#268 Laws of the Wild

This lady was just convicted for poisoning her neighbor’s cat. The prosecutor first charged the lady with a felony with strict criminal penalties. Then the case got bogged down because no one could prove she intended the cat to suffer. The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. The prosecutor in the case didn’t think the lady should spend any time behind bars but the judge gave her 30 days anyhow. My question, what if the neighbor’s pet had been a pit bull? And what if the judge hadn’t been a cat lover?
Now before cat lovers flood the station with calls, let’s review the facts. The lady didn’t trap the cat and feed it poison. She didn’t put poison in the cat owner’s yard. She soaked some chicken in antifreeze and put it on her own back porch. And the neighbor’s cat, scratch that, the neighbors three cats invaded her territory and gobbled up her science experiment. That’s right, three cats, roaming around without their owner, no sign of a broken leash, trespassing where they didn’t belong, came up on someone else’s porch, who happens to be soaking some chicken in antifreeze and letting it ferment—kind of like kim chi—and purloin and eat that toxic brew. And the poor lady who owns the house gets thirty days in jail. Forget about smokers in bars, this is a serious property rights issue here. Pasado’s Safe Haven, an animal rights group, is all for the jail time. “We worked very hard to get a felony law in this state,” a spokesperson said, “and we want them to enforce it when people transgress this line of decency.” So tell me, where is this line of decency?
It’s a long established tradition that a homeowner can rid his yard and home of pests. It’s okay to put slug bait in your garden. Snails and slugs and slow-moving dachshunds beware. It’s okay to spray termite poison around your house and up on your wooden porch. Termites are living things too. My kid had a pet mouse. It’s okay to poison rats. So when is a pet a pest? I once had a neighbor, very nice person, loved cats. All 13 of em. He let the cats loose all day and night and cats, being cats roamed. Usually they would roam into my front window boxes and take a kitty litter in to my petunias. This was right by my window of course so when I would open it to catch a sweet summer breeze it would be sullied by the sour scent of cat anus. I asked the neighbor to control his cats. I implored the neighbor to control his cats. I trapped his cats and took them to the pound who then gave the neighbor back his cats. I put cayenne pepper in the window boxes. I finally closed the window till the neighbor moved. I never thought of anti-freeze. I read that the scent and flavor of antifreeze attracts dogs and cats all by itself. I guess the lady really didn’t want the cats to suffer. Or she wouldn’t have wasted all that good chicken. America, ya gotta love it.