less whether they lived or died.

When it comes to wildlife, his most enduring legacy will be that of the president who sanctioned the brutal gunning down of more than four-thousand gray wolves between 2011 and 2017. Declared extinct in the continental United States in 1948, several of them were imported from Canada during the Clinton Administration and reintroduced into several western states.

In 2011, the USFWS stripped the vast majority of them of their protections under the ESA and since then it has been open season on them by the likes of Wildlife Services, state wildlife officials, and hunters. Even worse, they are killed by some of the most hateful methods imaginable.

For instance, should cyanide traps fail to kill them, they are hunted down by marksmen in airplanes and helicopters. They bravely attempt to outrun their pursuers but there is not any way that they can escape thanks to the tracking signals being emitted by the bulky radio-collars that they are forced to wear around their necks. Their plight not only is sad and reprehensible but a harbinger of what is in store for mankind in a not-too-distant surveillance society.

In eastern North Carolina, as few as forty-five red wolves remain alive in the wild. The USFWS all but abandoned plans for their recovery in 2014 and since then illegal hunting has been decimating their ranks. (See CBD press release of April 25, 2016, "Reward for Information on Red Wolf Killing Comes Six Months Too Late" and The Star Ledger of Newark, October 20, 2016, "Scientists Call Plan for Red Wolves Misguided, Wrong.")

On June 22nd of this year, the USFWS stripped the seven-hundred or so brown bears that live in and around Yellowstone National Park of their protections under the ESA and thus making them once again fair game for hunters. Although the rule change has come under Trump's watch, it was initiated by the Obama Administration and had been in the works for several years. (See The Washington Post, June 22, 2017, "Yellowstone Grizzly Bears to Lose Protections After Forty-Two Years on Endangered Species List.")

Every bit as shameful as Obama's turning of his back on wolves has been his sellout of wild horses and burros. Not only have fifty-five-thousand of them been removed from the range and incarcerated in governmental holding corrals but between 2008 and 2012 the Bureau of Land Management, which under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act has sole authority over them, sold one-thousand-seven-hundred-ninety-four of them to Tom Davis of La Jara, Colorado, who in turn resold them to businesses that delivered them up to slaughterhouses in Mexico. (See The Washington Post, articles dated November 2, 2015 and September 16, 2016 and entitled, respectively, "Nearly Two-Thousand Wild Horses Sent to Slaughterhouses Instead of Pasture after Government Sale, Probe Says" and "Rumor Has It Government Is Going to Kill Forty-Five-Thousand Horses. Here's the Reality.")

The mustangs and burros, which are being evicted in order to free up more land for cattle and sheep ranchers as well as energy extraction concerns, face even more perils under the Trump Administration which plans on saving a few shekels by selling more of them to slaughterhouses and killing others. (See The Washington Post, May 26, 2017, "Wild Horses Could Be Sold for Slaughter or Euthanized Under Trump Budget.")

Fish and marine animals did not fare any better under Obama's stewardship than did their terrestrial counterparts. Most notably, the Navy continued to injure and kill millions of whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals with its use of eardrum-splitting sonar and underwater detonations.

Already dying off in droves as the result of pollution and being run down by ships, what little protection that these magnificent creatures of the deep have received has come courtesy of the federal courts. (See The Huffington Post, April 3, 2015, "Whales, Dolphins Get Life-Saving Break from Navy's War Games.")

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a division of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration within the Commerce Department, along with wildlife officials from the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho have slaughtered at least one-hundred-sixty-six California sea lion since 2008 in order to keep them from feeding on salmon and steelhead trout. Private individuals also have killed an unspecified number of them and now Native Americans are clamoring to be allowed in on the killing spree. (See KOIN-TV of Portland, July 6, 2016, "Oregon Can Kill Salmon-Eating Sea Lions Until 2021" and US News and World Report, April 11, 2017, "Bill Seeks to Allow Tribes to Kill Salmon-Eating Sea Lions.")

The sea lions are supposedly protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 whereas the fish are covered by the ESA but neither law ever has done any of them very much good. The fish are only allowed to live so that they can be killed by fishermen and the sea lions, which eat only three to four per cent of the fish, are shot on sight for doing the same thing. All three species thus lose and both statutes are turned on their heads with the only winners being the fishermen who are laughing all the way to the bank.

NMFS, also known as NOAA Fisheries, likewise has been implicated in the death of an endangered orca named L95 after one of its agents shot an arrow into its dorsal fin in order to attach a satellite transmitter. The titanium arrow not only injured the whale but failed to break away and that prevented the wound from healing.

The satellite transmitters, which remain inside the animals for months if not indeed forever, also could be toxic. At least seven other orcas have been found with arrows in their hides and all totaled more than five-hundred marine mammals from nineteen species have been subjected this totally unnecessary barbarism. (See CTV-News of Vancouver, April 14, 2016, "Scientists Blast 'Overly Barbaric' Orca Tagging System" and the CBC, April 16, 2016, "Orca Satellite Tagging Halted after Dart Found in Dead Whale.")

Even more disturbing, this horrific treatment of animals in the name of controlling them is by no means limited to either orcas or Americans but rather it is practiced on just about all species by wildlife biologists all over the world. With that being the case, injuries and high mortality rates, whether publicly acknowledged or not, are the rule. (See Cat Defender posts of February 29, 2008, April 17, 2006, and May 4, 2006 entitled, respectively, "The Repeated Hounding Down and Tagging of Walruses Exposes Electronic Surveillance as Not Only Cruel but a Fraud,""Hal the Central Park Coyote Is Suffocated to Death by Wildlife Biologists Attempting to Tag Him," and "Scientific Community's Use of High-Tech Surveillance Is Aimed at Subjugating, Not Saving, the Animals.")

Even though Obama is certainly not known to ever have taken up arms against any animal, he nevertheless does not have a problem with those who hunt. "Justice (Antonin) Scalia was both an avid hunter and an opera lover...," is how that he chose to eulogize the former jurist to The Washington Post on February 13, 2016. (See "Transcript: President Obama Speaks on the Death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.")

Every bit as shameful, his colleagues within the Democratic Party, Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and "Dirty" Dick Durbin of Illinois, repeatedly voiced their abiding love for hunters and the sport itself during theirs and Obama's weak-kneed attempt at gun control legislation a few years back. They willingly threw all the animals underneath the bus in an attempt to reinstate the ban on assault rifles that had been in situ during the Clinton years but in the end they failed to get even that much accomplished, let alone anything else. They, in effect, prostituted themselves for nothing.

The only positive thing that Obama is known to have done for wildlife came this past January when, on his way out the door, he issued an executive order banning the use of lead-based ammunition and fishing tackle on federal lands. Even in doing that much, he gave the USFWS until January of 2022 in order to begin enforcing the law and Trump is likely to cancel the order almost any day. (See the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 29, 2017, "Can a Federal Ban on Most Ammunition and Sinkers Protect Wildlife from Lead Poisoning?")

Finally, the Obama Administration labored hard in order to weaken the ESA. It went about that by, among other things, limiting the overall number of species that qualify for protection, failing to set aside critical habitat for the recovery of some endangered ones, placing restrictions on the rights of citizens to petition the government to protect animals and plants, and by exempting federal agencies from considering the cumulative effects that their decisions can have on endangered species.

"Not since the Reagan presidency has an administration pushed regulatory changes that so severely undermine the Endangered Species Act," the CBD proclaimed in a press release on June 4, 2015. (See "Cutting the Safety Net: the Obama Administration's Stealth Attack on the Endangered Species Act.")

Yet, when the Democratic Party held its national convention last July in Philadelphia it carried on just as if nothing at all had changed. "Democrats oppose efforts to undermine the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act to protect threatened and endangered species," it declared in its party platform.

That, by the way, was the only acknowledgement that the party made to animals anywhere in the lengthy, fifty-five page document and it is highly unlikely that Hillary Rodham "and Gomorrah" Clinton so much as ever even mentioned them while on the campaign trail. The changing climate and energy policy did not fare all that much better in that they merited only three pages of ink.

When it came to the piteous suffering of the millions of animals that die each year in research laboratories the usually loquacious Obama was every bit as quiet as a church mouse. In particular, he did absolutely nothing in order to stop the hideous abuse that goes on in both governmental laboratories as well as on college campuses which also are in large part funded by the federal government.

The Trump Administration is even worse in that regard in that on February 3rd APHIS, which is charged under the AWA with regulating research labs, shut down its online database thus blocking access to thousands of records documenting the abuse meted out to animals at not only research laboratories but circuses and kitten and puppy mills as well. Now, such information can only be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. (See American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, untitled press release of February 8, 2017.)

Obama likewise did absolutely nothing in order to stop the Defense Department from annually shooting, stabbing, burning, and dismembering more than eighty-five-hundred live goats and pigs in its various trauma training exercises. (See AAVS newsletter of May 30, 2017, "End Use of Animals in Combat Training.")

He additionally could have stopped the United States Coast Guard, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, from doing likewise to an undisclosed number of defenseless goats and pigs during its trauma training exercises but, once again, he chose to remain silent. (See The Washington Post, April 28, 2017, "Coast Guard Suspends Practice of Shooting, Stabbing and Dismembering Animals in Trauma Training.")

He was not even willing to defund the USDA's Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, where all sorts of diabolical crimes are perpetrated against defenseless farm animals. (See The New York Times, January 19, 2015, "United States Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit.")

Obama's EPA even refused to intervene in order to stop the state of Texas from poisoning up to two-million homeless pigs with warfarin. In a way that was merely par for the course in that it was precisely a USDA laboratory in Kingsville, following in the steps of their Australian colleagues, who came up with that diabolical way of killing animals. (See The Washington Post, February 23, 2017, "'Hog Apocalypse': Texas Has a New Weapon in Its War on Feral Pigs. It's Not Pretty.")

The agency did intervene, however, in order to stop Boston, New York, and Chicago from killing mice with dry ice. (See USA Today, November 23, 2016, EPA to Big Cities: Stop Killing Rats with Dry Ice.")

Even though mice and other rodents have just as much of a right to live as do other animals, it nevertheless is odd to say the least that Obama and his minions valued them more than pigs in Texas and cats in Key Largo.

Then there is the matter of the ritualistic slaughter of thousands of innocent chickens each autumn by Orthodox Jews during their Yom Kippur celebration of Kaparot to consider. Whenever he was not wasting petrol and polluting the air during his frequent trips between Washington and Honolulu, Obama was in either Manhattan or Los Angeles raking in the shekels so he hardly could have been ignorant of this simply abhorrent and senseless practice. Besides, no halfway decent individual ever would do either the bidding or accept money from people who commit such crimes against defenseless animals.

12.) Conclusion: A Final Grade of F for Obama on All Cat and Animal Rights Issues.

Obama Considered the Killing of Forty-Six Million Turkeys to Be a Joke

It was, however, the sickening performance that Obama turned in last November 23rd during the annual presidential pardoning of two turkeys that revealed his abject callousness toward all animals in general. First of all, for the leader of a nation that slaughters and consumes forty-six-million turkeys each Thanksgiving to spare the lives of two of them can only be labeled as ironic to say the least.

Even more appalling, Obama could not resist the overwhelming temptation to make a joke out of the carnage. "I know that there are some bad ones in here, but this is the last time I'm doing this, so we're not leaving any leftovers," he yukked it up to those assembled according to an account of the proceedings rendered in The New York Times on November 23rd. (See "Obama Lets Bad Puns Fly at Turkey Pardoning Tinged with Sadness.")"And so let's get on with the pardoning, because it's Wednesday afternoon and everybody knows that Thanksgiving traffic can put everybody in a foul mood."

Then, after rattling off his accomplishments in the areas of health care, housing, and jobs, he added, "That's worth gobbling about."

At least he did have the bon sens not to mention his abysmal record on animal rights. That was superfluous anyway considering that his bad puns and clowning around with the obviously frightened birds already had said all that there was to say on that subject. It is not even known with any certainty if the birds' lives were indeed spared; it all could have been a cheap publicity stunt.

As head of the executive branch of the federal government for eight years, Obama had tens of millions of civil servants and soldiers at his beck and call and although it would not have been feasible for him to have fired all of them he most assuredly could have appointed cabinet secretaries and division heads who cared about animals and were willing to enforce the anti-cruelty statutes. He also could have issued any number of executive orders that would have substantially improved the lives of cats, wildlife, lab animals, and livestock.

He additionally could have used his high office as a bully pulpit in order to have pursued an animal-friendly agenda. As Richard Neustadt observed in his 1960 seminal work on the presidency, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: the Politics of Leadership, the power of the office is the power to persuade.

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time," Obama once pontificated while on the stump according to The New York Times'February 5, 2008 edition. (See "Barack Obama's February 5, 2008 Speech.")"We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

Those remarks, quite obviously, were not intended to apply to cats and other animals. Moreover, when it comes to abusing and killing animals he was more than satisfied with the status quo.

His total lack of interest in animal welfare issues is attributable in large part to fact that they never were a part of his moral and intellectual landscape. "Until one has loved an animal part of one's soul remains unawakened," Anatole France once pointed out and in that respect Obama's abject callousness relegates him to the class of the "undisturbed" and "sleep-lovers" that John D. MacDonald so vividly described in his 1964 novel, The Quick Red Fox.


Secondly, he quite obviously was not about to offend any potential voters and donors by beating a drum for any animal. Consequently, the only grade that he is deserving of is an F when it comes to his treatment of both cats and other animals as well.

That is not meant to imply in any way that Trump is going to be an improvement. Au contraire, he already has more than amply demonstrated that he cares even less for animals than did his predecessor. (See Cat Defender post of April 28, 2017 entitled "Trump Not Only Exposes Himself for What He Is but Also Disgraces the Office of the President in the Process by Feting Cat-Killers Theodore Anthony Nugent and Kid Rock at the White House.")

If there is any advantage to be found in having a Republican in the White House it lies in the opposition that his presence and policies are bound to generate. By contrast, whenever a Democrat is in the catbird's seat the overwhelming majority of animal advocates pipe down and become suck-ups to power; au fond, the only thing that they care about is being on the side that is winning.

So, in the end, the animals always lose regardless of whichever political party wields power. The only real difference between them boils down to a choice between the Democrats' lies and bullshit and the Republicans' no-nonsense ruthlessness.

The final word fittingly belongs to Charles Dickens who in his 1842 novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, described the United States in the following terms:

"I should want to draw it like a bat, for its short-sightedness; like a bantam, for its bragging; like a magpie for its honesty; like a peacock, for its vanity; like an ostrich, for putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it..."

Photos: Peter Souza of the United States Government (Obama), Hayne Palmour IV of the North County Times of Escondido (San Nicolas' cats), Tami Heilemann of the Department of the Interior (Morkill and Salazar), Roberto Rodriguez of the Associated Press (Patches), the Examiner.com (Dauphiné), Steve Solomonson of the Brooklyn Daily (Plum Beach eviction notice), the National Park Service (radio-collared wolf), Ahmed Jadallah of Reuters (boy from Mosul with his animals), The Tuskegee News (Sammy), Arizona Game and Fish Department (Macho B.), www.care2.com (crush video), and Carlos Barria of Reuters via NBC-TV (Obama pardoning a pair of turkeys).

Paucho

"I hope they're (her three cats) still there."
-- Esther Watts of Hurstway Walk

The deadly inferno that broke out during the small hours of June 14th and subsequently destroyed Grenfell Tower in the Kensington section of west London has dominated the news on both sides of the Atlantic for the past three weeks. Lost in both the daily reports chronicling the steadily increasing human death toll as well as the esoteric debates concerning the use of external cladding in order to both insulate and beautify the outsides of buildings has been scarcely any mention whatsoever of the fate of the dozens, if not indeed hundreds, of cats that also resided in the Latimer Road house of death.

What precious little information that has eked out of London has been sketchy and contradictory but as best it could be determined the twenty-four-story skyscraper contained approximately one-hundred-twenty-seven apartments that were home to somewhere between four-hundred and six-hundred souls. Illegal tenants as well as those who were away on summer holidays no doubt have contributed to the confusion over not only just how many individuals were at home on that god-awful night but also the exact number of fatalities.

Nevertheless, given that the English are known to favor cats as companion animals, it might not be unreasonable to assume that at least half of the flats contained one or more felines. Although Kensington is an affluent area of the realm that boasts the presence of such well-heeled tenants as the Royal Albert Hall, the French Consulate, and Imperial College, the vast majority of those who resided in the upscale public housing project appear to have belonged to the ranks of the working class and the poor and that in turn may have had a negative impact upon the number of cats actually living in the structure.

