Yes, we are in England, UK. An inebriated pensioner and utterly committed cat hunter (by his own admission) shot a Siamese cat in his back garden. The cat had strayed there from a neighbour’s house. He’s been convicted and sentenced to 12 weeks in prison. He is appealing the sentence.
The city is Cambridge, England. A peaceful and pleasant location well known for its top rated university. Christopher Boswell, 73, shot the Siamese cat with his air rifle.
In court he admitted that he hated cats because they were a menace to wildlife and birds. He admitted that he had hunted them for more than half a century! Incidentally, last night, neighbours claimed that there had been a spate of cat disappearances in the area in the past five years. Twenty pets had gone missing. They don’t know what happened to them. I wonder whether they should question Mr Boswell about this as well? I bet the police won’t though.
The owner of the Siamese cat, Caroline King, had knocked on Boswell’s door when she realised that her one-year-old cat Pia had gone missing in April. Without prompting or provocation, Boswell told her that he hated cats. He also told her in no uncertain terms that cats are a menace to wildlife and birds and “I’ve been hunting them since I was 17 years old”.
She thought he was joking but then he added:
“I’ve shot it twice; once in the head, once in the body and I have put it in the neighbours’ garden, you had better knock on their door.”
Thus, he openly admitted that he had committed a crime. Perhaps he was inebriated. His defence lawyer in the magistrates court said that his client had taken painkillers and a significant quantity of alcohol before he had picked up the airgun.
His aim was off as he missed the cat’s head but he still caused significant damage resulting in the amputation of the Siamese cat’s right-hand hind leg. One pellet lodged in the neck. The vet’s bill came to £5,168.
In court he regretted that he had caused suffering and he apologised through his barrister. He said that his motivation was not born out of a wish to cause suffering but a desire to protect birds.
The magistrate said that he had committed a particularly nasty offence and added:
“This was a deliberate act intending to kill or seriously injure the cat which had strayed into your garden. The shots caused extensive injuries to the leg and to the neck and left it immobilised, clearly in a lot of pain. Clearly this would have caused serious distress not only to the cat but also to the owners.”
Boswell was also ordered to pay £1,500 in compensation and a £115 victim surcharge and to give up his rifle which was destroyed.
Miss King is devastated and horrified. She has struggled to “fathom why somebody I do not know would carry out such an act”.
“I cannot believe Chris would be so calm and calculated over what he has done as if he got some enjoyment from it – as he did not have to tell us and could have chosen to remain quiet” (Miss King’s statement to the court)
She felt vulnerable after the attack and was worried that he would assault her on the street but the magistrates decided that a restraining order was unnecessary because Mr Boswell had not contacted her since the incident.
The story reminds us that in England, a so-called animal loving country, there are people living ostensibly decent lives and presenting a veneer of good neighbourliness who have high levels of motivation to hurt cats. I’m sure that Mr Boswell’s neighbours are as surprised as readers of The Times which is the source of the story.
Michael, Isn’t Jim your stalking troll?
Sometimes I think someone needs to give him a couple of gut shots and put him out of our misery.
Why wasn’t the shooter forced to pay 5,168 pounds??
I was wondering that too! 1,500 is far cry from 5,168!
Does the owner get to use her air gun on the defendant instead?
I see bird loving is the new excuse for cat hating.
Not new…
And at least 20 cats have gone missing from her neighbourhood plus one other had been shot (but returned home).
While I don’t agree with this, one friend makes sure that when he shoots a cat he gives it a “gut shot”. So that it will slowly bleed-out and can get back to the owner. This way, should the cat-owner find it before it dies, the owner will have to also suffer the cost of saving the life of their cat as further punishment for letting it roam free. Those vet bills can be costly. If I wasn’t such a stickler for not seeing any animal suffer to death, even your least-worthy-of-life cats, I probably would do this too to teach cat-owners their well-deserved lessons in life. I guess you’ll all have to learn how to grow-up into being responsible adults–one way or another. The cost will always be yours and yours alone–until you grow-up.
I am letting you comment on this one to show other people how obnoxious you are.
Do you also place toddlers’ hands on a hot burner to teach them a lesson? You’re sick. I pray you are not employed in any part of the legal system.
The police should investigate. He must be the man surely. We need a follow up on this.
