Birder Admits Killing Cat,

[Jim Alfredson]

Socializing a kitten is much easier than a full grown adult cat. There's not much you can do, there. And if you have small kids, its definitely a no-no.

[Quincy]

If the organization that had trapped the cat had tried to put it up for adoption this wouldn't have happened.

I'd be surprised if anyone would adopt a feral cat (assuming it's disease free and healthy). They don't make the best pets, as they don't trust humans.

And it seems to me the cats have just as much right to exist in the wild as the birds, regardless of their endangered status. Heck down here, I'd prefer the cats go after some of these dang seagulls and grackles.

People always want cuddly "everybody lives" answers, but they don't exist easily in this situation. You can either have feral cats and house cats, running around in abnormally high numbers picking off migratory & endangered birds (and mice & other "vermin".) Or people can keep their cats indoors, especially when located near wildlife sanctuaries, and society can try to do a better job of keeping unwanted cats out on the loose. Given the high numbers of unwanted animals, it either means death to the unwanted cats, or places to rehabilitate them. Then you have the matter of trying to find volunteers to staff such operations correctly, along with funds, and the space to ensure that the cats don't spend a lifetime in a 3 x 3 foot cage.

Looks like most people here are on the side of extinction of wild birds. That's the way the world's going.

[Quincy]

...Ideally he would warn neighbors to keep their cats out of his yard, but you'd have to hit up every residence & apartment/condo complex within at least 1/2 a mile in every direction...

so, do you think it's possible that he's already killed other people's pets that were unfortunate enough to wander onto his property?

Probably. And I'm not going to give the Michael Dukakis answer and claim to be okay with it if this guy had shot my cat had it escaped from my house. But are there laws against letting cats run loose in this community? And if not, why not?

Again, the ignorance about domestic cats' role in the ecosystem is something so few people get, and is a good reason why all sorts of birds which were quite common during my childhood in the 1970s are less numerous. Many of these species are small insectivores that eat their weight in insects.

This guy should have used a paintball gun instead, as that would mark the troublesome cats as well as maybe dissuading them from stalking the plovers.

[robviti]

Mistrial Declared in Cat Shooting Trial

The Associated Press

2007-11-16 19:57:43.0

GALVESTON, Texas -

The trial of a prominent birdwatcher accused of animal cruelty for shooting a cat ended in a mistrial Friday after jurors couldn't reach a verdict.

Jim Stevenson, the founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, has admitted he shot the cat last fall because he saw it hunting a threatened species of bird near the San Luis Bridge Pass. If convicted, he would have faced up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The trial sparked an Internet debate between cat lovers who decry Stevenson's actions and birders upset by the toll feral cats take on bird species. It's also raised questions about what makes an animal a pet, especially if it lives outside.

Jurors deliberated for more than eight hours before the judge declared the mistrial.

"The jury was hopelessly deadlocked, so the government has to decide if they are going to waste more of taxpayers' money trying this again," said Stevenson's attorney, Tad Nelson. "But they can try this a thousand times and they will never get a guilty because he didn't commit a felony."

Nelson said his client thought the cat was a stray. A state law bars the killing of domesticated animals without the owner's permission.

But prosecutors argued that a toll bridge worker took care of the cat and named it "Mama Cat," effectively becoming the pet's owner. And they say Stevenson could have easily realized that if he'd looked around the bridge before firing.

While the jury deliberated, Stevenson told The Associated Press that he thoroughly researched local and state law and thought long and hard about what he should do before he killed the cat. He said he decided to shoot it because he believed it was a threat to the birds. He added that he felt sorry for the animal.

The bridge, Stevenson said, "is a revolving door for cats. Dozens and dozens of cats go through there and disappear. They're getting run over ... they're getting killed by coyotes. It's no life for a cat out there."

A revision of the cruelty law that took effect Sept. 1 broadens protection to stray animals, but it does not apply in Stevenson's case.

[Brownian Motion]

I have an ugly truth for the thread's cat buffs. Your cats are using you.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

If you are outraged about this story of one man killing one cat, this story making the rounds about Puerto Rico's botched animal control efforts must make you want to fly down there and bash some heads.