Those caveats aside, it probably is safe to assume that there were at least sixty cats living in the building on that fateful night. Given the structure's height and layout, it additionally is totally out of the question that they could have been anything other than indoor felines. (See Cat Defender post of March 10, 2017 entitled "A Caring Woman in Tekirdag Comes Up with an Innovative Way in Order to Lure In Cats from the Cold.")

Yet, it has proven to be all but impossible to find out any information concerning the fate of those cats. For instance, both the dailies as well as the weeklies have avoided broaching the subject as if it were the plague and that in itself is extremely peculiar in that they, as a rule, seemingly never can get their hands on enough stories about the species.

Local animal rescue groups likewise have been every bit as reticent. For instance, the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in the south London borough of Wandsworth immediately offered to provide temporary assistance to companion animals that had been left homeless by the inferno but it has not proven possible to locate any data relating to just how many cats, if any, that the charity has rescued. (See Your Local Guardian of Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, June 14, 2017, "Battersea Dogs and Cats Offers Temporary Shelter to Pets of Those Affected by Grenfell Tower Fire in North Kensington.")

The Grenfell Tower Blaze Lit Up the London Skyline

The only cat reputed to have made it out of the burning building alive is a brown and white, blue-eyed male named Paucho. Even in his case, it has not been publicly divulged either how that he masterminded that bit of deering-do or what has happened to his caretakers.

Shortly after his escape, he was taken in by the Parish of St. Clement's and St. James on nearby Treagold Street and there his story ends. It accordingly is not possible to say how that he is getting on and where he is living today. (See the Metro of London, June 15, 2017, "Grenfell Tower Fire Cat Being Looked After at Church Near Scene.")

The Bush Theatre, located a little less than two kilometers away in the Shepherd's Bush section of the borough of Hammersmith and Fulton, has offered to provide shelter for children displaced by the fire but even in doing that it has failed to so much as mention the plight of the displaced cats. That is all the more odd in that it has a trio of resident felines of its own.

"If your kids need a cuddle, Marley, Caramel and I are here," a dashing tuxedo named Pirate, reportedly told the Express of London on June 14th. (See "London Fire: Local Theatre Offers 'Cuddles with Cats' to Terrified Children.")"Thoughts with those affected by the Grenfell Tower fire."

His mate, jet-black Marley, was equally forthcoming. "We are here if you want to chat with humans, a quiet place, a shower, Wi-Fi or cat cuddles," he chipped in to the debate. "So awful this has happened."

Fires, explosions, and other cataclysmic events present a myriad of nearly insurmountable obstacles to cats that live in apartment blocks. First of all, in addition to the damage that the flames and smoke can rapidly inflict upon their fur, whiskers, lungs, and eyes, it is totally impossible for them to open the doors that lead out of their apartments as well as those that block entry into the stairwells.

Pirate

They likewise do not have any means of activating the elevators, even if they should be still in service. Leaping from a window is a remote, albeit death-defying, possibility but even that last-ditch escape route is only available to them if one has been left ajar.

They therefore are totally at the mercy of their owners for their deliverance. The latter therefore must not only have cages ready at hand but, much more importantly, they must be willing to take the time and effort that is required in order to locate and corral them.

Next, they need to cover the cages with wet towels in order to protect their occupants' tiny lungs from succumbing to smoke inhalation. Finally, they must transport them through the smoke and fire to safety and for that task it is essential that they have flame-resistant and sturdy cages that will not either catch on fire themselves or come apart at the seams whenever their terrified occupants start to trash about in panic.

It accordingly is long overdue that derelict local fire and public safety officials took into consideration the safety of cats and thereby enacted protocols designed to ensure their safe evacuation from high-rises in times of emergency. If they are unwilling to to that, it is then time to, perhaps, consider the banning of cats from apartment blocks. This world most definitely does not need any more cats to be burned alive.

Fire departments in the United States, who only rarely can be prevailed upon to rescue cats that have become stranded in trees and on electrical poles,  recently have nevertheless purchased pet oxygen masks and, as far as it is known, their officers have not been shy about administering oxygen to dying cats. Some firemen even have risked their lives by reentering buildings in order to pull cats to safety.

Generally speaking, however, the solemn duty of evacuating cats from burning buildings falls squarely upon the shoulders of their owners. With human nature being what it is, far too many of them forget all about their faithful companions in times of emergencies and instead think only of saving their own worthless hides.

Marley

If past history is any guide, that is exactly what a good portion of the residents of Grenfell Tower and surrounding apartment blocks did on the morning of June 14th. The only person who so far has been willing to publicly admit to such shameful conduct has been fifty-year-old Esther Watts of nearby Hurstway Walk.

After having been told by the police to evacuate, she quickly gathered up her twelve-year-old son and dog and hightailed it out of her flat. Cruelly left behind to fend for themselves were her three cats. "I hope they're still there," she later told The Telegraph on June 14th. (See "Cat Saved from Grenfell Tower Now Being Looked After in Church.")

Earlier on December 31, 2009, forty-six-year-old Edgar K. and forty-four-year-old Susi S. of Altshausen in Baden Württemburg ran out on their cats, Lumpi and Sissi, after an early morning blaze engulfed their apartment. Sissi miraculously survived by hiding underneath a bed but nine-month-old Lumpi was not nearly as fortunate.

The couple's simply reprehensible conduct was made all the more deplorable in that they surely would have been burned to death if their cats had not awakened them from their slumber. "Jetzt verdanken wir ihm unser Leben," Susi S. afterwards truthfully acknowledged. (See Cat Defender post of April 3, 2010 entitled, "Lumpi Is Unforgivably Left to Die in a Burning Apartment by the Ingrates Whose Lives He Saved.")

The numerous wildfires that rage across the western United States and Canada each summer also provide callous owners with another golden opportunity in order to desert their cats in their times of greatest need. (See Cat Defender post of July 3, 2008 and October 14, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Phoenix Is Severely Burned but Still Manages to Save One of Her Kittens from the Humboldt Fire" and "Because a Compassionate Firefighter from Oregon Chose to Care When His California Guardians Could Not Be Bothered with Doing So, Monty Burns Is Able to Escape the Valley Fire with His Life.")

These fires also take a rather heavy toll on the newborn kittens of big cats, such as bobcats, but that is not attributable to their mothers running out of them but rather to their being burned alive themselves. (See Cat Defender posts of February 21, 2013 and December 13, 2013 entitled, respectively, "Orphaned by a Wildlife and Then Rescued by a Forest Ranger, Chips Is Bracing for a Frightening Return to the Wild" and "Chips Is Abandoned in the Perilous California Wild Where Her Fur Alone Is Worth $700 to Trappers.")

Cuddles and Jennifer Powder

The feline death toll that ensued when an American train carrying highly inflammable crude extracted from the Bakken Formation exploded in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July of 2013 never will be known, but some of them were undoubtedly left to die in the flames whereas others later succumbed to starvation. (See Cat Defender post of March 31, 2014 entitled "Mario Is Brought Back from Death's Door When His Silhouette Is Accidentally Spotted in a Window of Fire-Ravaged Lac-Mégantic.")

Public and private shelters alike are sometimes little more than dressed-up firetraps. Worst still, some of their operators will go to great lengths in order to save the lives of their canine inmates while simultaneously turning deaf ears to the plaintive cries for help of the cats that they have unjustly and negligently incarcerated. (See Cat Defender posts of March 15, 2016 and April 3, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Freckles Is Alive and Well More Than Two Years after Having Been Left for Dead in the Rubble of the Burned-Out Knox-Whitley Animal Shelter" and "Fires at Private Shelters Claim the Lives of More Than Two Dozen Cats in Connecticut.")

On September 9, 2008, forty-three-year-old Warren Niles and forty-four-year-old Joan T. Ferreira of New Bedford, Massachusetts, were charged with arson for setting their apartment afire in order to collect on a renters' insurance policy. In doing so, they did not even bother to first remove their three resident felines before torching the place.

Two of the cats perished in the blaze but a three-year-old tiger Angora named Kiki survived. (See Cat Defender post of September 29, 2008 entitled "Kiki Is Healthy Again but in Legal Limbo as Her Rescuer, Firefighter Al Machado, Basks in the Glory of His Heroics.")

While obviously not totally unheard of, torching cats for money is fairly rare; the far larger problem pertains to individuals who do likewise for fun. (See Cat Defender posts of October 5, 2006, July 12, 2007, June 8, 2009, September 22, 2010, and June 27, 2011 entitled, respectively, "New Jersey Teens' Idea of Fun: Beat Up a Defenseless Kitten and Then Burn It to Death,""Burned Nearly to Death by Laughing Teenage Girls, Two-Month-Old Kitten Named Adam Is Fighting for His Life in Santa Rosa,""Adam Is Persevering Throughout All the Pain Two Years after Having Been Torched by Giggling Teenage Girls in Santa Rosa,""Lätzchen Is Deliberately Set on Fire and Burned Within an Inch of Her Life in Karsdorf," and "Citizens of Ichenheim Callously Allow a Torched Cat to Walk the Streets for Days Before Summoning Veterinary Help That Arrived Too Late.")

In addition to the ongoing recriminations and public protests that the Grenfell Tower fire has engendered, the authorities have embarked upon an ambitious program to test the external cladding in at least six-hundred apartment blocks across England. Already many of those structures have flunked their tests and that has necessitated the temporary uprooting and relocation of dozens, if not hundreds, of tenants. (See the BBC, June 24, 2017, "Cladding Fire Tests Failed by Thirty-Four Blocks in Seventeen Areas.")

Bacon and Kristen Eliasson

Yet in spite of all of that, the fate of the Grenfell Tower cats remains unexplained. Almost as importantly, the question of how best to protect cats that live in skyscrapers had yet to filter into public consciousness.

It thus seems that as far as most owners, public officials, and rescue groups are concerned, the welfare of cats does not count for any more with them in times of domestic emergencies than it does in wartime. C'est-à-dire, they are considered to be expendable and of little value.

The only glimmer of hope that cats have lies in the petit fait that not all of their guardians are as selfish and uncaring as Edgar K. and Susi S. For example, twelve-year-old Jennifer Powder of Prince Albert in Saskatchewan made sure that her four-year-old, multicolored cat, Cuddles, made it out alive when the home that they shared was destroyed by a fire on October 12, 2007.

"I love my cat," she said succinctly and sincerely afterwards. (See Cat Defender post of November 30, 2007 entitled "Cuddles Saves Saskatchewan Family from a Blaze in a Faulty Fireplace That Destroys Their Home.")

Twenty-six-year-old Kristen Eliasson acted every bit as admirably when she wrapped her cat, Bacon, in a blanket and then spirited him to safety after a fire had engulfed her Ottawa apartment earlier on October 16th of that same year. Even though she wound up losing not only her abode but all of her personal belongings as well, she was singing anything but the blues.

"I'm just glad my cat's alive," was all that she had to say. (See Cat Defender post of October 31, 2007 entitled "Bacon Shows His Appreciation and Love for His Rescuer by Awakening Her from a Burning Apartment.")

Photos: the London Metro (Paucho), The Telegraph (Grenfell Tower ablaze), The Guardian of London (Pirate and Marley), The Prince Albert Herald (Cuddles and Powder), and the Ottawa Citizen (Bacon and Eliasson).

King Loui I Outside the Hauptgebäude of RWTH

"Stoff für viele weitere Abenteuer der Fellnasenbande habe ich jedenfalls mehr als genug."
-- Nadine Biewer

The gargantuan lengths that some owners are prepared to go in order to exploit their cats for financial and professional gain continues to astound as well as to infuriate at the same time. Was noch schlimmer ist, they are so ruthless and callous that they knowingly and willingly place the lives of their companions in grave jeopardy without so much as a second thought.

That is precisely what thirty-six-year-old Nadine Biewer has done by turning loose her gray and brown cat, King Loui I, to roam the perilous streets of Aachen in Nordrhein Westfalen. In particular, she allows him to wander the six-hundred-twenty-one-acre campus of Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) where he has become a huge favorite of the more than forty-four-thousand students who attend Deutschland's largest technical university.

While on campus, he hangs out with the pupils and even attends some classes. That latter activity demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that his roaming is fully supported by the school's five-thousand-nine-hundred-thirteen instructors and three-thousand-three-hundred-fifty-one administrators.

Be that as it may, a college campus is hardly a fitting environment for a footloose cat and that petit fait is demonstrated by some of the students taking it upon themselves to feed Loui all sorts of inappropriate food. According to his Facebook page, Aachener Campuskatze, that in turn has led to him having been sickened once in May by Dönerkebab und Eis, again in June by an unspecified food, and at no doubt other times as well.

That, generally speaking, is pretty much standard conduct on the part of students. For instance, for more than a decade those in attendance at Plymouth College of Art (PCA) in Devon used to feed all sorts of food to a truly beautiful brown and white homeless cat named PCAT.

"She used to hang about and now and then you'd do something like hand her a cheeky bit of ham from your sandwich," sophomore photography student Dan Richards said back in 2012. "She was really chilled out and laid back -- pretty cool for a cat."

Loui and Nadine Biewer

Although it never was disclosed if she ever were sickened by the scraps and tidbits tossed in her direction by Richards and other students, that which is not in dispute is that the school did practically nothing in order to ease her plight. For instance, it never fed and watered her, provided her with veterinary care, sought to place her in a home, or undertook any measures designed to ensure her personal safety. The only positive thing that it is known to have done for her was to provide her with an unheated outdoor kennel in which to sleep.

As is the case with Loui and RWTH, no moral bond ever was established between PCAT and PCA and therein lies the rub. Captive audiences, whether they are to be found in either an academic or a business setting, think and behave much like prisoners doing time. Das heißt, their members are so bored by what they are doing that they will welcome almost any distraction that helps to relieve the tedium and thus makes the hours of drudgery go by faster.

They thus willingly accept all the attentions, amusements, and affections that cats like PCAT and Loui have to offer without returning anything other than a few kind words, pats on the head, and scraps of food. Beyond that, they could care less whatever happens to them.

It therefore was not all that unexpected when PCAT's life ended tragically underneath the wheels of a hit-and-run motorist one black south of campus in October of 2012. (See Cat Defender post of November 21, 2012 entitled "Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT.")

The academic world likewise long ago sullied its image through its wholesale eradications of homeless cats, opposition to TNR, and its abandonment policies. (See Cat Defender posts of February 12, 2007, September 11, 2006, July 31, 2008, and June 9, 2008 entitled, respectively, "God-Fearing Baptists at Eastern University Kill Off Their Feral Cats on the Sly while Students Are Away on Christmas Break,""Selfish and Brutal Eggheads at Central Michigan University Target a Colony of Feral Cats for Defamation and Eradication,""Cal State Long Beach Is Using the Presence of Coyotes as a Pretext in Order to Get Rid of Its Feral Cats," and "Pennsylvania College Greedily Snatches Up Alumnus's Multimillion-Dollar Bequest but Turns Away His Cat, Princess.")

In addition to the countless cats that vivisectors at universities all over the world torture to death each year, some students also have been known to commit horrific crimes against the species. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2005 entitled "College Students in South Africa Cook a Cat to Death in a Microwave Oven.")

Loui Attends Class

Wildlife biologists, ornithologists, and other cat-haters that are on the payrolls of these disgraceful degree mills not only defame and kill cats with impunity but shanghai them into servitude as guinea pigs as well. (See Cat Defender posts of November 18, 2016 and July 18, 2011 entitled, respectively, "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages" and "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed.")

In keeping with the inherent dishonesty of their profession, the professors then have the chutzpah to turn around and not only cavalierly excuse their wholesale offenses against the species but to additionally claim that its members can take care of themselves. (See Cat Defender post of October 9, 2015 entitled "A Lynch Mob Comprised of Dishonest Eggheads from the University of Lincoln Issues Another Scurrilous Broadside Against Cats by Declaring That They Do Not Need Guardians in Order to Safeguard Their Fragile Lives.")

The most pressing concern as far as Loui is concerned arises whenever he leaves campus and ventures into the clogged streets of the Innenstadt. The Aachener Cathedral (the Dom), where Karl der Große was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D. and subsequently buried fourteen years later, is one of his favorite haunts and he often can be spotted at the entrance to the Domschatzkammer, a museum containing religious relics that date back to the early Middle Ages. He also is known to frequent Burgerservices am Katschhof as well as many businesses and cafes in the vicinity.

