Posted on 12/12/2012 6:06:50 PM PST by WXRGina
A Biloxi Community Court judge has sentenced a 78-year-old woman to 100 hours of community service for the hoarding of cats in a case believed to be unprecedented.
Dawn Summers, a 50-year resident of the Glendale Heights subdivision, thought she was already performing a community service.
She's the manager of a feral cat colony. In cooperation with a city-sanctioned program of the Humane Society of South Mississippi, she feeds cats that have been trapped, examined, spayed or neutered, vaccinated and released to live outdoors without fear of euthanasia.
She said she's fed as many as 27.
Her sentencing drew criticism from HSSM officials and animal lovers who attended a hearing Tuesday to show their support.
"This is already drawing national attention," said Tara High, HSSM executive director.
Contacts with Maryland-based feral cat organization Alley Cat Allies have said it is rare for a feral colony manager to be prosecuted for hoarding, High said.
Judge Pro Tem Dean Wilson sentenced Summers on Tuesday after an attorney met with him behind closed doors to discuss an agreement city officials signed in 2009. The agreement exempts residents from prosecution under the city's leash law if they are caring for feral cats released back into the community through the HSSM's Trap, Neuter, Return program.
The agreement -- a memorandum of understanding -- was attached to a resolution signed by Mayor A.J. Holloway.
But there's a hitch: a city ordinance that limits the number of domestic animals a resident can have wasn't changed when the resolution was signed. That means Summers only can feed up to six cats older than six months or she's breaking the law.
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
Wow...Biloxi must be a totally crime free city to have so much time to prosecute someone for feeding feral cats....under permission from the city
Why judges and prosecutors should lose immunity protection
I dont know who said it first, but The law is an ass..........
A friend of mine, a WW2 veteran, and one of the pilots in the Berlin Airlift, who home-cares his elderly bedridden wife, was FINED for feeding sex feral cats who sought shelter in his carport.
I kid you not.
That’s funny!
Around 30 years ago I was talking to a Mississippi State Wildlife Biologist. I disagreed with him on one thing. He thought we should not kill rattlesnakes.
On the other hand he said he killed every feral cat he saw in the woods. He said they were one of the most harmful things there is. I agree and I like cats.
I’m more concerned about feral democrats.
I live in north Texas. Every feral cat out there is one less house pet the owles and coyotes eat.
Can’t see them ever becoming a problem here. They are not that high on the food chain.
Given the short lifespan of feral cats she probably has a peak of 26 cats, and a minimum of 2 on a pretty regular basis. i'd suggest her's is a crime not worth worrying about.
I was fine $100 for feeding, fixing and vaccinating the cats that came into my house. I left that small ignorant community.
A friend of mine, a WW2 veteran, and one of the pilots in the Berlin Airlift, who home-cares his elderly bedridden wife, was FINED for feeding sex feral cats who sought shelter in his carport.
I kid you not.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Were they Freudian?
I lived in Western Kansas for 5 years. I spent a lot of time outdoors but don’t recall ever seeing a cat of any kind. I guess the prairies are just not cat territory.
Here in the NW Florida woods, the cats do pretty much what they want. We have coyotes but I don’t think the cats have much to fear from them, at least if there is a tree nearby.
Yep. I'm with you.
Mississippi ping
Maryland has several months of hard freeze during the winter months.Feral cat populations will be semi-controlled by nature.
Mississippi does not have the same weather cycles as Maryland.
What works in Maryland does not work at all in Mississippi.
I like your tagline. Spot-on.
When I was a teenager in NY state, I went to an auto junk yard looking for some parts and I remember 3 different cars in there that had long since dead cats impaled with engine fans and crushed in the fan belts. Cats would fall asleep on the warm engine blocks and the owner would start the engine later.
It sounds like the judge convicted her of something she wasn’t even charged with.
lol
He did.
I like your .gif file! :-)
Feral Viking Kitty PING!
People don't feed alligators here in Florida, nor do intelligent people in Michigan suburbs feed bears.
It tends to upset the natural balance of nature.
Oddly enough, there are laws forbidding exactly those activities, in both states.
Feral cats and non-native snakes in Florida are killing off migrating birds from the northern states.
Non-native plants, insects and animals introduced into Florida are killing many natural species, that would normally controll native insects, predator and prey animals, primarily our native lizards.
