Little Boy was a three-year-old black-and-white cat. He was loved by his owner. He must have been an indoor/outdoor cat because he went outside on January 18 to go to the toilet. He never came back. Due to a catalogue of events all of which are due to human behaviour, he ended up being killed several days later at the Wake County Animal Shelter, North Carolina, USA.
The first thing that happened to Little Boy was that he was trapped by a neighbour. Clearly the neighbour does not like cats coming onto his property so he set a trap. Cats are not concerned about property boundaries. Therefore it was no concern of Little Boy whether he was on someone else’s property. As far as I’m aware, in the USA, cats cannot trespass on someone’s property by which I mean that the law of trespass does not apply to cats. Nonetheless he was trapped and I wonder whether it was legal in this instance to trap him like this because this initial event led to the death of this cat.
No doubt the person who trapped him called Animal Control and they responded by collecting the cat on the following Tuesday, the 19th, whereupon they took the cat to the local shelter: Wake County Animal Shelter. Animal Control may be in breach of the law here. The law clearly states that they can impound a cat that appears to be “lost, stray or unwanted”. None of these conditions apply to Little Boy. They decided he was a stray because it was convenient to do so and because the person who trapped him no doubt said so.
At this stage Little Boy was in danger. We don’t know whether he had a microchip. Apparently he didn’t because there is no report that he was micro-chipped. If that is the case that is another failure in this litany of minor failures leading to a catastrophe.
Once at the shelter he behaved aggressively which further jeopardised his survival because we know that aggressive cats in shelters without any identification are liable to be put down.
In North Carolina there is an obligation for a shelter to allow a cat’s owner to collect their cat within 72 hours and therefore they have to notify the owner if they can and if not place a notice on the cage where the cat is in the shelter and on the website if they have a website.
This happened (but late for the website notification). The 72 hour period relates to 3 working days and working days which means the usual working days of the shelter even if those working days are interrupted, as happened in this case, by a storm which closed the shelter on the Friday and over the following weekend.
Initially Little Boy’s owner, Teresa, did not attend the local shelter to find out whether her cat was there or not. She probably fretted a bit and then looked on the Internet and finding the shelter’s website could not see her cat. On Thursday 21st January her cat was on the website whereupon she called the shelter but failed to receive an answer. As a result she emailed them at 6:50 PM on Thursday but at that time the shelter was closed and it remain closed on Friday and over the weekend because of the storm. As a result she could not contact the shelter and over this period the 72 hour time period expired during which Little Boy was euthanised.
There are two minor errors in the above narrative. Firstly the cat’s owner saw fit not to visit in person local shelters quickly enough or at all and neither did the shelter concerned allow an extra time period for the owner to collect her cat due to the storm which interrupted their operations.
I have checked the law of North Carolina with respect to rescue cats at shelters under the heading “Redemption of Owner Generally”. This shelter is strictly speaking not in breach of the law as they have stated. But they could have used their discretion and common sense to have extended the usual working hours by an extra day to take into account, as mentioned, the storm which forced them to close their doors and operation at that time.
As for Little Boy’s aggression, this is unexpected. It is almost normal for a domestic cat under these circumstances to be anxious, nervous and therefore aggressive. This would be defensive aggression. For the shelter to decide that this cat was aggressive in general because of his specific behaviour inside a cage at this time was an error of judgement. It is another error among a catalogue of errors which failed Little Boy.
Little Boy should never have been killed by a cat shelter. He was simply going outside to the toilet. That is still legal and perfectly acceptable in most of America as far as I am aware. The whole thing kicked off with a neighbour trapping the cat. That single act was, on its own, the single biggest factor which led to his death. A more sensitive neighbour and a more accepting neighbour and one who did not dislike cats could have dealt with the matter far more agreeably.
If I were to blame anybody in this unnecessary death I would blame the neighbour. And the owner, if she wishes to blame somebody, should really blame him and to some extent herself. To a certain extent she is the author of her own distress and demise. I wonder whether she knew that her neighbour was trapping cats and disliked cats going on his property. We don’t know. If she did know then it was not safe to let her cat go outside under almost any circumstances other than on a leash.
In addition, Little Boy’s owner should have been a little more vigourous and rigourous in locating her lost cat. She had a couple of days to find him before the storm and it appears to me that she waited too long whereupon the storm intervened to seal Little Boy’s fate. A sad story.
Primary source: Elisa Black-Taylor’s article on Examiner.com. The law on this.
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Even an indoor-only cat can escape. Do you ever go on business trips/vacation? What would happen if an indoor-only cat slips out while a cat sitter is coming in? This is my constant worry. I have my father there now, but he is 85. I also have gave the microchip company the phone number of my friend as a backup in case they cannot reach me, but something can always go wrong. I think 72 hour period is way too short. If you are abroad or on a cruise, you can be in the middle of the ocean if your cat slips out past the cat sitter.
That’s what I get for trying to argue with an idiot 🙂
Yes agreed Dee. All I can do at the end of the day is ban the bastard.
Bless you Elisa for your effort.
But, it’s useless to even try to reason with this sociopath even though I do it myself sometimes still. Even psychopaths can be stabilized with meds; but, there is no treatment that helps sociopaths. They are the real “vermin”, a word Jimbo uses so often.
If he has someone feeding him info on me he needs to fire them 😉
This is wrong. Only under a exception in the statute can a person kill a cat on their land. The specific exception is usually when the cat is harassing animals (livestock for example). You are distorting the law to meet your own perverted ideals. You have been banned again.