With two-hundred-fifty-thousand residents, Aachen is a big city and the area around RWTH and the Dom is unquestionably its most congested part. It is so dangerous in fact that scarcely a day goes by without either a pedestrian or a bicyclist being run down and that is despite the Aachener Polizei, in stark contrast to their utterly worthless American counterparts, taking these matters seriously.

It is a debatable point, but it nevertheless could be argued with some force that motorists are the number one killers of cats worldwide. (See Cat Defender posts of April 17, 2017, June 25, 2015, June 18, 2015, March 18, 2009, and August 17, 2006 entitled, respectively, "As Peat Tragically Found Out, Alcohol and Cats Are Such a Bad Mix That Even Working at a Distillery Can Be Deadly,""Kayden Is Run Down Three Times in Succession by a Van Driver in Yet Still Another Graphic Example of How So Many Motorists Intentionally Kill Cats,""Harry Is Run Down and Killed by a Pair of Derbyshire Police Officers Who Then Steal and Dispose of His Body in an Amateurish Attempt to Cover Up Their Heinous Crime,""Eco, Who for Years Was a Mainstay at a Small Massachusetts Police Department, Is Run Down and Killed by a Motorist," and "Brave Little Fred the Undercover Cat Has His Short, Tragic Life Snuffed Out by a Hit-and-Run Driver in Queens.")


Even those cats that are able to survive these deliberate attacks not only suffer egregiously but often end up crippled for life. (See Cat Defender posts of March 5, 2007, September 12, 2009, April 29, 2010, January 5, 2011,May 2, 2012, November 10, 2014, and October 13, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Run Down by a Motorist and Frozen to the Ice by His Own Blood, Roo Is Saved by a Caring Woman,""Luzie Sustains a Broken Hip and a Bloody Mouth Before She Is Successfully Rescued from the Busy Elbtunnel,""Long Suffering River Finally Finds a Home after Having Been Run Over by a Motorist and Nearly Drowned,""Gunned Down by an Assassin and Then Mowed Down by a Hit-and-Run Driver, Big Bob Loses a Leg but Survives and Now Is Looking for a Home,""Pregnant, Abandoned, and Deliberately Almost Killed by a Hit-and-Run Driver, Sugar Crawls Back to Her Subterranean Abode in Order to Feed Her Kittens,""Freya, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Resident Feline, Cheats Death Once Again When She Survives Being Run Down and Injured by a Motorist but Her Good Luck Cannot Last for Much Longer," and "Bart Has Courageously Overcome Being Run Down by a Hit-and-Run Motorist and Subsequently Buried Alive by His Owner but Another Dark Cloud Is Looming over His Future.")

The Majestic and Unforgettable PCAT

Because of his friendly disposition and trusting nature, Loui is his own worst enemy and it is precisely those qualities that have gotten him into trouble more than once. For instance, back in May he wandered into a delivery truck and was AWOL for an unspecified length of time.

He also would make an easy target for kidnappers. Malevolent individuals could snatch him from the street and in turn sell him to vivisectors and that would be the end of him. Others could abduct him for the best of reasons but quickly tire of his presence and in turn dump him back in the street with disastrous consequences. (See Cat Defender post of February 8, 2017 entitled "The Long and Hopelessly Frustrating Search for the Kidnapped Mr. Cheeky Ends Tragically Underneath the Wheels of a Hit-and-Run Motorist.")

It additionally is entirely conceivable that a caring and conscientious member of the public sooner or later is going to steal him and refuse to give him back because of the gross negligence displayed toward him by his owner. (See Cat Defender posts of July 9, 2007 and June 26, 2012 entitled, respectively, "A Hungry and Disheveled Cat Named Slim Is Picked Up Off the Streets of Ottawa by a Rescuer Who Refuses to Return Him to His Owners" and "A Family in Wiltshire Turns to Social Media and Leaflets in Order to Shame a Veterinary Chain and a Foster Parent into Returning Tazzy.")

Unleashed dogs, like the one that nearly killed Mayor Stubbs of Talkeetna a few years back, are another potential danger that could spell the end for Loui. (See Cat Defender post of October 28, 2013 entitled "Slow to Recuperate from Life-Threatening Injuries Sustained in a Savage Mauling by an Unleashed Dog, Stubbs Announces His Intention to Step Down as Mayor of Talkeetna.")

It is far from clear exactly how long that Loui has been wandering the forbidden streets of Aachen. Although Biewer's Facebook page was established in 2010, it strains credulity that any cat could survive for seven years in streets as congested and violent as those in Aachen.

The ambiguous title of her Facebook page also invites the suspicion that Loui may have had predecessors. If there is any truth in that supposition, that in turn brings up the disturbing issue of what has become of them.

Loui's Rambles As Tracked by Satellite

Another piece of incriminating information comes courtesy of an untitled August 14, 2015 posting on RWTH's Facebook page wherein Loui is identified for the first time as the cat that has been visiting its sprawling campus. If, on the other hand, Loui had been Biewer's original Campuskatze, it does seem rather odd that it would have taken the college five years to have tumbled to his presence.

That is important because what could be going on here is a case of long-term and serial abuse of multiple cats. If so, RWTH has become complicit in Biewer's crimes.

It likewise is not known how much time that Loui spends on the street but the impression, rightly or wrongly, is that it is all day with him returning home only at night. According to information contained online, Biewer lives in a four-story building located at 20 Annuntiatenbach Straße which is located between the Dom and RWTH.

Moreover, since the ground level of her building is devoted to a photography shop, it would appear that she carriers him downstairs in the morning and subsequently dumps him in the street to fend for himself. Either she or a confederate then has to locate him in the evening and transport him back home and up the stairs.

What she does with him on weekends, holidays, when classes are out, in times of inclement weather, and whenever special events are held in the Innenstadt has not been explained. It is strongly suspected, however, that at such times his care often is fobbed off on others.

It accordingly is clear that this is not a usual case of whereby a cat is allowed out into the yard and then strays to parts unknown; rather, Loui is deliberately dumped in the street and condemned to spend his days there until he meets his Waterloo. Every bit as revolting, he is being treated this way so that Biewer can make money and advance her career as a writer.

In Order to Produce This, Loui Has to Die

For example, he already has attracted more than five-thousand fans on Facebook, two-hundred-eighty people follow him on Instagram, and he has his own accounts on both Twitter and Jodel. Most promising of all, Biewer recently published an e-book on Amazon under the Schriffstellername of Dina Bell entitled Die Fellnasenbande. Hinter dem Gartenzaun.

The book concerns the adventures of not only Loui but her other resident feline, Mia, and two purely fictional strays. A print edition is expected out soon.

It is described as a work about friendship, courage, and the right to be different. "Eigentlich habe ich es für Kinder geschrieben, aber es ist näturlich auch für die Aachener Studenten," she told the Aachener Zeitung on May 27th. (See "Campuskater King Loui I stellt die Stadt auf dem Kopf.")

What Biewer is doing to Loui should be illegal but, regrettably, that is not the case. Furthermore, she is far from being the only individual to ever have so nakedly exploited a cat for financial gain.

For example, between 2006 and 2010 a handsome, longhaired tuxedo named Casper from the Barne Barton section of St. Budreaux in Plymouth, Devonshire, was allowed to ride First's buses around town all by his lonesome. His owner, sixty-five-year-old Susan Finden, put up with this madness even though she knew from the very outset that she was playing Russian roulette with his life.

"We think he's about twelve years old but he has no road sense whatsoever," she early on admitted. "He just runs across the road to the bus stop."

Long Gone but Not Forgotten Casper

On January 14, 2010, he stepped into Poole Park Road where he promptly was mowed down by a speeding taxi driver. Like Biewer, Finden got at least one book out of Casper's exploits and his image still adorns some of First's buses.

For whatever it is worth, his death did, apparently, cause her a few pangs of conscience. "I never dreamt I'd miss an animals as much as I miss him," she later confessed. "He was lovely and loved people so much. He was such a different character. (See Cat Defender posts of August 27, 2009 and January 30, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Casper Treats Himself to an Unescorted Tour Around Plymouth Each Morning Courtesy of the Number Three Bus" and "Casper Is Run Down and Killed by a Hit-and-Run Taxi Driver While Crossing the Street in Order to Get to the Bus Stop.")

It is not known with absolute certainty, but it is believed that both Loui and Mia were adopted, most likely from a local rescue group. Although there may be certain similarities in their backgrounds, their personalities are as different as night and day.

Whereas Loui is a gregarious and outgoing male, Mia is a shy female who still carries around with her the psychological scars of her difficult upbringing. It therefore seems unlikely that she could be anything other than an exclusively indoor cat.

The picture of Biewer that emerges from all of this is that of an ambitious professional who is either too busy or uncaring in order to take proper care of Loui during the daytime. While it is true that she has equipped him with a satellite tracking collar, that would appear to have been done more so in order to gather information for her various writing projects than as a safety device.

Other than alerting her as to where to search for him in the evenings, such devices are thoroughly worthless when it comes to protecting cats from the machinations of humans and other animals intent upon doing them harm. That in turn relegates them to the same category of Silicon Valley snake oil as implanted microchips and surveillance cameras. (See Cat Defender posts of June 11, 2007, May 25, 2006, and February 22, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Katzen-Kameras Are Not Only Cruel and Inhumane but Represent an Assault Upon Cats' Liberties and Privacy,""Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats," and "The Months of Unrelenting Abuse Meted Out to Elfie by a Roommate Graphically Demonstrate the Advantages as Well as the Limitations of Using Surveillance Cameras in Order to Protect Cats.")

Loui with His Tracking Collar

Just how idiotic and irresponsible it is to rely upon technology in order to safeguard the lives of cats was demonstrated writ large a few years back when Iain Simpson and Clare Smith of Quarrington in Lincolnshire fitted their four-year-old cat, Archie, with a satellite tracking collar. Even though they soon learned that he was sleeping in the middle of a busy motorway, they did absolutely nothing in order to remove him from harm's way. (See Cat Defender post of March 29, 2017 entitled "Archie Is Knowingly Allowed to Sleep Smack-Dab in the Middle of a Busy Thoroughfare by His Derelict Owners Who Are Contented with Merely Tracking His Movements by Satellite.")

The same criticism are equally applicable in regard to Biewer's irresponsible guardianship of Loui. The case against her is furthermore compounded in that she is having difficulty even keeping batteries in his tracking collar.

Even though she is now laughing all the way to the bank and has forged a budding literary career for herself, she nonetheless insists that none of that was planned. "Ich habe die ganze Aufmerksamkeit nie beabsichtigt oder geplant," she vowed to the Aachener Zeitung."Loui liebt einfach die Menschen, und die Menschen lieben ihm."

All over the world it is the same auld lang syne: bad things generally can be counted upon to happen to cats that become too friendly disposed toward humans. For their own safety and well-being, they never should be encouraged to go anywhere near strangers and, above all, to accept food from anyone other than their owners.

Even under the best of circumstances cats are sometimes going to be sickened by raiding garbage cans or, worst still, killed by eating rodents that have ingested d-CON and other poisons. Owners who fail to heed these admonitions are asking for big trouble. (See Cat Defender post of July 14, 2016 entitled "Missy, Who Was Too Kindly Disposed Toward Humans for Her Own Good, Is Memorialized in Wood at the Bus Stop That She Called Her Home Away from Home for Almost a Decade.")

Much more poignantly, a cat is said to have the intellectual development of a four-year-old child and absolutely no halfway conscientious parent ever would turn loose a toddler in the street. Since cats accordingly do not have any conceivable way of anticipating the multitude of dangers that lurk around every corner in this highly ailurophobic world, that makes it doubly imperative that they have responsible owners who are willing to ensure their personal safety.

Biewer's claim that Loui loves strangers also does not ring quite true. Unless they have not been sterilized and therefore are on the prowl for mates, cats generally are more than content to be homebodies. Loui, who most likely was sterilized long ago, therefore does not have any valid excuse for living on the street.

Wohin nun, Loui?

Furthermore, it is an outright lie for Biewer or anyone else for that matter to claim that a sterilized cat would prefer to live in the street as opposed to being at home with a loving and caring owner. In Loui's case, he has not freely chosen to live as a Vagabund; im Gegenteil, that is the lifestyle that she has foisted upon him for her own selfish and exploitative reasons.

If, on the other hand, she were willing to stay home with him, to entertain him, and to sprinkle in a few treats now and again, he not only would be infinitely happier but, much more importantly, safe as well. Besides, anyone who is unable to write with five or six cats drapped on top of her and pestering her nonstop needs to find another vocation.

As if her abject neglect and naked exploitation of him were not bad enough, Biewer hypocritically claims that she is passionate about animal welfare issues and in furtherance of that objective she has pledged to donate half of the proceeds from her new tome to animal protection groups operating in the Aachen area. Given that such monies have been raised at Loui's expense, it is hard to imagine how that any such organization could accept them while at the same time remaining true to their missions.

The roll call of shame does not merely include Biewer and those charities that accept money from her but it also extends to Rector Ernest M. Schmachtenberg and the other administrators, professors, and students at RWTH, the holy men of the Dom, social media, and the Aachener Zeitung. Since none of them have raised so much as a finger in order to protect Loui's precious and fragile life, they are every bit as responsible as Biewer for how that he currently is being treated as well as for what ultimately becomes of him.

Make no mistake about it, for addition to being callous and exploitative what is being done to Loui constitutes a textbook case of animal abandonment, neglect, and endangerment of the first degree. Consequently, everyone even so much as tangentially involved in Biewer's machinations is richly deserving of substantial time in jail.

"Stoff für viele weitere Abenteuer der Fellnasenbande habe ich jedenfalls mehr als genug," she declared to the Aachener Zeitung. Quite obviously, she does not believe a word of that because if she did she would immediately bring Loui home and keep him there with Mia.

Given her unwillingness to do even that much for him, coupled with the intransigence of local animal protection groups, the time has come to, sadly, start a death watch for him. Under such perilous and utterly hopeless circumstances, it is all but impossible to envision any other dénouement for him than the ones that robbed the world of both PCAT and Casper.

Photos: BuzzFeed (Loui outside RWTH), Katharina Menne of the Aachener Zeitung (Loui and Biewer), Facebook (Loui in class, PCAT, map, book jacket, Loui in the grass and close up), and The Sun (Casper).

Long Suffering Grandpa Mason

"He (Grandpa Mason) also shows us that old, broken, ferocious, 'lost cause' cats still have value and are worthy of compassion."
-- Shelly Roche of Tiny Kittens

Far from the maddening crowd at an undisclosed location in British Columbia an estimated ten-year-old gray and brown formerly homeless tom named Grandpa Mason is waging a lonely and uphill battle against the Grim Reaper and accordingly could only have either days or months in which to live. His is unquestionably a sad and disturbing story but that serves only to make its telling all the more imperative.

His recent history began last October when he was trapped and removed from a farm by the charity Tiny Kittens of Fort Langley, forty-seven kilometers southeast of Vancouver. His uprooting and removal was necessitated after a developer had purchased the farm and began to tear down the derelict barns that he and roughly fifty-nine other cats and kittens had called home for an undetermined number of years.

Absolutely nothing has been disclosed about either his early years or how that the managed to survive for so long on his own, but given his ingrained fear of humans it would appear that he likely was born on the farm and lived his entire life without so much as a glimmer of human contact and support. Much more importantly, judging from his rapidly deteriorating health his deliverance did not come a day too soon.

In particular, he had a massive growth on the bottom of his right paw, his tail had been broken multiple times, his teeth had gone bad, and he was suffering from several unspecified infections. Tiny Kittens attended to those maladies, sterilized him, and was planning on returning him to the wild when it discovered that, tragically, his kidneys are failing.

Fearing that he would not be able to make it through another winter on the outside, the organization was left with the choice of either killing him off or bringing him inside. Fortunately for him, it chose compassion over expediency.

"We are a no-kill organization, and believe that any life is worth saving as long as we are able to alleviate suffering," founder Shelly Roche wrote in an untitled and undated article that appears on the charity's web site, www.tinykittens.com. "Mason's many scars told us how hard he had fought to survive this long, and we were determined to give him a chance to experience comfort, safety and freedom from pain during his sunset months."

Although Roche wisely had elected to exercise the only morally acceptable option available to her under the circumstances, that did not necessarily make the task at hand all that much easier. "He is one of the oldest ferals we have seen, and throughout his recovery, he made it clear his feral instincts were deeply ingrained," she pointed out.

Consequently, his unsocialized nature coupled with his rapidly deteriorating health meant that adoption was all but out of the question. That in turn left Roche with little choice other than to bring him home with her to live in her house.