Your friend probably deserved an even higher fine that what he paid.
I love my pet cat!
I keep her inside my house.
Adult eagles, crows and vultures would consider her a tasty exotic treat, just as she would merrily chomp on the eggs of the same birds, if given the opportunity.
Thanks. I always loved that one. :) I can’t imagine how that place must have smelled.
Obama needs to step in and advise the judge to exercise “selective prosecution” like he has for those who want to deport illegal aliens. And these are AMERICAN CATS!!! ;o)
Did you ask the “Biologist” if he was also fond of rats and mice?
I'll remember to tell my two tomorrow morning as I awake with them both snuggled close to me in bed. Also, when they rub against my legs and greet me with a purr and chirp. When they wait patiently while I get their water and food, I'll be sure to tell them, "Cats aren't really domesticated animals." Especially, when the one lays on the table between the keyboard and my chest and gently kneads me while purring loudly with a contented smile on his closed eyed face. Yeah, I'm sure they'll agree - though I know they won't mean it. :o)
Dogs r’dogs and cats r’cats. I love ‘em both.
I had to keep my cats away from the computer while I read the news story. They try to read everything and would have been very upset by what the judge did.
Ha Ha Ha! Darn Spell-check. “Sex” is indeed spelled correctly!
Mr. Bumble upon being told that the law assumes that his wife acts under his direction.
Mr. Bumble replies “If the law supposes that ... the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
Stray-Cat Feeders TRAIN Feral Cats To Attack Humans
These cat-lovers always like to claim that feral cats run away from humans, and therefore aren’t the cause of all the thousands of new rabies cases.
Google for: feral cat attack rabies
Don’t be surprised at the numbers of search-hits you get, nor the thousands of horrendous stories that go with them. The numbers of rabies cases or required rabies shots caused by feral cats have been exponentially growing as fast as the cats breed.
These cat-feeders are TRAINING these disease-infested cats to approach humans for food. And what happens when that child (or foolish adult) doesn’t have food and reaches down to “pet the cute kitty” or pick it up to try to take it home? The cat lashes out and bites or scratches the hand that has no food for them. That means MANDATORY $1000+ painful rabies shots for the child (or any adult that is just as ignorant and naive). Paid for out of their OWN pockets — because NOT ONE of these cat-feeders carries one penny of liability insurance for the DEADLY danger they bring to their communities.
These are just the diseases they’ve been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Plague, Rabies, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasma. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, Tularemia, and Rat-Bite Fever can now also be added to that list.
The ONLY difference between rats and cats these days is that people who own and love pet-rats aren’t severely mentally unbalanced and trying to hoard feral-rat populations on other people’s public and private properties — while also relentlessly petitioning all their lawmakers to do so.
Pet-rat owners, and all other types of pet owners, at least have THEIR sh** together.
If only the same were true of all these mentally-ill TNR cRat-hoarders.
(I still think it’s their cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites in the cat-lovers’ brains that make them so unfalteringly blind to their own stupidity, hypocrisy, and absolute absurdity.)
The TNR CON-GAME
FACT: Trap & Kill failed because cats cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control.
FACT: Trap, Neuter, & Release (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue the cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today — FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague — Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)
FACT: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY _NOTHING_ HUMANE ABOUT TNR. Nearly every last TNR’ed cat dies an inhumane death by road-kill, from cat and animal attacks, environmental poisons, starvation, dehydration, freezing to death, infections, parasites, etc. And if very very lucky humanely shot to death or re-trapped and drowned (the two most common methods employed on all farms and ranches to protect their gestating livestock’s offspring and valuable native wildlife dying from cats’ Toxoplasmosis parasites). This doesn’t begin to count the thousands of defenseless native animals that cats skin alive and disembowel alive for their daily and hourly play-toys. The only difference in destroying cats immediately and humanely instead of trapping, sterilizing, then releasing them to an inhumane death; is that money isn’t going into an HSUS or SPCA board-member’s pocket, veterinarian’s pocket, cat-food company CEO’s pocket, or a drug-company CEO’s pocket. And that’s the ONLY difference!