Do we send any money to Puerto Rico? If we do, let's stop until this is cleared up.

From http://apnews.excite.com/article/20071114/D8STNQ080.html

TRUJILLO ALTO, Puerto Rico - Back roads, gorges and garbage dumps on this tropical island are littered with the decaying carcasses of dogs and cats. An Associated Press investigation reveals why: possibly thousands of unwanted animals have been tossed off bridges, buried alive and otherwise inhumanely disposed of by taxpayer-financed animal control programs.

Witnesses who spoke with the AP said that, despite pledges to deliver adoptable strays to shelters and humanely euthanize the rest, the island's leading private animal control companies generally did neither.

News that live animals had been thrown to their deaths from a bridge reached the public last month when Animal Control Solutions, a government contractor, was accused of inhumanely killing some 80 dogs and cats seized from three housing projects in the town of Barceloneta. A half dozen survived the fall of at least 50 feet.

The AP probe, which included visits to two sites where animals were slaughtered, found the inhumane killings were far more extensive than that one incident. The AP saw and was told about a scale and brutality far beyond even what animal welfare activists suspected, stretching over the last eight years.

A $22.5 million lawsuit against Animal Control Solutions and city officials — including those who helped round up the animals — was filed on behalf of 16 Barceloneta families whose dogs or cats were seized under rules prohibiting pets at the city projects. The animals' deaths show "a cold and depraved heart and has stirred public outrage around the whole world," the lawsuit says.

Julio Diaz, owner of Animal Control Solutions and a co-founder of another company, Pet Delivery, declined AP requests for an interview but told reporters there is no proof his company was responsible for the Barceloneta pet massacre. "We have never thrown animals off any place," he said.

A police investigation into the Barceloneta killings has not led to charges, but police Sgt. Wilbert Miranda, who heads the probe, said the information gathered so far indicates Animal Control Solutions was responsible. He declined to give details.

Maria Kortright, a lawyer involved in the suit, said it's clear the pets Animal Control Solutions removed from Barceloneta were the same ones hurled off the bridge because the survivors have been identified by their owners.

"Last Tuesday, I saw one of the survivors back at its home," Kortright said.

Animal welfare activists have complained to government agencies for years about allegations of improper disposal of animals, but say officials didn't act. Preventive action also is almost nonexistent: Puerto Rico has at least 100,000 stray dogs and cats — and no island-wide spaying or neutering programs.

Activist Alfredo Figueroa said the animal disposal companies acted with impunity because government agencies ignored allegations of cruelty, rather than investigate the companies or address the overpopulation of strays.

"There is apathy," Figueroa said. "No one wants to take responsibility."

A former employee of one of Diaz's companies told the AP that the firms rounded up thousands of animals over the years, brutally killed many of them and discarded the corpses wherever it was convenient. One of the former employees led the AP to two different killing fields and he and another former employee described a third.

"Not a single animal was turned over to a shelter," a former dogcatcher for Animal Control Solutions told the AP. Both he and an ex-employee of Pet Delivery, who was interviewed separately, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Both said they left the animal disposal jobs voluntarily.

The AP contacted all eight animal shelters and sanctuaries across Puerto Rico, and they confirmed that none had received animals for potential adoption from Diaz's companies.

Diaz co-founded Pet Delivery in 1999 and created Animal Control Solutions in 2002. Pet Delivery appears to be defunct, having reported no earnings since 2004. Facing little competition, the companies had 85 contracts with municipalities and other clients worth $1.1 million in the past eight years, according to the Puerto Rican comptroller's office.

The AP could find no sign that any of the municipalities checked to make sure the companies dealt with the strays humanely.

"It wasn't our responsibility," said Edwin Arroyo, special assistant to the mayor of Barceloneta, which paid Animal Control Solutions up to $20,000 per year and in October hired the company to remove banned pets from housing projects — allegedly the ones that wound up at the bottom of the bridge.

The pet disposal scandal adds to Puerto Rico's poor reputation for treatment of animals. Cockfighting is legal, with matches shown on television. One of the island's beaches is known as Dead Dog Beach — a place where teenagers drive over live puppies sealed in bags or cruelly kill them with machetes and arrows, according to animal welfare groups that photographed the atrocities.