The details have not been spelled out, but it apparently was, to say the least, a rather interesting adjustment period for the both of them. Eventually, Mason reached the point where he would engage in play with Roche but other than that he still did not want to have much to do with her.

It was only after he had begun to play with his toys and to rearrange the throw rugs and pillows that she realized he was beginning to adjust to his new home and life. "I thought that was a pretty great outcome for an old, terminally ill feral cat, and I didn't think it could get any better," she wrote on her web site.

As things eventually turned out, she was completely wrong about that. "The wonderful thing about the cat is the way in which, when one of its many mysteries is laid bare, it is only to reveal another," Robert De Laroche wrote in his 1997 tome, The Secret Lives of Cats."The essential enigma always remains intact, a sphinx within a sphinx within a sphinx."

So, too, was it with Mason and Roche's epiphany came when she introduced several kittens that she was fostering to him. Halfway expecting the grizzled tom not to want any part of the rambunctious little ones, she received the shock of her lifetime when something altogether different occurred.

As soon as the kittens were placed in the same room with him they made a beeline for his lair and quickly climbed all over him. Not only did he not chase them away but when intrepid, ginger-colored, Scrammy licked his ear his old calloused heart melted away faster than a cone of ice cream on a hot July afternoon. Now, he and the kittens regularly play, snuggle, wrestle, and chase each other around Roche's house. (Videos of him and the kittens are posted on Tiny Kittens' web site.)

It Did Not Take Scrammy Long to Melt Mason's Heart

He sometimes calls out to them in order to gain their attention and even grooms them. "...the one thing missing for Mason had been contact with another living being, and while he didn't want that from me, he had clearly been craving it from his own kind," Roche concluded.

Actually, it is not all that uncommon for toms to assume some type of a role in the rearing of kittens although in most instances such activity is pretty much confined to keeping them warm and minding the nest while their mothers are away. In Mason's case, however, there appears to be a good deal more going on, such as perhaps a pressing need for companionship and possibly even a few latest pangs of paternalism.

According to his latest round of blood tests, his kidneys have stabilized. His weight is steady and he is said to be looking "great."

Even so, it does not appear that his story is destined to have a happy ending. "We are trying to be realistic and prepare ourselves that he likely only has months left, but we are determined to make those months the best he's ever had," is how that Roche summed up Mason's rather gloomy prospects.

Tiny Kittens has not given up on him completely, however, in that he is receiving some form of unspecified treatment. What, if any, impact it is going to have on his prospects is not known.

Since cats, like humans, can get by on one kidney, a transplant would be one option for Tiny Kittens to explore. Such procedures are only performed in the United States and England and cost around US$15,000. (See Cat Defender post of October 11, 2013 entitled "Heroic Hermione Is Holding Her Own Despite Tragically Losing a Kidney in a Botched Sterilization Two Years Ago.")

In spite of their daunting price tags, thirty-five-year-old Thomas Rätsch of Hannover brought his six-year-old cat, Maxi, to the United States in 2010 for such a procedure. (See the Hannover Allgemeine Zeitung, October 27, 2010, "Kater aus Hannover bekommt Vereinigten Staaten -- Niere für siebentausend Euro." and Die Welt of Frankfurt am Main, October 27, 2010, "Katze soll neue Niere für siebentausend Euro bekommen.")

Fred Petrick and Tony Lacari from parts unknown in Virginia likewise paid the University of Georgia in Athens US$15,000 back in 2015 to implant a kidney in their beloved cat, Arthur. (See the Daily Mail, November 5, 2015, "Couple Rescue a Stray Cat...So They Can Use It for a $15,000 Transplant to Save Their Pet with Fatal Kidney Disease.")

It is not known how that either Maxi or Arthur have fared but on the average only fifty per cent of transplant recipients live for as long as three years. In spite of that rather disappointing success rate, some cats do beat the odds. For instance, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia claims on its web site that one of its transplant recipients lived for at least thirteen years.

In Mason's case, his options likely are pretty much limited to diuresis, dialysis, chemotherapy and, possibly, stem cell treatments. Another possibility would be a regimen of home care consisting of the daily administration of subcutaneous fluids and a special diet rich in omega three fatty acids.

"I've seen even very sick cats, cats who need hospitalization in the beginning, do really well on home care with an owner who was willing to give it a try," Patty Khuly of Sunset Animal Clinic in Miami told the San Francisco Chronicle on August 18, 2009. (See "Caring for a Cat Whose Kidneys Have Failed.")"What makes the difference in how well a cat with kidney failure does is not how sick they are, or how bad their kidney values are on a blood test. It's the attitude of the owner."

The odds against Mason are definitely long but all is not lost just quite yet. "Many of these cats who were on the brink of death can be brought back with supportive care at home," Khuly continued. "Not only brought back for days or weeks or months, but years. You just don't know unless you try."

Needless to say, the administration of subcutaneous fluids to a formerly homeless cat like Mason would not be an easy feat to pull off but Roche and the staff at Mountain View Veterinary Hospital in Langley City, eleven kilometers south of Fort Langley, should be resourceful enough in order to be able to master that difficult chore. If doing so would help to extend his life, a few scratches and bites would be a small price to pay.

Mason and Lucy Enjoy a Snuggle

In addition to subcutaneous fluids and a diet rich in protein, veterinarian Karen Becker of the Chicago area also recommends that cats suffering from kidney disease be provided with good quality water, kept in stress-free environments, and monitored for anemia and hypertension. She additionally counsels that kibble be eliminated from their diets. (See www.healthypets.mercola.com, August 6, 2012, "Why Do So Many Domestic Cats Have Chronic Kidney Failure.")

Practitioners at Colorado State University in Fort Collins also recommend that the vaccinations for Feline Viral Rhinotracheitis (herpes), Feline Calicivirus (pneumonia), and Feline Panleukopenia (distemper) be either omitted altogether or at least significantly reduced. (See Truth4pets.org, May 25, 2012, "Don't Vaccinate Your Adult Cat for Distemper" and catinfo.org, April 2011, "Vaccines for Cats: We Need to Stop Overvaccinating.")

Founded in 2013 in order to help cats and kittens by, inter alia, mounting rescues, providing veterinary care, foster care, and placement in new homes as well as sterilization services, Tiny Kittens also has embarked upon an ambitious agenda aimed at educating the world about both the plight as well as the intrinsic value of homeless cats. "He (Mason) is helping us raise awareness about feral cats, the hardships they face, the love they have to give, and that spaying and neutering is a very easy way to prevent the suffering that results from cat overpopulation," Roche writes on her web site. "He also shows us that old, broken, ferocious, 'lost cause' cats still have value and are worthy of compassion."

The only thing that she fails to mention is the astronomical death toll that the failure to sterilize takes on kittens that are born premature and stillborn; countless others are, for one reason or another, deserted by their mothers. Being subjected to a long series of continuous pregnancies also take a heavy toll on females and some of them actually die during childbirth.

Unneutered toms likewise also have a hard row to hoe. In addition to the cuts and scratches that they often sustain while fighting amongst themselves over fertile females, their incessant roaming also makes them easy prey for motorists who are only too happy to intentionally end their lives.

Ideally, cats that are allowed to breed need to be healthy, well fed and cared for, and domiciled. In the case of females, the number of litters that they are allowed to produce needs to be restricted. Above all, owners need to be willing to take responsibility for any and all kittens that their cats bring into this cruel and ailurophobic world.

Beyond its rescue and heuristic efforts, Tiny Kittens has demonstrated through its rescue and care of Mason that homeless cats can be socialized. Secondly, its choice of life over death serves as a model for all feline rescue groups to emulate.

Thirdly, it has shown that old old cats not only have value but are to be treasured as well. (See Cat Defender posts of November 21, 2012, March 23, 2015, April 16, 2015, August 6, 2015, September 12, 2015, May 27, 2016, and May 4, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT,""Old, Sickly, and on the Street, George Accidentally Wanders into a Pet Store and That, in All Likelihood, Saved His Life,""Nelson's Odyssey from Being the Long Abused Cat That Nobody Wanted to One of England's Most Beloved Comes to a Sad End at Age Twenty,""Elderly, Frail, and on Death Row, Lovely Pops Desperately Needs a New Home Before Time Finally Runs Out on Her,""Pops Finally Secures a Permanent Home but Pressing Concerns about Both Her Continued Care and Right to Live Remain Unaddressed,""Snubbed by an Ignorant, Tasteless, and Uncaring Public for the Past Twenty-One Years, Tilly Has Forged an Alternative Existence of Relative Contentment at a Sanctuary in the Black Country," and "Seventeen-Years-Old, Sickly, and Blind Orakel Is Abandoned to Fend for Herself in the Unforgiving Streets of Breitenfurt bei Wien.")

There cannot be any disputing that Mason's lot in life has been an outrageously unfair one. Tant pis, there is not any power on earth capable of undoing the wrongs that have been done to him.

Although there is not any way of putting the sand back into the hourglass and thus giving him back his youth and health, it would be a small step in that direction if Tiny Kittens and its veterinarians were to put their heads together and come up with some means of extending his sojourn upon this earth even if it is only for a very brief period of time. He most definitely is a rare treasure who is more than worthy of such an eleventh-hour effort.

The days and weeks ahead are destined to be difficult ones for him. His flesh is going to grow progressively weaker and his spirits are going to begin to flag. Under such trying circumstances, the urge to give up the ghost is going to be almost too much to resist.

There likewise may come a point when Tiny Kittens wearies of the cost and effort that are required in order to sustain an ailing cat. It accordingly will be sorely tempted to either simply let nature take its course or, worst still, to get rid of him once and for all.

The very best that therefore can be hoped for is that he somehow will be able to summon the resources that he is surely going to need in order to carry on and that Tiny Kittens will remain steadfast and unwavering by his side. The gold standard for the both of them is therefore identical to the one that Dylan Thomas laid out for his ailing father way back in 1951:

"Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Photos: Tiny Kittens.

The Unforgettable Stubbs

"He was a trooper (sic) until the very last day of his life. Meowing at us throughout the day to pet him or to come sit on the bed with him and let him snuggle and purr for hours in our lap. (sic)."
-- Stephanie Enders

Even though it cannot be said that his quietus was not altogether unexpected, that has not made the recent death of Mayor Stubbs of Talkeetna any less painful. The only positive thing that can be said about it is that he, apparently, was allowed to live out his brief sojourn upon this earth to the very end and then to die a natural death.

"The night of July 20th, we checked on the cats before bed and Stubbs was snuggled up with Aurora in the bed next to his," Stephanie Enders, who along with Kjetil Andre Spone, owns Nagley's Store and the adjacent West Rib Pub and Grill, announced July 22nd in an online article entitled simply "Mayor Stubbs, 1997-2017.""Stubbs went to bed as usual and before we woke the morning of July 21, he was already in heaven."

Although Enders claims that at the time of his passing he was twenty years and three months old, prior press reports maintain that he turned sixteen on March 7, 2012 and that in turn would have made him twenty-one and four months old. Regardless of who is doing the arithmetic, he had a relatively long life for a cat. Compared to the longevity enjoyed by humans, however, his limited tenure left him with time for little more than a cup of coffee.

It is not much of consolation given the enormity of the loss that the cat world has suffered, but from all accounts Stubbs was pain-free and in relatively good health right up until the bitter end. "He was a trooper (sic) until the very last day of his life," Enders continued. "Meowing at us throughout the day to pet him or to come sit on the bed with him and let him snuggle and purr for hours in our lap (sic)."

From all outward indications, the love that he held in his heart for her, Spone, and their two young girls was fully reciprocated. "Thank you, Stubbs, for coming into our lives for the past thirty-one months; you are (sic) a remarkable cat and we will dearly miss you," is how that she chose to eulogize him. "We loved the time we were allowed to spend with you."

Even though he served as mayor of the tiny hamlet located one-hundred-eighty-two kilometers north of Anchorage at the foot of Mount McKinley for twenty years, no other eulogies have appeared online from any of its nine-hundred or so residents. Even press coverage of his death in the United States has been pretty much limited to the Anchorage area. (See KTVA-TV of Anchorage, July 22, 2017, "Stubbs, Talkeetna's Honorary Cat Mayor Dies" and the Alaska Dispatch News of Anchorage, July 24, 2017, "Stubbs, Talkeetna's Honorary 'Mayor' Cat and Beloved Feline Fixture, Dies at Twenty.")

Although the capitalist media in the United States may be comprised of largely an uncaring, unappreciative, and callous lot of rotters who, to crib from Oscar Wilde, "know the price of everything but the value of nothing," the English press certainly was well aware of Stubbs' intrinsic value and duly remembered his passing. (See the Daily Mail, July 24, 2017, "Stubbs, the Honorary Mayor of Alaska (sic) Town That Held the Role Since He Was a Kitten, Dies Aged Twenty" and The Guardian, July 23, 2017, "Feline Sad: Cat Who Was 'Mayor' of Alaskan Town for Twenty Years Dies.")

The press in Deutschland likewise gave extensive coverage to his death. (See the Süddeutsche Zeitung of München, July 24, 2017, "Katzen-Bürgermeister in Alaska ist tot" and the Berliner Morgenpost, July 25, 2017, "Alaska trauert um Katzen-Bürgermeister.")

In announcing the death of her cat, Enders neglected to make any mention whatsoever about holding a memorial service for him. She likewise omitted any reference as to what was done with his remains.

At the very least, Stubbs deserved a proper resting place and a tombstone worthy of a cat of his stature. Hopefully, his remains were not either casually tossed out in the trash or burned to ashes.

Stubbs on the Job at Nagley's

Even though the vast majority of his fans, admirers, and supporters had known him far longer than her, she did not even think twice about uncharitably warning them not to telephone either Nagley's or West Rib Pub and Grill. Instead, she has directed that all condolences be sent in his name to Post Office Box 413, Talkeetna, Alaska 99676.

All post cards received are scheduled to be placed in a scrapbook that will be put on display at the store. A photograph album also is planned and those wishing to contribute to it may do so at info@NagleysStore.com.

As is the case with so many cats, Stubbs came from the humblest of beginnings imaginable. Not only did his original owner not want any part of him and his litter mates, but that individual was so desperate to get shed of them that either he or she resorted to the expedient of giving them away for free to the public from a cardboard box in a Talkeetna parking lot.

This world is chock-full of horror stories about what happens to kittens that are fobbed off to the public under the rubric of "free to a good home," but the orange-colored, part-Manx kitten without much of a tail hit the jackpot when he was adopted on that fateful day back in 1997 by Laurie Stec who at that time owned Nagley's. Either she or someone else shortly thereafter came up with the brilliant idea of having him declared to be the town's mayor and the rest of the story is pretty much history.

He soon thereafter settled into a normal routine of whereby he would spend his days at the store greeting visitors and posing with them for photographs. At times when he was not working he enjoyed dining on Alaskan snow crabs at the store and sipping water laced with catnip from a wine glass at the West Rib Pub and Grill.

Word of his meteoric ascendancy soon spread weit und breit and that in turn brought in the tourists and their godly green. "Oh my gosh, we probably have thirty to forty people a day come in who are tourists wanting to see him," Stec declared back in 2012. "He was just in Alaska Magazine (April 2012 edition), and he's been featured in a few different things."

She accordingly was more than justified in singing his praises to the high heavens. "He's good. Probably the best (mayor) we've had," she continued in 2012. "He doesn't raise our taxes (and) we have no sales tax. He doesn't interfere with business."

He even made a half-hearted run for the presidency in 2012 and, given what has transpired since then, the country most definitely would be far better off today if it had had the bon sens to have voted for him as opposed to the bum who ultimately prevailed in that election as well as the blighter who won last year's contest. (See Cat Defender posts of June 23, 2017 and April 28, 2017 entitled, respectively, "For Eight Long and Tortuous Years, Barack Obama and His Bloodthirsty Henchmen Within the Federal Bureaucracy Waged a Ruthless, No-Holds-Barred War on Cats" and "Trump Not Only Exposes Himself for What He Is but Also Disgraces the Office of the President in the Process by Feting Cat Killers Theodore Anthony Nugent and Kid Rock at the White House.")

Being a politician is not all fun and games, however, and that admonition applies to felines as well as to humans. In Stubbs' case, he came under attack from wildlife advocate Peter Mathiesen and his wife as well as Patti Callen of the Mostly Moose Gift Shop at 13594 East Main Street.