FACT: Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any other caused by man. Cats are even worse than an oil-spill of continent-sized proportions. They not only kill off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines from run-off carrying cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found. From smallest of prey gutted and skinned alive for cats’ tortured play-toys, up to the top predators that are starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY food sources. (Precisely what cats caused on my own land not long ago.)
FACT: Hunted To Extinction (or in this case, extirpation of all outdoor cats) is the ONLY method that is faster than a species like cats can exponentially out-breed and out-adapt to. Especially a man-made invasive species like these cats that can breed 2-4X’s faster than any naturally occurring cat-species.
FACT: In _TWELVE_YEARS_ Alley Cat ALL-LIES of NYC have only reduced feral cats in their own city by 0.08% to 0.024% (as the months go on that percentage becomes more insignificant), allowing more than 99.92% to 99.976% to exponentially breed out of control. Here’s how Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES’ deceptive math works: If you TNR 4 cats and 3 get flattened by cars this translates to 75% fewer feral-cats everywhere. Alley Cat ALL-LIES can’t even reduce cats in their own city, yet they promote it as a worldwide solution. Then even bigger fools fall for it and promote it.
FACT: When researching over 100 of the most “successful” TNR programs worldwide, JUST ONE trapped more than 0.4%. Oregon’s 50,000 TNR’ed cats (the highest rate I found) is 4.9% of all ferals in their state. Yet, by applying population growth calculus on the unsterilized 95.1% they will have trapped only 0.35% of all cats in their state sometime this year. Less than 0.4% is a far cry from the required 80%-90% to be the least bit effective.
FACT: Their mythical “vacuum effect” is a 100% LIE. A study done by the Texas A&M University proved that any perceived “vacuum” is just the simple case that CATS ATTRACT CATS. Get rid of them all and there’s no cats there to attract more. I proved this myself by shooting and burying hundreds of them on my own land. ZERO cats replaced them FOR 3 YEARS NOW. If you want more cats, keep even one of them around, more will find you. That university study also found that sterilized cats very poorly defend any territory. Non-sterilized cats, being more aggressive, take over the sterilized cats’ resources (shelter & food if any). If there is any kind of “vacuum effect” at all, it is that sterilizing cats cause non-sterilized cats to restore the reproductive void.
FACT: During all this investigation I have discovered something that is unfaltering without fail. Something that you can bet your very life on and win every last time. That being — IF A TNR CAT-HOARDER IS TALKING THEN THEY ARE LYING. 100% guaranteed!
Destroying cats is neither hating cats nor a fear of cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Kudzu, African Cichlids, Burmese Pythons, Brown Tree Snakes, or any of the other myriad destructive invasive-species have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don’t even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I had been battling a cat-infestation for FIFTEEN YEARS. During which time cats destroyed nearly every last bit of native wildlife on my lands, from smallest of prey up to the top predators (starved to death from cats destroying their only foods for cats’ tortured play-toys). I kept listening to the advice of FOOLS like you which only made the problem worse and worse. Until there were nothing but your disease-infested invasive species cats left on my lands. Luckily I had a wise Sheriff who finally advised that I just shoot every last one of them, collared or not, HUNDREDS of them. Even he gave up trying to reason with idiots like you who kept letting their cats roam free, even after HE warned them that all their cats were going to be shot to death. Perfectly legal to do so throughout the USA too, contrary to cat-lovers’ oft-spewed manipulative LIES and DECEPTIONS. In only 2 seasons of hunting them down was I able to be rid of every last one of their invasive vermin cRats.
My wildlife has been recovering nicely for the last 3 years. I finally hear owls in my yard again. One so tame it sits on a branch about 10 feet from my door most days even when I’m out in the yard with it. It even nabbed a vole I had disturbed while walking through my yard one time, the owl landing nearly between my feet, it just looking straight-up at me all proud about its catch. I had to step over the owl to let it finish what it was doing. I get to listen to a chipmunk chorus again on calm late-afternoons. (Ever hear one of those? Sounds like a wooden windchime in various notes, all coming from every direction in the woods. It’s astounding.) Hawks are soaring in the skies regularly again. Grouse are drumming in the spring again. Spring-Peepers announce Spring again. A family of Gray Fox (one of the most beneficial native animals to grace the land) made a den near my home last year. I get to enjoy watching them prance through my yard nearly every other night, even bringing a kit or two with them. What clowns to enjoy watching. Birds I had never even seen in my life before now nest in my trees. 2 of these new species are Warblers listed in the Top-10-Songbirds of the world. What an amazing sound to awaken to during warmer months. The LIFELONG REWARDS for ridding your land of domestic cats (by shooting and burying every last one of them) are immeasurable and priceless!
