This is a bit bizarre: the attempted theft of a cat in broad daylight. A blond woman gets out of a car driven by someone else and walks over to a cat (Mo) resting on a front porch. She is patient in the way she grabs the cat. She does not rush it. The cat backs off and then she entices him/her towards her sufficiently to grab her. She runs to the waiting car. As she gets in the cat breaks free. The woman screams. You can just hear it in the video. The cat runs back to her original position on the porch.
So what does it all mean? Well, on the face of it, it is attempted theft which is a crime. It is quite a serious crime too because if you are convicted of theft you are a person who can’t be trusted. It’s a crime which undermines your standing in society because it tells the world you are untrustworthy. It’ll affect jobs and such like.
So what does the newspaper say about it? Well firstly the location is Lincoln, USA. It is North 52nd Street, just east of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus. The woman has been identified. I am not surprised as the security video is high quality. She is 17 years of age. She claims she did it on a dare and had no intention of keeping the cat. If she can convince the police that is true it avoids a charge of attempted theft of a cat. For theft you have to have the correct men rea meaning an intention to keep the cat and deprive the owner of the cat his/her property. Perhaps the young woman knows that and had an excuse prepared in case she was caught.
However, if it is a dare, it is a very stupid dare because it is all over the news and her credibility is tarnished. Is it a copycat of an earlier cat stealing?
Caught – No surprise
News media in Omaha and Lincoln picked up the video footage. Then someone contacted law enforcement. She believed the woman was her neighbor. Officers have visited the woman and her mother and asked her to apologize to Mo’s owner. There is a possibility of a charge against the woman of attempted larceny (an old-fashioned name for theft) and trespassing. Trespassing is actually a civil matter and not a crime so I don’t where that comes from. Maybe it is aggravated trespass because it is part of a crime.
I really don’t buy the ‘dare’ concept. It’s time the law comes down on these thieves once and for all. Pet theft is huge in the USA, which is another reason most shelters insist on microchipping an animal and most microchip as part of the vetting process. I wonder who was driving the car? That person should be brought up on charges too.
Yes, the dare scenario is what they’d say (i.e the thieves). As the cat escaped I’d expect the police to let her off. Too much paperwork for a cat. That’s the attitude.
If a person is so heartless to hurt an animal and its owner so badly for a stupid dare, that person is mentally unstable. Cruel. I would not show her mercy.
It is certainly stupid. Really idiotic if we are honest. Maybe naïvety is another factor. But at the end of the day it is very bad behavior. If she had got the cat into the car and let the cat lose somewhere else it could have ended badly.