"His biggest political rivals would be other local businesses that would hate that he comes over and takes a nap and leaves fur everywhere. They aren't big fans of him," Skye Farrar, an employee of Nagley's, disclosed in 2012. "We usually say, 'You have to deal with it. He runs the town'."(See Cat Defender post of September 25, 2012 entitled "Talkeetna Has Profited Handsomely from Mayor Stubbs' Enlightened Leaderhip but the Lure of Higher Office Soon Could Be Beckoning Him to Change His Address.")

In addition to fastidious merchants and cat-hating wildlife advocates, Talkeetna is home to a large canine population and on the night of August 31, 2013 one of them almost put an end not only to Stubbs' tenure as mayor but his life as well. He was on his way to the Wildflower Cafe at 13578 East Main Street, which is only a short one-minute walk from Nagley's, when he was attacked by an unleashed dog and subsequently left for dead by its reprehensible owner.

Stubbs and Laurie Stec

An unidentified Good Samaritan discovered him bloodied and dying on the ground and telephoned Stec. She rushed right over but it nonetheless took her some time in order to locate him.

Once she did, she rushed him to Golden Pond Veterinary Services in Talkeetna where practitioner Jennifer Pironis was able to stanch the hemorrhaging and to stabilize his condition. What followed next was a nightmarish, ninety-six kilometer race against the clock to the Big Lake Susitna Veterinary Hospital in Big Lake. Stubbs' condition was so dire in fact that Pironis brought along a jab of sodium pentobarbital just in case it worsened en route.

At the hospital veterinarian Amy Lehman diagnosed him to have suffered a long, deep gash in his side that required twelve stitches to close, a punctured lung, a fractured sternum, an unspecified number of broken ribs, and a bruised hip. The repairs and the insertion of a breathing tube consumed three hours of her time.

It all very well could have ended right then and there for Stubbs if Stec had not insisted that Lehman treat, as opposed to kill, him. "I knew who he was when I got the call and so I knew who was coming, but I was never expecting this kind of circus to arise out of his being here," she said afterwards. "But he's a cat, you know, so for me he's a patient and I'm treating him just like everybody else."

It was touch and go for a while as Stubbs lingered somewhere between life and death for days. By September 5th, however, he was back on his feet again and four days later he was well enough to return home with Stec.

The damage already had been done, however, and he was destined never to be quite the same again. In addition to that, he was confronted with a long and difficult recuperation that included the daily administration of painkillers as well as frequent return visits to Lehman's surgery.

Approximately six weeks later, he announced what his many fans and supporters long had feared. "As you have read I don't think I will return to public life in the same manner as before," he wrote October 18th on his Facebook page. "I had a great run and a very exciting life as mayor but it is time for Talkeetna to find a new mayor."

Every bit as gracious in exiting the political stage as he was when he first walked out on it, Stubbs' only concern was, not for himself, but rather his subjects. "I only hope that I have served them (the residents of Talkeetna) with as much love and respect as you (sic) all have shown me," he continued. "I love you all -- meeow!"

Although the dog's owner was belatedly identified and Stec did file a formal complaint against him with the Animal Control officers at the Matanuska-Susitna Animal Shelter, as far as it is known no action ever was taken against either him or his dog. (See Cat Defender post of October 28, 2013 entitled "Slow to Recuperate from Life-Threatening Injuries Sustained in a Savage Mauling by an Unleashed Dog, Stubbs Announces His Intention to Step Down as Mayor of Talkeetna.")

Although that unquestionably was the worst thing that ever happened to him, it was far from being the only calamity to have befallen him during his lifetime. For example, in 2008 teens armed with air guns shot him in the rear.

In 2012, he became soaked in oil when he accidentally tumbled into a fryer at a local restaurant. Luckily for him, the pan was turned off and the oil cold.

Stubbs and Some of the Visible Injuries That a Dog Inflicted Upon Him

Earlier, he unwittingly had climbed aboard a garbage truck and was transported out of time. He nevertheless was able to have kept his wits about him and subsequently jumped off at the first opportunity that presented itself to him. He was not harmed but he did have a long walk back to town.

Stubbs pretty much stayed out of the media's spotlight during 2014 and that in turn served only to intensify the jolt that the cat world received in January of 2015 when Stec not only sold Nagley's and West Rib Pub and Grill to Enders and Spone but, inexplicably, ran out on the cat that she had sheltered and cared for over the course of the past eighteen years. "Really, without having him, the deal would have gone a lot differently," was all that Enders was willing to divulge about what transpired to KTVA-TV of Anchorage on January 14, 2015. (See "Talkeetna Store Gets New Owner; Mayor Stubbs the Cat Sticks Around.") "He's a big part of Talkeetna in general."

It simply defies all logic, morality, and common sense that Stec could have given up custody of Stubbs. Although it is often said that dogs that belong to people whereas cats belong to places, the latter are far more malleable and adaptable than they are generally given credit for and Stubbs accordingly easily could have adjusted to a new abode with Stec as his caretaker.

Not a great deal is known about the psychological makeup of cats but it would be absurd not to assume that Stec's desertion of him did not adversely affect him. While she possibly could have stayed on in Talkeetna and therefore occasionally put in brief cameo appearances in his life, that somehow does not seem to have been very likely.

From the tidbits of information to be found online, it would appear that it was solely her decision to have abandoned Stubbs. "We knew Stubbs before he really knew us," Enders pointed out in the online posting announcing his death. "Never did we imagine that the mayor of Talkeetna would become our new pet and best friend."

In spite of Stec's simply outrageous and unconscionable act of betrayal, Enders and her family would appear to have done all right by him. "Just over two and one-half years ago, we purchased Nagley's Store and West Rib Pub and Grill and part of the contract was that Stubbs would stay with the store," she related in her online posting. "We couldn't have been happier. The girls were ecstatic that they finally got a friend that could sleep in their beds and romp around the house with."

Even more importantly, the family's commitment to Stubbs was not limited solely to palaver. Rather, Enders started him on a regimen of regular veterinary visits and gave him special foods, medicines, vitamins, and saline. She even improvised a kitty walk so as to help him get up and down the stairs at their house.

As 2015 played out, he could still be found at Nagley's but not on a regular basis. Instead, he started spending considerably more time at Enders' house located, it is believed, directly in back of the store.

In 2016, his appearances at Nagley's became even less frequent although he still would occasionally mosey over to the West Rib Pub and Grill for his customary wine glass filled to the brim with water and catnip. It also was along about then that Enders' daughters took to carrying him across the road to a public park so that he could get some fresh air and exercise.

On May 16th of that same year, a posting on Martin McCullough's Facebook page entitled "Stubbs Mayor Cat," which is to be distinguished from the mayor's own page, declared that he had died. Enders, however, quickly refuted that claim.

Stubbs During His Twilight Days

"He's alive and well, and we can't get all of the fake pages off Facebook," she told KTVA-TV on May 16th. (See "Mayor Stubbs Is 'Alive and Well' Despite Facebook Rumors of His Death.")"You post on social media about Stubbs, and within minutes there's thousands of people who have commented or shared or liked. So this kind of thing gets out so fast you can't even screech the brakes enough to stop it."

So, as he had done so many times in the past, Stubbs survived in order to live another day. The false report nevertheless served as a harbinger of what was to come. "He's getting older and inevitably (it) will probably happen someday, (sic) but today is not that day and he is super-fine," Enders summed up.

In preparation for that eventuality, she adopted two kittens, a brother and a sister named Denali and Aurora, in August. Their presence also helped somewhat to energize Stubbs' flagging energy and spirits.

Following the summer of 2016, he rarely left the house. As a consequence, whenever visitors to Nagley's requested an audience with him the girls, if they were about, would fetch him from home and carry him over for a brief interview and photo opportunity.

Earlier this year he appeared on a couple of television shows and did a handful of interviews but that was about the extent of his public appearances. He visited the store a few times this summer in order to say hello and to snuggle with some of the employees but that, in retrospect, turned out to be his swan song.

Despite Stec's cruel abandonment of him and his many injuries and brushes with disaster, it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that he had an unhappy life. Yet at the same time it also is indisputable that Nagley's in particular and Talkeetna in general got considerably more out of the relationship than did Stubbs.

He first of all was a cash cow who helped both Stec and Enders to line their pockets. "Over seventy-five per cent of visitors ask 'Where's the mayor?' or come in with this statement: 'I have an appointment with the mayor," Enders acknowledged in her online statement. "I think we heard those two statements over one-hundred times a day during our first year."

Secondly, he put the tiny Census Designated Place on the map. Now, people all over the world have heard of Talkeetna and that is all attributable to him, his personality, and exploits.

Thirdly, and most importantly, he was a faithful friend and companion to Stec, Enders and her family, and the workers at Nagley's. Talkeetna may very well be all about turning a fast and easy buck but it would be absurd to attempt to place a price tag on the fidelity, class, and loyalty that Stubbs dispensed so freely.

Even though his corpse is barely cold, Enders and her family already have moved on to the next chapter in their commercial lives and now it is Denali, not Stubbs, who is the focus of all their attentions and affections. "Amazingly, Denali has the exact personality as Stubbs. He loves the attention, he's like a little puppy when he's around people," she wrote in the online article. "We couldn't have asked for a better understudy than Denali. He really has followed in Stubbs' pawprints in just about everything."

By contrast, Aurora is said to be shy and standoffish. Whereas she may eventually warm to the public, for the present time it would appear that her role is going to be pretty much limited to serving as her brother's companion, that is unless Enders should elect to get rid of her altogether.

Last Call Has Sounded for Stubbs

By stepping into Stubbs' shoes, Denali is following a time-honored tradition at Nagley's that began in the 1970's with a longhaired gray and white cat named Gemini. She was succeeded in the late 1980's by a kitten named Holly who lived at the store until the early 1990's. For unexplained reasons, she was exiled to a ranch in Bend, Oregon, where she later died in 1999.

She was followed by a white and brown tom named Squeeker who was killed in a fire in 1997. A brown and white Persian named Charlie followed in his stead but he did not fare much better than his predecessor in that he succumbed to a sudden, undisclosed illness in 2004.

Nagley's track record in taking care of its resident felines is therefore underwhelming to say the least. Most glaringly, its getting rid of Holly, the death of Squeeker, and Stec's desertion of Stubbs are black marks against the establishment and its naked exploitation of cats.

Enders and her family accordingly have been presented with a golden opportunity not only to rake in some serious moola but, more importantly, to reverse the uncaring and exploitative policies of their predecessors. With human nature being what it is coupled with the talismanical effect that a love of shekels has been known to have on people, it would be naive to expect much in the way of improvement from any of them in that regard.

Looking ahead, the tourists are still going to continue to trek to Talkeetna and that in turn is going to make the cash registers at Nagley's hum. Denali is destined to do a good job as Stubbs' replacement and soon is going to have a following of his own.

It often is said that the dead live on both in their writings as well as in the memories of those whose lives that they have touched. In Stubbs' case, however, he not only never put down his thoughts on paper but even the days of those who were fortunate enough to have known him are likewise numbered.

Things change but time keeps marching on and after a while the petit fait that he even once so much as graced the face of the earth will gradually begin to recede from public consciousness. C'est la vie!

It nevertheless is difficult to get around the stubborn feeling that his life was not all that it could have been as Hal David mused when he penned the following lyrics for the title song of the 1979 James Bond thriller, Moonraker:

"Where are you?
When will we meet?
Take my unfinished life and make it complete
Just as the moonraker knows his dreams will come true some day
I know that you are only a kiss away."

In particular, his life could have been so much fuller is only one of the many individuals who walked in and out of it had bestowed upon him the attentions, love, and appreciation that he so richly merited. He was, after all, far more than an inexpensive, four-legged prop that lured in the tourists and their coveted greenbacks.

Au contraire, he was a true individual who carried around inside his beautiful soul more gold than there is to be found in the pocketbooks of a million tourists. The tragedy therefore lies in the abject failure of all those who knew him never to have realized that and now it is much, much too late for them to make amends.

Photos: KTUU-TV of Anchorage (Stubbs up close), Facebook (Stubbs at the store and drinking catnip and water), Jim Carlton of the Wall Street Journal (Stubbs and Stec), Laurie Stec (Stubbs and his injuries), and KTVA-TV (Stubbs in his twilight days).

Suspect Number One

"We are devastated about the loss of these cats, and we're doing everything we can to find out who is behind this cruelty."
-- Alley Cat Allies

Three of the world famous Boardwalk cats of Atlantic City have been killed. Press reports differ as to exactly when these atrocities were carried out, but as best it could be determined they occurred during the nighttime hours of either March 22nd or March 27th.

Absolutely nothing has been publicly revealed as to the methodology employed but since the media claim that the victims were "slain," that would tend to preclude poisoning as the cause of death. That in turn lends itself to speculation that they were killed by either multiple steel pellets fired from an air gun or a barrage of bullets unleashed from a more conventional firearm.

Given the cats' friendly disposition toward humans, it additionally is conceivable that their assailants could have gotten close enough to them in order to have bludgeoned them to death. Such an undertaking would have been greatly facilitated if the cats had been blindsided while reposing in their winterized shelters.

Those modi operandi are by no means exhaustive and cat killers, both individuals as well as organizations, have been known to go to extraordinary lengths in order to realize their fiendish designs. (See Cat Defender posts of January 19, 2011 and November 18, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Bird Lover in München Illegally Traps Rocco and Then Methodically Tortures Him to Death with Water and Pepper Spray over an Eleven-Day Period" and "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

In Atlantic City, there are fifteen managed colonies that altogether contain somewhere between ninety and one-hundred cats. They are located underneath the planking at the infamous Underwood Hotel and are spread out over a distance of more than three kilometers beginning at Absecon Inlet in the north end of town and extending as far south as, it is believed, Providence Avenue.

The victims reportedly belonged to the Vermont Avenue colony which is situated two blocks removed from the Inlet. Although that particular section of the Boardwalk teems with fishermen during the daylight hours it is almost completely deserted after dark.

There are not any commercial enterprises in the area and the nearest gambling den that is still open for business, Resorts, is .48 kilometers south along the wooden way. Although its isolated location provides the cats with some much needed peace and quiet, it also leaves them at the mercy of those individuals intent upon doing them harm.

As a consequence, that forlorn section of the Boardwalk was all but deserted on that cold March night and, as far as it is known, there were not any eyewitnesses to what transpired. The cats' killers accordingly believed that they had perpetrated a series of perfect crimes but they failed to realize that their images were being captured by a surveillance camera that was mounted on either the Boardwalk or at a nearby residential structure.

The footage later revealed that three, fairly young males, two whites and one black, had been in the area during the overnight period in question. Although it has not been disclosed if the camera recorded the presence of any other individuals in the vicinity, it is conceivable that it did but that the authorities do not consider them to be suspects.

It likewise has not been disclosed if the camera recorded the cats being killed but the assumption, rightly or wrongly, is that the atrocities were carried out underneath the pines and well out of range of the camera. That also leaves open the remote possibility that the killers could have entered and exited the colony from the beach and therefore possibly could be individuals other than the trio captured on film.

Normally, surveillance photography is of such poor quality as to be almost worthless but in this instance the faces of the suspects are clearly recognizable and that alone should have made their apprehension a cinch. Regrettably, the stellar work done by the camera was almost immediately negated by the still unexplained fact that neither the images that it captured nor even the news of the cats' killing was brought to the attention of the public until almost four months after the fact. "We are devastated about the loss of these cats, and we're doing everything we can to find out who is behind this cruelty," Alley Cat Allies (ACA) of Bethesda, Maryland, who since 2000 has overseen the Boardwalk Cats Project, belatedly informed the Philadelphia Daily News on July 19th. (See "Reward Offered in Killing of Three Boardwalk Cats.")"Animal cruelty must be taken seriously, and the guilty parties should be punished to the full extent of the law."

Other than offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the killers, it is not known what, if any, action ACA has undertaken. As far as the Atlantic City Police Department (ACPD) is concerned, it is not known to have done anything other than to post photographs of the suspects on its web site.

At the very least, necropsies should have been performed on the victims. Secondly, the entire area where the cats were found should have been cordoned off and treated as a crime scene.

In particular, the railing along the Boardwalk as well as the handrails of the steps that lead down to the beach should have been dusted for fingerprints. The same should have been done with any weapons, such as sticks, bats, and stones, found nearby as well as the cats' food dishes and winterized shelters. In short, any surfaces that the killers possibly could have come in contact with should have been gone over with a fine-tooth comb for fingerprints and other forensic evidence.