I had a neighbor’s two pure-bred (appeared to be) Siamese cats sitting under my hummingbird-feeder one summer. I watched them both jumping up and trying to snatch hummingbirds out of the air. Shot them both. Apparently they’re not too bright. The other one didn’t run when it heard the gunfire or seeing its sibling drop dead. When I told a cat-shooting friend about it, he asked, “Siamese? Aren’t those really expensive?” I replied, “I sure as damn well hope so! Maybe the irresponsible owner will finally learn their well-deserved lesson. They sure as hell earned the death of their cats, that’s for sure.”
Hello Jim. Thanks for commenting. Although the subject matter of your comment is distressing to cat lovers at least it is politely written and therefore I am able to publish it.
The trouble with your logic is that you must have committed a crime and don’t tell me that you haven’t. If you have not committed a crime then the criminal law where you are is broken.
Perhaps in your extreme confidence you could tell the public exactly where and when you shot two Siamese cats. Then somebody could report you to the local police to see whether (unlikely) they turn up to investigate the matter.
Now why would the police investigate the matter? They were the ones who told me to legally shoot any of the neighbor’s cats on my land. You still fail to understand all the laws in the world where it is perfectly legal to destroy any animal on your own lands year round. (Endangered and regulated game-animals exempt.) I guess you’ll just keep crying until you are in your grave. Or you stop letting target-practice cats run loose. Either or, doesn’t matter to anyone. Your free-roaming cats will all die. That’s all you have to really know I guess.
Stop hiding behind your anonymous name. Be a real man and come out of the dark. Are you scared?
NO sane person in the world wants to get a bunch of psychotic and sociopathic cyber-stalking & cyber-bullying cat-lickers invading their personal lives. (Just ask Elisa how she does this every day of her life. LOL) All that do learn this lesson learn it far far too late.
You psychotic cat-lickers post any and all anti-cat news events on your web-sites, blogs, email-chains, etc. (I keep track of these to watch how you operate), then within 1 hour of the news up-to 50,000 of you from all over the world (that’s only 0.0007% of the world’s population that are manipulating everyone with their lies and deceptions, to put your “powerful” cat-lobby numbers in true real-world perspective) will descend on any site that is about some controversial cat issue, start up at least 3 international petitions, and then fire-off addresses (business and home), phone numbers (business and home), names, and even photos of everyone involved so you can then cyber-bully everyone into submission. You even post any and all 800 phone numbers of local authorities and agencies near the cats so you can then launch a phone-calling DoS (denial of service) attack on those agencies or any businesses involved. (I have archived all your cyber-attacks and methods for 7 years now, but this has been going on for decades.) The more dedicated cat-lickers from organizations like Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES (who risk losing their multi-million-dollar con-artist and deception-artist racketeering empire) will then even fly cross-country or internationally to attend any protests and meetings to scream their warped, ecologically-illegal, and inhumane views. You even send off death-threats to everyone involved, even lawmakers and congressmen. There’s no limit to your cyber-bullying.
This is precisely why everyone is learning to destroy all of your disease-infested vermin cats on their properties as quickly and quietly as possible. Telling nobody beforehand about any cats even being there. Long before you psychotic cyber-bullying cat-licker sociopaths and psychopaths get wind of the cats. Shoot (or trap & drown) cats first — tell no-one later. The only thing worse than feral cats are feral cat-lickers. You can legally shoot the former, not the latter. You need to pay lawyers and courts to get rid of the latter. THEN you can get rid of your cats. And the sad part is, that’s EXACTLY what happens, each and every time.
People are wising-up. If ANY cats are around they destroy every last one of them first, before they make any other move. Before you cyber-bullying cat-lickers can do anything about it to try to destroy and waste everyone’s lives even more than you already have with your disease-infested invasive-species vermin cats. Not quite the results that you sociopathic cat-lickers had intended, but that’s what you’re getting! 🙂
WOW I got a rise out of you! If you are spending as much time as you indicate you are on your mission of tracking websites, blogs, email chains etc then you must not be much of a productive citizen. It is clear that you are obsessed with destroying all cats. Your venomous hatred of good organizations such as Alley Cat Allies shows how demented you really are. Oh, btw, your real name is already known.
Woody this is your trademark:
cat-lickers
Tell us about the birds of Galveston. Go on…
Yep. That’s the psycho of Galveston.
🙂 I like the description.
Well, I know that the police where you are are as bad as you! They’re probably just like you. Arrogant, conceited, cat haters too ready to use their guns on black people and so on and so forth. Oh please God spare me your diatribes. It is not legal to destroy any animal on your land anywhere in the world. It is certainly not legal for me to kill a cat in my back garden. That in itself disproves your stupid argument.