Figueroa says he met Diaz in 1999 and introduced him to city officials in Fajardo. The city then awarded Pet Delivery a contract to remove strays. But Figueroa said he later learned that Diaz's company also was removing pets with collars and ID tags, and dumping their bodies in a field.

"Crying children, old people, a sick woman were all calling us, thinking we were involved," Figueroa said.

A former Animal Control Solutions employee told the AP that he witnessed another worker in 2005 dragging 12 to 15 small dogs out of a van along a road outside San Juan. Normally, workers injected animals with a euthanasia drug but on this day there was none. The animals were instead given an overdose of a sedative and flung 50 feet into a trash-filled gully. Some of the dogs were alive as they crashed on top of junked beds, bottles and other garbage.

"I could hear some of the dogs whimpering as they hit the tree branches and then the ground," the former employee said as he stood with AP journalists in the muck at the site, which still holds the stench of death.

Not all the dogs died, however. A dog that was not a stray, but a sickly pet whose owner wanted it euthanized, managed to limp home. The angry owner telephoned the company and demanded it retrieve the dog and do the job right, the former employee recalled.

The former employee also showed AP reporters a highway rest stop near a gorge outside the town of Cayey where, he said, workers would inject dogs. At the edge of the gorge lay the skeletal remains of more than a dozen dogs amid matted fur and two dog collars with no tags.

Asked if the number of dogs and cats killed by Animal Control Solutions was in the hundreds, the former employee shook his head.

"It is in the thousands," he said. "On a good month, we would pick up 900."

One dog, stuffed in a sack, was found recently at the Cayey site among other bagged carcasses. It apparently survived the fall and managed to poke its head out of the bag before dying, said Carmen Cintron, who runs an animal shelter.

"I am having nightmares when I think about what that poor dog went through before it died," Cintron said.

Until 2003, Pet Delivery ran a shelter where workers injected strays, often not knowing what the drugs were or their proper doses, the former employee of that company told the AP.

Some animals were adopted from the shelter, but others — including puppies and kittens — were euthanized, the ex-employee said. Euthanizing animals that cannot be adopted is standard practice in pet shelters, but the former employee said animals at Pet Delivery's shelter were inhumanely killed.

"Any available employee at that moment would use the drug that was available and they were thrown half dead into a hole, and that's why there were some live dogs among them," he said. "What he (Diaz) had us do was to throw dirt on top of the live dogs along with the dead ones, so they all would die."

[Quincy]

And it seems to me the cats have just as much right to exist in the wild as the birds, regardless of their endangered status. Heck down here, I'd prefer the cats go after some of these dang seagulls and grackles.

Unlikely to happen. In my 5 years at the wildlife center I never came across a cat attacked sea gull, and people would bring in gulls, especially in the winter. Unless one was sick & injured and solitary, a cat would go after something else. They're just too big & ornery for most cats. Nesting grounds might be another matter, as cats have been known to cause herons & egrets to abandon rookeries.

Grackles nest too high off the ground to be an easy mark for a cat (one reason why there are so many, compared to other species.) The ones in my back yard as a kid were always at least 10 to 12 feet up, and we've all seen cases of cats being good climbers going up, but having trouble coming down. The best chance the cat has to kill them is when they're on the ground after grubs or when a young one has fallen from the nest.

Here's a link to a website that has a PDF that gives synopses of various studies involving cats and wildlife. In the first paragraph in blue is a PDF link to a report entitled "Domestic Cat Predation On Birds And Other Wildlife." It's only 3 1/2 pages and a quick read. You could also Google the title & view it as HTML if you don't want the PDF, but the PDF reads better.

Are there bias? Sure, as there are from the cat side. But I think as you scan through the short report, you may find there are many problems caused by free ranging cats. And some interesting findings too:

1. That like the "small pox blanket," cats can be a threat to bobcats & cougars because of the spread of diseases like feline leukemia & feline AIDS.

2. One report found that house mice were more plentiful outdoors where cats were allowed to roam, to the detriment of "outdoor" mouse species. Personally I'd love to see a follow up on that study, as that's something I wouldn't have expected, but then again, I don't know much about the lives of mice.