Most importantly of all, photographs should have been made form the surveillance footage and immediately circulated to all members of the ACPD, security guards and other personnel at the gambling dens, Boardwalk merchants, the coolies who push rolling chairs, and jitney drivers. Since the Underwood Hotel is such a popular rendezvous for drunkards, dope addicts, transients, and the homeless, the stills should have been circulated around the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army's soup kitchen, and other establishments that cater to that clientele.

The photographs likewise should have been shown to the drivers of New Jersey Transit and Greyhound buses as well as to conductors on the Atlantic City Rail Line. If all of those efforts had failed to bear fruit, the search should have been extended to Philadelphia and New York City just in case the suspects were day-trippers who had come to town on a casino junket.

Whereas it is not known if either the ACPD or ACA have actively pursued that line of inquiry, it is strongly suspected that has not been the case. That assumption is based solely upon the reasoning that it seems more than likely that if they had actively done so that someone would have recognized at least one of the suspects.

Suspect Number Two

Furthermore, given that their images are still plastered all over the web, it seems unlikely that they have been identified, interviewed, and cleared of wrongdoing. Even though most of the sand has long since drained out of the hourglass, there is still a remote possibility that this case could be cracked.

If the ACPD cannot be prevailed upon to take these killings seriously, ACA has at least twenty-nine volunteers who care for the cats and they could be pressed into service as investigators. If ACA is unwilling for whatever reason to do even that, it sole remaining recourse would be to retain the services of a private dick.

That is precisely what Neil Tregarthen of Truro in Cornwall was forced into doing after both the Devon and Cornwall Police as well as the RSPCA categorically refused to investigate the murder of his daughter's beloved fourteen-month-old black cat, Farah, by an assailant wielding an air gun. The peepers did their job in that they were able to locate and identify a suspect but even that proved to be insufficient in order to get any movement out of the authorities. (See Cat Defender post of April 2, 2015 entitled "Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and the RSPCA.")

There accordingly are not any foolproof solutions available to ACA. Nevertheless, justice demands that the culprits be apprehended and made to stand trial for what they have done. Besides, if that should prove not to be the case it is highly probable that they are going to target other cats in the future whether they are living at the Boardwalk or elsewhere.

On June 15th, ACA held a Cat Hero Celebration on the Boardwalk at which time it singled out Steven Dash of the Humane Society of Atlantic County, Paul Jerkins, directors of public works for the city, Police Chief Henry White, and Mayor Don Guardian for their support and cooperation with the cats. The volunteers who attend to their daily needs were feted, but not named, at an indoor event held afterwards.

"(I am) very humbled to receive this award from such an outstanding organization," White said while pledging his continued support according to ACA's press release of June 21st. (See "Celebrating the Cat Heroes of Atlantic City, New Jersey!")

Guardian was equally effusive. "I want to thank you very much for taking (an) interest in Atlantic City and showing how we can all live together on this earth and on this beach," he told those assembled. "We're proud of our cats."

He certainly has more than enough reason for being so in that they are one of the few success stories to be found in a bankrupt city that has seen no fewer that eight of its once prosperous gambling dens bite the dust over the course of the past twenty years. Plus, beyond the glow of the casinos' flickering neons there exists an altogether different Atlantic City where corruption, poverty, crime, and despair are the norms with the only known palliatives being the equally destructive alcohol, drugs, whores, and violence.

Conspicuously omitted from the festivities was any mention whatsoever that something had gone terribly awry with the cats. Once the news of the horrible deaths of three of them had become public fodder a little over a month later it became clear as to why ACA had labored so hard in order to keep that under wraps.

Every bit as predictable as clockwork, all the old familiar cat-haters immediately spilled onto the scene much like cockroaches out of an old mattress in order to seize upon that revelation as an affirmation of all that they hold holy and dear. Given that absolutely nothing in this big, wide world thrills this crowd quite so much as a report of dead cats, there was much glee, gloating, preening, strutting, and the popping of champagne corks.

Once their whooping it up and high-fiving of each other had subsided to a point so as to once again allow them to remaster the faculty of language, they proceeded to launch into a seemingly never-ending recitation of their myriad of outrageous lies. As per usual, their goal was to bludgeon the public long and hard over the head with their fabrications until it eventually would be forced into either conceding the veracity of them or succumbed to fatigue.

In pursuit of that stratagem, the first batter to step up to the plate was none other than the cats' longtime nemesis, The Press of Atlantic City. Owned by the buffet man, Warren Buffet of Omaha, Nebraska, and located, not at the shore, but rather in neighboring Pleasantville, it goes almost without saying that what goes on at the Underwood Hotel is really not any of its business.

Undeterred by such considerations, The Press went right ahead with its vituperation and in doing so it did not take long for it to demonstrate that its views regarding the Boardwalk cats have not ameliorated one iota over the years. (See Cat Defender post of July 5, 2007 entitled "Bird and Wildlife Proponents, Ably Assisted by The Press of Atlantic City, Launch a Malicious Libel Campaign Against Feral Cats.")

Totally in keeping with the standard modus operandi of just about all professional cat-haters, The Press began its onslaught by expressing its condolences to the deceased. "Beyond the illegality, it's very sad to see this happen to cats or any other animals," the editors stated in an August 7th editorial. (See "Atlantic City Cat Killings Another Reason to Ban Managed Feral Colonies.")

As it soon became perfectly clear, what the editors meant by that was that it broke their hearts to see anyone other than themselves and their comrades-in-arms within the political establishment abusing and killing cats. "Pets are great and there are many mutual benefits for cats, dogs and people -- but only if people take full responsibility for the care, protection and health of their pets. And that includes ensuring pets don't become an affliction on other people, their property or the natural world," the editors pontificated. "It's simple. Pets should stay in their caregivers' homes and on their properties...Anything less is just another form of abandonment."

Translated into shirtsleeve English, what the editors are really saying is that homeless cats do not have any right to so much as draw another breath. They are simply too dishonest and concerned about subscribers cancelling their subscriptions to come right out and say it; instead, they have chosen to dance pirouettes around the truth.

Following that inauspicious beginning, the writers next threw their wholehearted support behind a 2013 study conducted by the convicted cat abusers at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington that made outlandish claims about feline predation of birds and small mammals. Even though that study has been dismissed as junk and utter nonsense by just about all impartial individuals who have examined it, the continued dissemination of it as the gospel truth by The Press and other media outlets serves only to call attention once again to their ingrained dishonesty and prejudices.

Suspect Number Three

While they were at it the editors likewise claimed that cats do not belong on barrier islands because they pose a threat to migrating and nesting shorebirds but those considerations are hardly applicable as far as Atlantic City is concerned. First of all, it is virtually impossible for a cat to get close enough to a shorebird on a beach in order to take it down even if it were so inclined.

Secondly, any nests constructed on the beach in Atlantic City would not last for very long and that would not be due to any inference on the part of the cats. Rather, it is precisely vehicular traffic, the presence of restaurants and bars, and thousands of daily sunbathers and joggers that make the area totally inhospitable to nesting and migrating birds.

Even Pete Bacinski and Scott Barnes of the New Jersey chapter of the National Audubon Society are willing to acknowledge that foxes, raccoons, and gulls kills far more shorebirds than cats. They additionally are on record as stating that adverse weather, such as n'oreasters and hurricanes, take the heaviest toll of all on birds. (See The Star Ledger of Newark, July 1, 2007, "Respect Beach Rules to Protect Nesting Birds.")

Next up the editors alleged that cats are such filthy creatures that they spread ringworm, cat scratch fever, and toxoplasmosis to people. Quite obviously, that is simply another example of them making up lies because, given the number of cats, there surely would be epidemics of those diseases if there were so much as a scintilla of truth to their assertions.

Often overlooked in this contentious debate is the petit fait that it is precisely birds that spread epidemics of influenza, destroy crops, and foul city streets, land, and streams with their excrement. It likewise is bats, raccoons, and skunks that spread rabies, not cats.

Nevertheless, it simply is accepted without question that birds and other wildlife have an unqualified right to live, eat, reproduce, defecate, prey upon other animals including cats, and even to spread deadly diseases. By contrast, it is only cats that The Press and its supporters want to deprive of all of those rights.

If The Press's nonsensical and utterly absurd anti-cat rant sounds familiar, that is because it is taken chapter and verse from the self-serving propaganda so profusely disseminated by the biggest liars, criminals, and phonies on the planet. "I am from New Jersey and I have seen these cats on the Boardwalk and the beach. It breaks my heart to know that they are trying to fend for themselves in a world they are not adapted to, but with a background in ecology and conservation I feel that wildlife must come first," Kimberly Spiegel of PETA appendaged those comments to the bottom of The Press's editorial. "Euthanasia is the best option when these cats can't be rehomed, (and) it is certainly better than dying a violent death at the hands of cruel people."

Declarations such at that leave little room for doubt that if PETA, the editors of The Press, and all others who think like them were on hand at concentration camps they would be imploring the condemned that they were destined for a far better place as they shoved them headfirst into the furnaces in order to be burned to a crisp. Moreover, the petit fait that they could talk that way about animals who are unable to defend themselves exposes them to be the lowest, vilest, most unprincipled and utterly ruthless monsters to ever have trodden upon the face of the earth.

They also would have to be considered to be the world's biggest liars. "No organization is more completely dedicated to the interests, welfare and rights of animals than People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals," the editors of The Press concluded, presumably, with a straight face.

If they were simply trying out their shtick on an audience at the Comedy Stop everyone would be entitled to laugh along with them but that is far from being the case in that what they are doing is preying upon the ignorance of the uninformed. It is an old story to be sure but it nonetheless bears repeating, especially if PETA and its minions at The Press and elsewhere so stubbornly insist upon spreading nothing but lies.

To begin at the beginning, for the organization's head honcho, Ingrid E. Newkirk, the en masse murders of totally innocent cats, dogs, and other animals began a long time ago when she ran an unidentified shelter in the nation's capital. In an article entitled "The Extremist: The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America," which appeared in the April 4, 2003 edition of The New Yorker, she proudly made the following candid admission:

"I went to the front office all the time, and I would say, 'John is kicking the dogs and putting them in freezers.' Or I would say, 'They are stepping on the animals, crushing them like grapes, and they don't care.' In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that. I must have killed thousands of them, sometimes dozens every day."

C'est-à-dire, from the very beginning she was totally unwilling to put a stop to the blatant acts of animal cruelty that she witnessed being perpetrated right underneath her own nose and by her own employees. Secondly, she refused to find homes for those cats and dogs under her care. Thirdly and most reprehensible of all, she never has had so much as a scintilla of respect for the sanctity of animal life.

It therefore is not the least bit surprising that it was precisely those same policies that she put in situ when she founded PETA. For example, the organization admits to annually exterminating up to ninety-eight per cent of all the cats and dogs that it impounds at its shelter in Norfolk.

Less well known is that it also liquidates chickens, rabbits, rats, and other species. To make a long story short, it kills just about every single living creature that unwittingly falls into its bloodstained hands.

Perhaps most outrageous of all, the donations continue to keep rolling right on in from around the country and the world in spite of Newkirk's admission. "Our service is to provide a peaceful and painless death to animals who no one wants," she has declared on numerous occasions.

PETA therefore is anything but an animal rights group; au contraire, what it actually is operating is a slaughterhouse. Furthermore, its actual kill rate at its shelter is sans doute considerably higher than even it is willing to publicly admit in that it operates a fleet of death vans that travel around to shelters in southern Virginia, northern North Carolina, and perhaps elsewhere as well in order to collect cats and dogs.

The Volunteers Have Cared for the Cats Since 2000

It promises the shelters that it is going to place them in good homes and it even sometimes goes as far as to send back photographs of cats and dogs gamboling in the yards and fields of their supposedly new abodes. In reality, however, the photographs have been staged and the animals depicted in them were killed off almost as soon as they left the shelters.

All of that came to light in 2006 when it was caught disposing of the bodies of its victims in Dumpsters. Reprehensibly, the morons who dispense justice in the Tar Heel State let off the murderers scot-free. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007 and February 9, 2007 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killings Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in a North Carolina Courtroom" and "Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs.")

Following its public chastisement PETA became considerably more circumspect in its criminal activities but it is still very much active in the business of stealing and killing cats. (See Cat Defender post of October 7, 2011 entitled "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

It likewise continues to treat dogs in much the same fashion and that was proven on October 18, 2014 when the organization's Victoria Jean Carey and Jennifer Lisa Woods stole a three-year-old chihuahua named Maya off the porch of a trailer in Parksley, Virginia's Eastern Shore, and promptly snuffed out its life. Demonstrating once again that it is every bit as cheap as it is murderous, PETA afterwards gave the dog's owner, Wilbur Cerate, a basket of fruit as compensation. (See The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, articles dated December 1, 2014 and February 27, 2015 and entitled, respectively, "Man Says PETA Took His Dog from Porch, Killed It" and "PETA Devastated after Dog Taken from Porch Is Euthanized.")

The only positive thing that can be said about that sorry episode is that Cerate got, in a roundabout way, exactly what he deserved in that he was the one who originally had asked PETA to come over and kill several homeless cats. The criminals subsequently trapped, removed and, no doubt, exterminated at least two of them.

In the uproar that ensued not so much as a word ever was uttered about the killing of the cats and that just goes to show why that things are as they are in this world. The only morality worth having is, not the one propagated by the Jews and the Christians, but rather one that encompasses Mother Earth and all the animals as well as people.

Early on in his existence man discovered that he could live high on the hog by destroying the earth, killing off the animals, and enslaving his fellow beings and as a consequence the killing and naked exploitation has never abated. On top of all of that, he has an unquenchable thirst for blood and a love of inflicting pain on others.

Cerate's behavior also vividly demonstrates that those individuals and groups who freely choose to roll in the hay with devils must fully expect to feel the sting of their horns and pitchforks. (See Cat Defender post of March 10, 2009 entitled "Audubons' Dirty Dealings with the Mercenary United States Fish and Wildlife Service Rebound to the Detriment of Acorn Woodpeckers.")

The theft and killing of Maya furthermore demonstrated that The Press is far from being the only newspaper that PETA has in its back pocket. "As long as people abandon or surrender their pets, as long as other shelters choose to turn away injured, aggressive or feral animals, there'll be a need for PETA to do what it does," the editors of The Virginian Pilot declared by way of racing to the killers' defense on February 27, 2015. (See "Taking Aim at PETA's Work.")

Perhaps the most compelling affirmation that PETA is little more than a cat defamation and extermination service came a little bit earlier in 2014 when the city of San Diego invited in the diabolical USDA's Wildlife Services in order to hunt down homeless pigs with dogs and to shoot them from helicopters as well as on foot. That in turn proved to be too much for Newkirk's soldiers to stomach.

"No animal should be killed for doing that (simply trying to provide for its family and to survive)," the organization's Kristen Simon declared to The San Diego Times-Union on September 17, 2014. (See "City Aims to Kill Feral Pigs.")

While the organization was crying out its eyes for the pigs it simultaneously was lobbying officials in Tucson to veto a TNR initiative sponsored by the Pima Animal Care Center and Best Friends of Kanab, Utah. (See KGUN-TV of Tucson, August 5, 2014, "PETA Says Euthanasia 'Preferable' to TNR.")

"Perhaps it's time to correct misinterpretations about PETA: that it is an organization devoted to fighting for animal rights and sheltering the homeless animals that need helping for not being in the best of health," Sunshine Blanco wrote in The Glam Monitor on November 15, 2014. (See "How Ethical Is PETA's Treatment of Animals?")"After all, PETA seems to have a singular, simple answer to address all forms of suffering and need: death."

From there she proceeded to pose the most pressing question of all. "So before we answer how ethical PETA's treatment of animals is, first we should answer the question: is it ethical at all?"

Far more important than that, the organization's tax-exempt status as well as its licenses to operates a shelter and to administer lethal drugs should be revoked. Above all, Newkirk and her morally-warped acolytes should have been put behind bars decades ago for all the cats and dogs that they have stolen and murdered.

Since it continues to enjoy the widespread support of the capitalist media and governmental officials alike, that in turn gives rise to speculation that PETA possibly could be a creation of dark forces within both the American and English political establishments in order to discredit the animal rights movement in general and to forestall the eventual emergence of a legitimate organization that would actually take seriously animal welfare issues. After all, such underhanded tactics have been tried in the past. (See The New Yorker, August 25, 2014, "The Spy Who Loved Me.")