I now feel nothing but immense pity and sorrow for anyone who has cats by them. Their lives are so dismally bereft, impoverished, and phenomenally empty that they don’t even realize it.
It is people who let a destructive invasive-species roam free that tortures-to-death all other wildlife, wasted for their cats’ play-toys, that have zero respect for ALL life. They don’t even care about their cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons, etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don’t even respect their fellow human being. This speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to all animals, cruelty to your own cats as well as all the native wildlife that you let your cats skin alive or disembowel alive. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law in existence.
If people do hate cats today, have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You’ve done so much to make people care about cats, haven’t you. If you want to do something about it, direct your sadly and sorely misplaced energies at those that are causing the problem, not at those who are actually solving it AND HAVE SOLVED IT 100%.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat’s grave.
CC
You can look at it this way .... it took me 2 hunting seasons to get rid of every last stray cat on my land, feral, pet, it mattered not. HUNDREDS OF THEM shot and buried. Buried to prevent them from killing any more wildlife even after dead with their diseases.
I tried to feed a shot-dead cat to some native wildlife and they promptly died from some disease in that cat-meat. Cats truly ARE complete wastes of flesh, they can’t even be used to safely feed native wild animals. Leaving any cat out in nature, alive OR dead, is no better than intentionally poisoning all your native wildlife to death.
(BTW: You MUST shoot all stray pet cats as well, for they are the very source of all feral cats. You can never train them to stay off your property, but you CAN, in time, train a cat-owner into being a responsible pet-owner. I found you have to make at least 12-15 of their cats permanently disappear before they even begin to learn how to be a responsible pet-owner and a respectable neighbor. They’re VERY slow learners and just that phenomenally stupid — hard to train into being a responsible human. They think all their cats are expendable. They don’t give one damn if they get ran over by cars, die from environmental poisons, cat or other animal attacks, etc.; not even if their cats are being shot to death, as I proved on my own land. They kept adopting and releasing MORE cats even AFTER they knew and heard all their other cats being shot to death. They don’t even give a damn if their cat causes a fatal car accident and a family of four is no more. Clearly they don’t really give one damn about those cats at all, nor any other lives on earth. Cats are just expendable lawn ornaments to them.
And all thanks to this effort of mine not ONE waste-of-flesh cat has returned to again senselessly destroy any valuable native-wildlife for over 3 years now. (Disproving again the cat-lovers’ psychotic “vacuum effect” LIE. Simple reason being: CATS ATTRACT CATS. Get rid of every last one and there’s none there to attract more of them. Should even ONE cat ever show up again? Shoot on sight, A.S.A.P., before it turns into hundreds again.)
This was accomplished through relentless vigilance and accuracy. I realized that the ONLY way to prevent this from ever happening again was to apply the very same techniques now to those that had caused this local ecological disaster in the very first place. To stop them, for myself and everyone else that has been tormented in life by people just like these mindless cat-lickers online. I’m not going away until every last person that advocates the release of these highly-destructive, native food-chain destroying, deadly-disease spreading, invasive-species cats have been stopped from practicing their criminally-irresponsible behavior. You can count on that.
CC
Sir, I’m so very glad you don’t live in my neighborhood. We would undoubtedly drive you mad. We live on 5 or 10 acre properties in a rural area, almost all of us with livestock (horses, goats, chickens and/or llamas) and almost all of us with feral cats that we deliberately sought out and brought in.
We have snakes, voles, gophers, ground squirrels, rats and mice which they very nicely control. We feed the cats and provide them with somewhere to live, a hay barn, a tack room, a shop - whatever. In return, they rid us of our rodents and snakes. We occassionally lose a cat to a coyote but most of them are pretty street smart.
They are all spade/neutered by the humane society and given shots. We use humane traps to catch strange cats that show up and have them spade and/or neutered. We suffer no loss of owls, hawks or coyotes from cats, we lose very few birds although we could stand to lose a lot of them - they show up for the grain and hay or the gardens.
Your FACT’s are wrong imo. All of them.
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