If anything interests you there are links to investigate the studies in more detail.

Like I said, I love cats. But having spent 5 years doing wildlife rehab and seeing the damage they do, along with seeing species that were relatively common 20-30 years ago fade away, cats left to roam free are part of the problem and one where an individual can make an instant contribution by keeping the cat indoors.

Edited November 16, 2007 by Quincy

[Aggie87]

Like I said, I love cats. But having spent 5 years doing wildlife rehab and seeing the damage they do, along with seeing species that were relatively common 20-30 years ago fade away, cats left to roam free are part of the problem and one where an individual can make an instant contribution by keeping the cat indoors.

I wouldn't disagree with your point here at all. I don't think a vigilante shooting wild animals is part of the solution though.

[Dan Gould]

I can only imagine what jury selection was like in this case and I would propose that any retrial should require that a jury be impaneled of dog lovers. No cat people, no birders. Dog people only.

Then you might have a shot at getting a verdict.

[BruceH]

Cats are evil.

[robviti]

Cats are evil.

now what would make you go and say a thing like that?

[DukeCity]

For crying out loud, Jim; calm down. Is there an epidemic of cats attacking kids that we haven't heard about? Go jump on a pit bull or something...

I'm calm, I just think it's ridiculous. I grew up on a farm. We had outdoor cats and indoor cats. The indoor cats were the beloved pets of the family and were well taken care of. With the outdoor cats it was understood that, although we loved them too, they might get hit by a car, freeze to death, catch rabies and have to be put down (happened a lot), or they might get into the neighboring farmer's chicken coup and he'd kill them. That's the way it goes.

Did the guy who claims to own the cat actually take care of it besides giving it some food and a couple of toys? Did it live in his home? Did he change it's litter box? Or was it basically an outdoor cat that he fed and enjoyed? To me, that's the distinction. If the cat is basically feral, then I don't see a problem with somebody killing it. If it was the guy's pet, then there is a problem. People shouldn't be allowed to kill another person's pet on a whim.

As for comparing the life of a cat to that of somebody's grandmother... c'mon. Let's get real.

Exactly, if we're talking about a grandma who has a loving home and a family. But hey, if it's one of those feral, homeless grandmas out there roaming the streets and digging in peoples' trash, then I say she's fair game!

[robviti]

Exactly, if we're talking about a grandma who has a loving home and a family. But hey, if it's one of those feral, homeless grandmas out there roaming the streets and digging in peoples' trash, then I say she's fair game!

[MoGrubb]

This would practically be a moot subject around here, because our restraint ordinance applies to cats as well as dogs. I'm at the mercy of my neighbors with the three feral cats that I feed, and had neutered. [When you trap them once, it's almost impossible to trap them again.]

[Jazzmoose]

Of course, we would all be better off if lunkhead pet owners would figure out that spaying or neutering their cats is the right thing to do. Personally, I'd like to see animal abandonment considered a serious crime. It's not only animal cruelty, but as we can see from information such as what Quincy shares with us, it is an act that has a serious impact on the environment.

[robviti]

Of course, we would all be better off if lunkhead pet owners would figure out that spaying or neutering their cats is the right thing to do. Personally, I'd like to see animal abandonment considered a serious crime. It's not only animal cruelty, but as we can see from information such as what Quincy shares with us, it is an act that has a serious impact on the environment.

[Quincy]

Of course, we would all be better off if lunkhead pet owners would figure out that spaying or neutering their cats is the right thing to do. Personally, I'd like to see animal abandonment considered a serious crime. It's not only animal cruelty, but as we can see from information such as what Quincy shares with us, it is an act that has a serious impact on the environment.

(Can't believe I've been set up to say this!) Thanks Moose & Squirrel! (If only I had a Russian accent.)

And right on about harsh penalties for abandonment. It's really sad (understatement) what some people do.

Thing is despite knowing about the problems involving cats & wildlife, when I walk through town I do enjoy seeing cats on front porches and those occasions when they decide to be sociable and say hello. Even when you backtrack a little because the cat starts following you.

Wild or domestic, we got some animal lovers here.