Gregory S. Okin

It additionally cannot be totally ruled out that it was precisely representatives of possibly PETA, the National Audubon Society, the Smithsonian Institution, or some other virulently anti-cat organization that were behind the killing of the Boardwalk cats. (See Cat Defender posts of May 18, 2013 and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and then Try to Lie Out of It" and "Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

There is not any evidence to support such suspicions but their rhetoric and past behavior has more than demonstrated that they would not think so much as even twice about killing cats if they thought for one second that they could get away with doing so. At the very least, the activities of those groups need to be closely monitored.

The Press's outrageous lies about the Boardwalk cats provoked a spirited rebuttal from ACA's Becky Robinson. "What is particularly shocking about the editorial is that evidence of how cats can live worthwhile lives outdoors is right in front of us at the Atlantic City Boardwalk," she wrote August 12th in an op-ed piece for the paper. (See "Boardwalk Cat Colonies Shouldn't Be Banned.")"The cats in our Alley Cat Allies Boardwalk Cats Project have healthy lives as a result of our TNR program with many living well into their teens."

That is certainly true enough in that a gray and white female named Snowball lived at the site of the Taj Mahal's old gambling den until her sad death in August of 2011 at the age of twenty. (See Cat Defender post of December 10, 2011 entitled "Snowball Succumbs to the Inevitable after Toughing It Out for Two Decades at Atlantic City's Dangerous Underwood Hotel.")

A nineteen-year-old shorthair named Inky still resides at that same site and the recently deceased Genie lived to be eighteen years old. Above all, the quality of life that the cats enjoy is not a matter of opinion but rather their good health and the excellent care that they receive is self-evident to any Boardwalk promenader.

"I've had cats at home for many years," ACA's Matthew Wildman told the Philly Voice on July 17th. (See "Meet the People Who Care for One-Hundred 'Boardwalk Cats' at Jersey Shore.")"None of them lived to nineteen."

The quality of life and longevity enjoyed by some outdoor cats is by no means a phenomenon that is limited to Atlantic City. "On average, outdoor cats are healthier than indoor," Fred Hampton, who cares for some of those that are homeless in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, testified to The Riverdale Press on June 10, 2010. (See "They Care for Cats That Others Don't Care For.")"And they live longer too."

Robinson next up totally obliterated Spiegel's sottise about cats being ill-equipped to live outdoors. "Cats lived outdoors alongside people for more than ten-thousand years in virtually every landscape on every continent where people live," she wrote in The Press on August 12th. "Only in the past seventy years, with the invention of kitty litter, have they become popular domestic pets."

Even in venturing that much she has grossly understated the case in that even before their domestication cats survived and flourished on their own for millions of years. The threats posed to them by motorists, dogs, coyotes, raccoons, and other animals are very real but none of those perils are present in the world that exists underneath the pines in Atlantic City.

Robinson was considerably less honest, however, when she categorically declared that homeless cats "aren't socialized to humans and can't live indoors." On the contrary, if Tiny Kittens was able to have brought in from the cold Grandpa Mason, practically every homeless cat on the planet can be domesticated to one degree or the other. (See Cat Defender post of July 24, 2017 entitled "A Rescue Group in British Columbia Compassionately Elects to Spare Grandpa Mason's Life and in Return for Doing So It Receives an Unexpected Reward Worth More That Gold Itself.")

Doing so would require, first of all, that homes were made available to them. Secondly, socializing them would require a great deal of time, effort, patience, and expertise and, regrettably, few individuals and groups are willing to make that type of investment in any cat.

Robinson therefore was justified in dismissing The Press's edict that all cats be kept at home as "unrealistic and unreasonable." That by no means absolves her organization, however, of the solemn responsibility of finding homes for as many of its cats as is feasible and that is especially the case with those that are either elderly or sickly.

In addition to being frequented by some very dangerous individuals, the Underwood Hotel is cold, damp, and forbidding. Hurricanes, such as Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012, also claimed the lives of an undisclosed number of the cats.

Given that a number of them already have been socialized to the point of permitting their caregivers and tourists to pet them, that in turn augurs well for their ability to adapt to living with a family. Ironically, it could have been precisely the friendly demeanor of the victims that allowed the suspects to have gotten close enough to them to have killed them.

For the time being, however, ACA is not planning on making in changes in its stewardship of the cats. "There's no real end point for the project," Wildman disclosed to the Philly Voice."We'll just keep working to provide the best quality of life for those cats that we can."

Nothing remains the same for very long in this world however and since the feline population at the Underwood has declined by seventy-two per cent since ACA's intercession, the Boardwalk cats are not likely to be around for too much longer. That is especially the case since no new kittens have arrived on the scene in recent years.

Nevertheless, even if they along with every other homeless cat on the planet were to die off today that stunning dénouement would contribute absolutely nothing toward silencing inveterate cat-haters such as The Press, PETA, and their allies. Au contraire, they simply would then redirect their venom, slanders, and criminal conduct in the direction of domiciled cats.

That was demonstrated writ large once again on August 2nd when Gregory S. Okin, a geographer at UCLA, published in PLOS ONE an article entitled "Environmental Impacts of Food Consumption by Dogs and Cats." Although his conclusions are at best estimates, he nevertheless theorizes that America's roughly one-hundred-eighty million pet cats and dogs consume a whopping twenty-five per cent of all the animal-derived calories that are produced in this country.

By way of remedying that situation he recommends that cats and dogs be fed offal and organ meats as opposed to good-quality cuts. He additionally proposes that dog owners either trade in their large companions in favor of smaller ones that eat less or, better still, that they get rid of them altogether and in their stead acquire hamsters.

His conclusions regarding diet were wholeheartedly endorsed by Tufts veterinarian Cailin Heinze. "Dogs and cats happily eat organ meats," she told The Washington Post on August 4th. (See "The Hidden Costs of Dog and Cat Food.")"Americans do not."

A Resident Peers Out from the Desolate and Dangerous Underwood Hotel

Conspicuously absent from The Washington Post's diatribe was any mention whatsoever that man, unlike cats, is not an obligate carnivore and therefore could single-handedly remedy the situation by ceasing to eat meat. Secondly, barbaric animal sacrificial rites, such as the Jews' economically motivated slaughter of tens of thousands of chickens each year during the Yom Kippur celebration of Kaparot, could be outlawed.

So, too, could be the use of animals in scientific research, trauma training, law enforcement, and war. The creation of designer animals and clones could be proscribed as well as the use of animals in sports, the entertainment industry, and their unjust incarceration in zoos.

Most egregious of all, the newspaper intentionally neglects to point out not only that the human population of the United States has doubled in the past seventy years or so and continues to expand but that the land of the free and the home of the brave has become a nation of gluttons, drunkards, dope addicts, and profligates. Yet, Okin and Heinze have the unmitigated gall to suggest that cats and dogs be fed garbage while they and their fellow Homo sapiens continue to gorge themselves.

All of those glaring omissions are quite understandable in that the article was written by none other than Karin Brulliard who scarcely could be defined as a fan of cats and dogs.  For instance, in 2005 Old Brulliard Bird paid a visit to the Loudoun County Animal Shelter in Waterford, Virginia, and afterwards she penned an article that clearly demonstrated that PETA's slimy tentacles stretch far and deep into the heart of the capitalist media.

In particular, she argued, inter alia, that there was nothing wrong with the en masse killing of cats and dogs, that they would be happier in heaven, and that they were little more than inanimate objects. (See Cat Defender post of September 30, 2005 entitled "Morally Bankrupt Washington Post Pens a Love Letter to Shelter Workers Who Exterminate Cats and Dogs.")

Okin likewise is hardly an impartial observer in this debate given that one of his fellow geographers at UCLA is none other than Travis Longcore who, in his second job as science director of The Urban Wildlife Group, was able to convince a local judge back in 2009 to bar the city of Los Angeles from funding TNR. (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2011 entitled "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Abused.")

Back in the day when intellectual integrity and academic credentials counted for something, a pair of glorified map jockeys never would have been able to have gotten away with passing themselves off as experts on the diet and predatory activities of cats but, quite obviously, things have changed considerably since then. Nowadays, most anything goes and scurrilous journalists such as Brulliard are more than happy to serve as the professors' stooges.

As simply god-awful as she is as a journalist, Old Brulliard Bird is far from being the only member of her ignoble profession to be in the thrall of cat-haters. For instance, Irene Banos Ruiz of Deutsche Welle of Köln went so far off her rocker after having soaked up a good dose of Okin's baloney that she completely forgot all about the environmental impact of dogs and instead elected to direct all of her energies into defaming cats.

Following in the well-trodden path of The Press, she began by voicing her unqualified support for the Smithsonian's 2013 nonsensical study of feline predation. Although she did have the bon sens not to endorse Okin's and Heinze's suggestion that cats be fed a steady diet of slaughterhouse offal, she did propose that they be put on an organic diet that is marketed in environmentally-friendly packaging.

It was, however, the excretory functions of cats that really got her goat. In particular, she recommends that hot water not be used in order to sanitize litter boxes and that owners purchase litter made from compost.

She does not say so explicitly, but it seems rather clear that starving cats is the central thesis of her war on excrement. "As with all our resources, reducing consumption is the first step," she hypocritically pontificated in the August 8th edition of Deutsche Welle. (See "Your Cat Is Killing the Earth -- but You Can Prevent It.")"Thinking twice to avoid overfeeding and reduce (sic) waste can be a good starting point."

In her rant about feline excrement Ruiz is not really breaking any new ground in that as early as 2006 Patricia Conrad of the University of California at Davis accused cats of killing sea otters by spreading the parasite toxoplasma gondii in their feces. (See Cat Defender post of March 3, 2006 entitled "A Cat-Hating Professor at UC-Davis and the BBC Call for the Extermination of Seventy-Eight-Million Feral Felines.")

So, in the final analysis, despisers of the species simply cannot abide cats either indoors or outside, they begrudge them what little that they eat, and they are adamantly opposed to them even so much as taking a shit. The only thing that they have not yet accused them of is halitosis and that is surely percolating somewhere in their cauldron of evil.

Meanwhile they and their fellow hate-filled fascists remain as innocent as lambs and see absolutely nothing wrong with the ever-expanding human population, the insane levels of superfluous consumption that are accompanying it, unchecked greed, violence, and bigotry of every sort imaginable. Instead, it is cats alone that are to blame for all the world's evils.

In spite of The Press's vocal opposition to their continued existence, the Boardwalk cats do not appear to be in any imminent danger of losing their homes and that is thanks not only to ACA's coup in winning over both the mayor and chief of police to its side but also to widespread public support for the inalienable right of homeless cats to live. "People would rather leave cats in their outdoor homes than have them brought to a shelter and killed," the organization's Rebekah DeHaven told USA Today on July 12th. (See "These Feral Cats Aren't Put Down, They're Put to Work.")"It's not a politically viable option."

The real danger confronting the cats lies rather in the possibility that the attacks carried out back in March were the beginning of a coordinated campaign designed not only to pick them off one by one but to simultaneously undermine the fine work being done by the volunteers. That must not be allowed to happen but, unfortunately, neither the police nor the public can be counted on to protect the cats. That awesome responsibility rests squarely upon the shoulders of ACA and it is therefore imperative that it undertake decisive measures in order to ensure that there are not any additional killings.

In that respect, the principal concern is for the safety of those cats that reside in the colonies that are located north of Resorts and near Absecon Inlet. If it has not done so already, ACA should have its volunteers take turns patrolling those areas at night.

If no one can be found who is willing to undertake that dangerous job, ACA does not have any alternative other than to hire a security guard to watch over the cats. The installation of surveillance cameras at all fifteen colonies would deter some individuals from harming the cats but not everyone.

Although the only thing that really matters is the safety and well-being of the cats, there is going to be a high price to be paid politically should there be additional killings. Worst still, such an adverse development would have the potential of transforming perennial losers such as The Press, PETA, and those who think like them into winners and that is the absolute last thing that cats need.

Photos: the Atlantic City Police Department (suspects), Emmy Favilla of BuzzFeed (sign), Research Gate (Okin), and The Press (cat at the Underwood Hotel).

Harvey Has Been Left Alone with Only His Dark Thoughts for Company

"But he really is completely lovely -- just so desperately unlucky."
-- Sam Davies of Yorkshire Cat Rescue

Languishing in one of the cages at Yorkshire Cat Rescue (YCR) in Keighley, West Yorkshire, is a disillusioned and extremely unhappy thirteen-year-old brown, gray, and white male named Harvey. His feelings are easy enough to comprehend once one realizes that his world has been turned upside down during the course of the past eight months or so.

Absolutely nothing has been disclosed about his first twelve years on this earth but given that he was able to have persevered for that length of time in this ultra-ailurophobic world is a pretty good indication that his prior life was not all that shabby. The security and sense of well-being that he previously had enjoyed ended abruptly last December however with the death of his guardian.

No specifics have been divulged so it is impossible to speculate as to the circumstances but, quite obviously, no provisions were made for Harvey's continued care in the even of such an occurrence. Even though that could have been because his owner had not expected to kick the bucket quite so soon, that still does not excuse the deceased's surviving relatives for dumping him at YCR. That is especially the case in that all the world knows only too well what happens to the overwhelming majority of cats that wind up at shelters.

By contrast, when Ellen Frey-Wouters of the Bronx departed this vale of tears in 2015 at the age of eighty-eight she was thoughtful enough to have left behind US$300,000 for the continued care of her beloved resident felines, Troy and Tiger. Whereas not everyone can hope to be a millionaire, that does not excuse even those owners of limited means from the solemn responsibility of making some provision so that their faithful and loving companions can go on living. (See the New York Post, August 21, 2017, "Bronx Widow Leaves $300,000 Fortune to Her Cats" and the Daily Mail, August 24, 2017, "Here, Kitty, Kitty! New York Woman Leaves $300,000 to Her Cats in Her Will with the Request They 'Never Be Caged'.")

In Harvey's case, he initially lucked out in that his first stay at YCR was a short one in that the charity soon was able to place him in another home. Unfortunately, the cats already residing there apparently resented his intrusion and he according was sent packing.

As far as this debacle was concerned, there was more than enough blame to go all around. First of all, YCR erred egregiously in placing him in such an environment. Secondly, it certainly did not take his new guardians long in order to demonstrate both their unfitness and unworthiness to care for a such a cat as Harvey and they did so by jerking the welcome mat out from under him almost as soon as he arrived.

It is by no means unusual for cats to sometimes not get along initially but difficulties of that sort almost always can be worked out over time. Patience and a certain modicum of savior-faire are required but any individual unwilling to invest at least that much in a cat does not have any business adopting one in the first place.

Besides, individuals of good will but lacking in expertise can always seek out the advice of cat behaviorists and others who are knowledgeable about the species. A wealth of information regarding such issues also is available online. Anything is far preferable to giving up on a cat and thus returning it to death row at some hellhole shelter.

At some undisclosed time earlier this year, another attempt was made at finding Harvey a permanent home when YCR let him go to an unidentified woman living in Leeds, thirty-three kilometers southeast of Keighley, but she likewise returned him when she became ill. As was the case before, YCR clearly dropped the ball once again by failing to verify the woman's ability to care for a cat.

In adopting out a cat, it is not sufficient for shelters to merely establish that would-be adopters are willing and financially able to care for one, but rather they also need to inquire as about their health as well. In particular, they need to know who is going to be responsible for the cat's continued care in the event that the adopter either becomes ill or dies unexpectedly.

Quite often these types of events are unavoidable and it is axiomatic that all rescue groups have more cats on their hands than they can properly care for and shelter. Many of them no doubt therefore conclude that any home, even one for a brief period of time, is preferable to having a cat languish in a shelter.

No one therefore can really blame shelters for exploring all available options when it comes to rehoming cats. Such an approach fails, however, to adequately take into consideration just how traumatic it is for a cat to be bandied about from one stranger's home to another.

So, to sum up, over the course of the past eight months Harvey has been forced to suffer through no fewer than three guardians as well as three stays at YCR. It accordingly is not at all surprising that recent events have left him withdrawn and felling down in the dumps.

"Older cats who lose their owners sometimes find it harder than youngsters to come out of their shells at the center," YCR's Sara Atkinson said in an August 14th press release. (See "Twice Returned Cat Seeks Loving Home.")"They just don't feel at home in a pen, and really should be making themselves comfortable on a sofa, with someone who appreciates the benefits of adopting an older cat."

That is stating the case rather mildly in that for a cat to wind up at a shelter is a far more harrowing experience than for a previously domiciled individual to be dispossessed and subsequently relegated to living in a homeless shelter. At least the evil individuals and organizations who run the latter institutions are not permitted by law to either cage or kill their inmates. Most important of all, inmates can walk out the door at anytime.