We can only hope that you’ll stray onto the land of someone who hates animal killer losers. Because you are an animal and as you stated it’s legal where you live to shoot animals illegally on your land. I’m so thankful to know someone like you personally.
Thankful to NOT know someone like you. Oops typo on my first message. Also cats killing birds is part of the circle of life.
Thanks for commenting.
I’ll be sure to notify every person on earth who runs their own game-hunting preserve on their own lands that Micheal Broad said they are illegal everywhere in the world. And all those hunting-law brochures printed by the government every year where it states, “Unregulated small-game of any species is legal for hunting without any license whatsoever on your own land. A gun-owner’s license is not even required.” Maybe they can throw all those government officials that publish all those illegal laws into jail too. That should make them all stop. Because, well, you know … Micheal Broad knows all the laws of the world about killing animals. Odd too that they shoot feral cats in the UK legally; listed as unregulated, open-season year-round. How is that done? I guess you haven’t talked to everyone else in the UK to tell them that that is illegal. That must be it. Word was out that you tried to be a lawyer once. It’s easy to see why that didn’t work for you either. Your unrealistic imaginary beliefs are not laws–anywhere. That’s why.
Don’t you realize that all your readers can now see just how obvious you are about making up anything you want, no matter how outlandish, and then trying to tell everyone that those self-deceptive lies of your are facts? You don’t just have egg on your face, you’ve smeared a whole 12-egg omelet on it. But then you’re used to that, aren’t you.
Regarding the first section of your comment, you have taken what I’ve said out of context as usual. This is what I said:
It is not legal to destroy any animal on your land anywhere in the world. It is certainly not legal for me to kill a cat in my back garden. That in itself disproves your stupid argument.
Just to clarify, I’m saying that it is not automatically legal to destroy any animal on your land. There are obviously exceptions such as the nasty practice of the hunting of lions in South Africa within small enclosures where stupid hunters think that they are actually being hunters when you are simply slaughtering an animal bred for the purpose.
I do not know all the laws in the world about animal protection an animal welfare. However, I do know quite a lot about it. In fact I have a full page on the subject which you can read here:
https://pictures-of-cats.org/laws-on-domestic-cat-breeds-wild-cat-species-and-animal-rights-law-enforcement.html
We are not allowed to shoot fell cats legally in this country unless under certain restricted in very limited circumstances.
You state the following:
I think that you had better tell me which law you are referring to and please quote chapter and verse. I need the name of the statute and the date and the case law to support that statement. And they need to know which country or state it relates to. If you can’t do that then what you have said is meaningless.
You have some serious misconceptions about animal-laws, and indeed misconceptions about reality itself.
You, and every other human on earth, evolved into an omnivore. You are by very definition, by nature’s declarations, or even by your God, defined as an omnivore. A species that eats both plants and animals. By your very nature you are given the right to kill animals from the very moment that you were born.
Now, if you can understand that, then maybe you’ll also understand why you are oh so very wrong about laws concerning killing of animals.
Laws created by humans don’t GIVE you the right to kill animals, laws created by humans can only DENY YOU FROM KILLING CERTAIN ANIMALS. These laws are written to protect endangered species to preserve bio-diversity, and so that hunters just don’t go willy-nilly killing every last game-animal species until there are none left for others to go out hunting.
Human created laws only LIMIT how many and what few species you should-not or cannot (by law) kill.
Nature, your very evolutionary genetics, says you were born with the god-given right to kill animals. It’s not the other way around. Human created laws don’t grant you permission to kill animals. Human created laws only limit how many you can kill. If that were not true then you couldn’t even pay others to kill animals for you to make cat-food for you.
Got it?
Where did you get that from? I don’t think killing an animal to eat it is about rights. It is about needs. There is no automatic right to kill animals to eat. And being omnivores we don’t have to eat animals anyway. In addition, if we do have to kill animals we should kill them under strictly regulated conditions and not domestic animals with a .22 rifle in one’s backyard!
Laws written to protect animals are not exclusively concerned with protecting endangered native wild species. They encompass all animals and are concerned primarily with animal welfare in general and they include pets. There are laws concerning hunting as well but that is a different matter.
Your world seem to revolve around hunting because you view animal welfare laws in the light of hunting and endangered species but not in the much wider area of animal welfare generally which includes domestic animals.
Also, don’t lecture me. You are an incredibly arrogant person and I’m afraid it is your arrogance which presents a barrier to rational thought. I don’t think I have met a more arrogant person that you.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. It is not even worth commenting upon.
My thoughts too but I have let him have his say this time for sake of non-censorship and open discussion. He’s mad though 😉