It is an entirely different ballgame for cats in that the familiar faces and personalities of their previous guardians are replaced by those that belong to total strangers and the unbridled freedom and respect that they formerly enjoyed are forced to give way to incarceration in a cage without so much as an iota of dignity. Most devastating of all, the sense of security that they once had is rudely supplanted by fear, stress, and an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. The smell of death that pervades these wretched gulags for cats is palpable.

As if all of that were not sufficient in order to sicken a healthy cat, the obnoxious smells, the strong disinfectants that are used, the unfamiliar, and often subpar, food and water, and the presence of all sorts of communicable diseases are almost certain to do the trick. Such horrendous living conditions are even more intolerable for elderly cats who are accustomed to far better treatment. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock: Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Proposed Remedy? Keep Them Out.")

For all those reasons and more, YCR is pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to place Harvey in a permanent home. "This poor lad has spent the summer with us, and still no luck in finding him a home," Atkinson lamented. "So we're trying our very best to help him tell the world what a lovely lad he is."

The number one obstacle standing in Harvey's way of securing a new home is the harsh reality that few individuals either want or appreciate the value of an older cat. Two notable exceptions to that rule were Andrea and Dave Huntley-Crow of Seaton in County Durham who compassionately took in Nelson after he had been forced to spend fifteen hellish years on the docks of nearby Seaham Harbor. (See Cat Defender post of April 16, 2015 entitled "Nelson's Odyssey from Being the Long Abused Cat That Nobody Wanted to One of England's Most Beloved Comes to Sad End at Age Twenty.")

Generally speaking, however, most individuals only look at the matter through the prism of what a cat can do for them, as opposed to what they can do for a deserving feline in desperate straits, and that in turn leaves precious few opportunities for the Harveys of this world. Not a great deal has been written on this subject but judging by what little that has come to light it does not appear that there are too many happy endings for old cats that have been abandoned by their owners.

In fact, the successful rehoming of cats that have outlived their owners is such a rare occurrence that only a couple of recent cases come readily to mind. One concerned a male named Tizer who was taken in by the British Transportation Police to work as a mouser at King's Cross Rail Station in London. (See Cat Defender post of November 23, 2007 entitled "Tizer Lands a Job Working for the Police After Ending Up at a Shelter Following the Death of His Previous Owner.")

The other one concerned a female cruelly misnomered as Pops who eventually was taken in by an unidentified family in Bath, Somerset. (See Cat Defender posts of August 6, 2015 and September 12, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Elderly, Frail, and on Death Row, Lovely Pops Desperately Needs a New Home Before Time Finally Runs Out on Her" and "Pops Finally Secures a Permanent Home but Pressing Concerns about Both Her Continued Care and Right to Live Remain Unaddressed.")

Many elderly cats, including some that even have gone blind, are routinely abandoned to fend for themselves as best they can in the street. While that is a decidedly far preferable fate than a one-way trip to the death house, it is hardly ideal. (See Cat Defender posts of March 23, 2015 and May 4, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Old, Sickly, and on the Street, George Accidentally Wanders into a Pet Store and That, in All Likelihood, Saved His Life" and "Seventeen-Year-Old, Sickly, and Blind Orakel Is Abandoned to Fend for Herself in the Unforgiving Streets of Breitenfurt bei Wien.")

Even worst still, some senior citizens of the feline world end up as murder victims. (See Cat Defender post of January 17, 2006 entitled "A Loony Virginia Judge Lets a Career Criminal Go Free After He Stomps to Death a Fourteen-Year-Old Arthritic Cat.")

About half of the remaining number of elderly cats are whacked by unscrupulous veterinarians at the urging of their morally bankrupt owners. (See Cat Defender posts of October 18, 2014, July 17, 2013, March 12, 2009, October 27, 2008, December 7, 2006, and February 9, 2006 entitled, respectively, "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect Only to Have Him Killed Off After He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold,""Not Satisfied with Merely Whacking Meiko, Garrison Keillor Struts on Stage in Order to Shed a Bucketful of Crocodile Tears and to Denigrate the Entire Species,""Too Cheap and Lazy to Care for Him During His Final Days, Betty Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned,""Loved and Admired All Over the World, Feline Heroine Scarlett Is Killed Off by her Owner after She Becomes Ill,""After Nineteen Years of Service and Companionship, the Ingrates at an Iowa Library Murder Dewey Readmore Books," and "A Newspaper Cat Named Tripod Is Killed Off by the Journalists That He Befriended in Vermont.")

The other half of them are killed off by both conventional and phony-baloney no-kill shelters. (See Cat Defender posts of September 28, 2011 and October 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor" and "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care.")

In Harvey's case, the daunting task of finding him a new home has become considerably more difficult than it was before in that YCR now believes that he is suffering from a small, but benign, brain tumor. That diagnoses was made earlier this summer after he was returned to the shelter for the second time and began to exhibit symptoms of a noticeable decline in his mental faculties.

He therefore could be suffering from a growth within either the brain itself or the membrane that surrounds it called a meningioma. Although MRIs, radiographs, and ultrasound imaging can be helpful in detecting abnormal growths, the only sure way of diagnosing cancer is through a biopsy.

Since YCR is unsure what exactly is ailing Harvey, that test apparently was not conducted. It accordingly is possible that he could have sustained some type of injury that has produced a buildup of fluids in his head and that in turn is mimicking a tumor.

Apparently YCR is not planning on treating him. "Harvey's brain tumor shouldn't affect how long he has left to live," the organization's Sam Davies speculated in the press release. "It just means he can get a little confused at times. It looks like he is wondering why he is finding it so much harder to live at the shelter than all the young cats around him."

If he does have a tumor and it does not grow, Harvey may be able to live with it. If it should become malignant, however, it will need to be immediately removed if that can be done without endangering his life.

In either case, the growth needs to be constantly monitored by way of computed tomography, computerized axial tomography, and MRIs. (See Pet MD, undated article entitled "Brain Tumors in Cats" and Vet Info, undated article entitled "Meningioma in Cats.")

Although he may be sickly as well as getting on, Harvey still loves his freedom and the great outdoors and YCR, to its credit, does not wish to deprive him of either of them provided that certain precautions are undertaken. "We feel he might be a little too vulnerable to be roaming the streets or fields on his own," Davies said in YCR's August 14th press release. "So we'd love to find him a home with a safe, and enclosed garden, because he does love the outdoors, and a cat his age should be able to enjoy life -- even if he sometimes forgets where he is."

It also is entirely conceivable that the mental fog in which he allegedly is laboring could clear up somewhat if a good and loving home could be secured for him. Since the response from the public has been so appalling callous, perhaps it is time that either a staffer at YCR adopted him or the charity considered placing him in a sanctuary.

For example, a cat named Tilly has spent just about all of her long life at such a facility in the West Midlands. (See Cat Defender post of May 27, 2016 entitled "Snubbed by an Ignorant, Tasteless, and Uncaring Public for the Past Twenty-One Years, Tilly Has Forged an Alternative Existence of Relative Contentment at a Sanctuary in the Black Country.")

Above all, it is imperative that YCR does not give up on Harvey and take the easy way out. As it is, cats live such terribly short lives that to shorten any of them by so much as one second is a monumental crime of the first order.

As an elderly cat, he additionally is richly entitled to a warm and secure home, good quality food, and topnotch veterinary care. For all that he has given to this world, he deserves at least that much in return.

"But he really is completely lovely -- just so desperately unlucky," is how that Davies summed up his tragic plight. It does not have to end for him in a shelter, however, in that all he needs is for one kindhearted soul to ride to his rescue on a white stallion and that would magically transform all of his Unglück into Glück.

Anyone who therefore would be willing to either provide him with a permanent home or to make a contribution toward his medical expenses is urged to immediately contact YCR at 44-01535-647184. The charity also can be reached at mail@yorkshirecatrescue.org.

Photo: Yorkshire Cat Rescue.

Frank Contemplates Doing a Little Web Surfing

"He isn't any inconvenience but a living, breathing creature."
-- Luke Turner

Frank was in sad shape and it showed. The fifteen-year-old ginger and white tom was so famished and exhausted that he had collapsed in a garden on Dewsbury Road in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

He also was bleeding from his head on that fateful day in late November of last year and that in turn led those who had found him to initially believe that he had been mowed down by a hit-and-run motorist. Mercifully, that turned out not to have been the case. As for the injury itself, it apparently was not too serious even if its nature and how that he sustained it remain mysteries.

Since he was neither wearing a collar nor microchipped, that made attempting to return him to his previous owner pretty much out of the question. Luckily for him, however, Barbara Brotherton of Yorkshire Cat Rescue (YCR) in Keighley, forty-seven kilometers northwest of Wakefield, compassionately consented to allow him to stay at her house for a few days.

"This old cat was completely exhausted and emaciated," she later told the Yorkshire Evening Post of Leeds on January 27th of this year. (See "Yorkshire Cat Rescue Rehome (sic) Stray Who's Suffering from Terminal Cancer.")"The vet suggested that I simply made him as comfortable as possible but I decided to go a bit further."

The reason that the practitioner had so precipitately thrown in the towel on Frank is attributable to the fact that while examining him inoperable tumors had been found on both of his ears. Even if that did mean that his days were numbered, Brotherton nonetheless was determined to make them a good deal more than just comfortable.

"Three mashed-up tins of cat food, a warm wash and a bed bath later, and this poor lad was all purrs," she testified to the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Frank spent six days with her and her husband and their fourteen-year-old Alsatian, Mortimer, before he was transferred to YCR's shelter. "To say it was a pleasure to have known him is an understatement," she afterwards declared to the Yorkshire Evening Post."He is a wonderful old gentleman who must once have been much loved by someone."

Like everyone else who eventually came to know him over the course of the days and weeks that followed she was perplexed as to how a cat of his caliber could have fallen upon such hard times. "How he ended up like this is anyone's guess," she threw up her hands in exasperation.

Although most any type of mischief, no matter how diabolical, is entirely possible when it comes to cats, the most likely explanation is that his former owner either died unexpectedly or deliberately abandoned him for some unknown reason. Usually incidents of this nature do not end well for elderly cats but in Frank's case he was blessed with the good fortune of having Brotherton to enter his life at his hour or greatest need.

At YCR, he immediately was placed on a regimen of antibiotics and painkillers as well as treated for worms and fleas. As it had been the case with Brotherton, it did not take the staff long to become impressed with Frank's perseverance.

"Poor old Frank had had a tough life," the charity's shelter manager Sam Davies averred to the Yorkshire Evening Post."We don't know where it began, and for how long he has lived as a stray, but it's certain at his age he was finding it too tough living on the street."

Frank Relaxing

That observation is certainly true enough in that if Brotherton had not taken him in his life very well could have ended in that garden in Wakefield. Regardless of all the deprivations and cruelties that he had been subjected to, Frank's kind and forgiving nature also was still very much apparent for one and all to behold.

"Despite it all, he is one of the most loving cats we have ever seen," Davies marveled to the Yorkshire Evening Post.

None of that, however, immediately translated into securing him a new home given that individuals who are willing to take on the awesome responsibility of caring for an elderly and ailing cat are about as rare as hens' teeth. Even YCR's generous offer to foot the bill for his continued veterinary care failed to attract any suitors.

As a consequence, Frank was forced into remaining at YCR until late January when magnanimous Luke Turner of Halifax, twenty kilometers south of Keighley, learned of his desperate plight and decided to do something about it. "When I head Frank needed a home, I just had to volunteer," he told the Yorkshire Evening Post."This is a cat who probably doesn't have long to live. How can you not step up and give him that final bit of comfort?"

Sadly, there are not too many individuals in this world who choose to look at the matter from that perspective. Besides, old and ailing cats do require specialized care but Turner, far from viewing that as an added burden, takes pleasure in attending to Frank's minimalist needs.

"Right now, he is very weak; an old man who has had one hell of a life," he conceded to the Yorkshire Evening Post. "So we carry him up and down the stairs and do our best to spoil him."

Perhaps it is attributable to all the months and, possibly, years of neglect but Frank particularly enjoys having someone to look after his skin and fur. "Frank loves a good scratch -- so much that the starts to dribble when he begins to purr," Turner added.

Best of all, Frank appears to finally have found not only a loving but a forever home. "We won't put him through another change of home; this is where he belongs now," Turner declared to the Yorkshire Evening Post."He isn't any inconvenience but a living, breathing creature."

Such an enlightened and compassionate philosophy is refreshing and that is especially the case when viewed against the backdrop of the millions of cats that shelters, veterinarians, ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and PETA slaughter each year not only without so much as a second thought but with glee to boot.

The same can be said for the fine work that is being done by YCR. "I do admire YCR for stepping in and saving this old boy, even with limited funds and resources," Turner concluded.

Through its work in saving cats like Frank and Harvey, YCR is demonstrating conclusively that not only old cats but those with medical problems are worth saving. (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2017 entitled "With His Previous Owner Long Dead and Nobody Seemingly Willing to Give Him a Second Chance at Life, Old and Ailing Harvey Has Been Sentenced to Rot at a Shelter in Yorkshire.")

Frank in His New Home Back in April

Half a world away in Fort Langley, British Columbia, Tiny Kittens is likewise demonstrating through its rescue of Grandpa Mason and countless other felines that the only morally acceptable way of treating old and sickly cats is to provide them with shelter, food, veterinary care and, above all, to allow them to finish out their terribly brief stays upon this earth. (See Cat Defender post of July 24, 2017 entitled "A Rescue Group in British Columbia Compassionately Elects to Spare Grandpa Mason's Life and in Return for Doing So It Receives an Unexpected Reward Worth More Than Gold Itself.")

The emergence of YCR and Tiny Kittens into the vanguard of the feline right to life movement is an important step forward but much more work remains to be done. First of all, the cult of death that is being so profusely propagated by the cat thieves and killers at PETA must be strenuously opposed at every turn. (See Cat Defender post of August 24, 2017 entitled "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provide an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Out the Champagne.")

Secondly, nothing short of an across the board ban on the killing of all cats by shelters and veterinarians will ever suffice. "If a child is in a situation where the parents can no longer care for that child whether the parents have financial issues, mental health issues, or they die, the government steps in and the state supports that child," Camille Labchuk of Animal Justice of Toronto explained the obvious to the CBC on May 22nd. (See "Advocates Calling to End Euthanasia of Healthy Pets for Owners' Convenience.")"Why we wouldn't do the same thing for vulnerable animals is beyond me."

Owners likewise need to realize that caring for a cat is a lifetime commitment and that most definitely entails during both sickness and old age. Yet, Compassion Understood of Rugby in Warwickshire and its allies within the veterinary medical establishment are laboring hard in order to try and convince the public that killing cats and other animals is of no more of a moral consequence than tossing a pair of worn-out shoes into the trash.

The goal of this morally bankrupt organization is to make the killing of "a pet as smooth and stress-free as possible" for both owners and veterinarians. Consequently, the organization has absolutely no regard for the rights, feelings, and desires of its legions of innocent victims.

Much more to the point, the snuffing out of any life should be anything but "smooth and stress-free;"au contraire, it should be deeply troubling even under those circumstances, such in wartime, when it is, largely, unavoidable. (See Your Cat Magazine of Grantham in Lincolnshire, April 21, 2016, "Online End-of-Life Training for Vet Practices Launched.")

Every bit as difficult as convincing owners not to kill off their old, sickly, and simply no longer wanted cats, is the herculean task of persuading them to adopt cats like Frank, Harvey, and Grandpa Mason. In that respect, perhaps the best argument against such an ingrained prejudice is that individuals who turn up their long schnozes at such cats do not know what they are missing.

As far as Frank is concerned, for example, neither YCR nor Turner expected him to be around for much longer. Their goal accordingly was primarily to provide him with a place in which to die.

A warm and secure home, good quality food, topnotch veterinary care, and tons of love and attention can work wonders for cats who appear to have one paw in the grave and the other one on a banana peeling. In Frank's case, the tumors on his ears later were diagnosed to be benign and at last report he was still very much alive.

"Happy, relaxed and much loved in his new home!" is how that YCR described him in an untitled article posted April 5th on its Facebook page. "Again, this is what we want for all the cats in our care."

There accordingly are plenty of kudos to go all around. "Yay for Frank and yay for his new family that didn't hesitate to take in an older cat," the article concludes and no one ever could say it any better than that.

Photos: Yorkshire Cat Rescue.