COMPTON, CALIFORNIA-NEWS AND COMMENT: The usual feud has been sparked off by the presence of feral cats in Compton. Feral cats have the ubiquitous ability to divide society. On the one hand you have animal rights advocates who are sensitive to the welfare of feral cats even if they agree that they are a problem in society, and on the other hand you have the insensitive types who just want to rid themselves of feral cats and they don’t care how they do it. And in this instance a female suspect is accused of killing feral cats with glue traps. Feral cats have been found dead or dying stuck to glue traps.
It’s the first time I’ve heard about this method of killing feral cats, I must say. It’s quite novel and ingenious in its cruelty. There is no telling how ingenious and cruel people can be. The Crawford family living in Compton believe that their neighbour is behind the deaths. This woman has complained about them leaving food out for the cats. Once again this is a dispute between people who feed feral cats, normally under a TNR program, and those who strongly object to it.
This unnamed woman who is blanked out in a video by Fox 11 (see below) has often complained about feeding feral cats. Her alleged response has been to throw cat faeces into the yard of this family. The dispute escalated when the Crawfords found the body of a cat and a dying kitten in their trashcan.
Pamela Crawford said that the woman put out the glue traps with tuna and that she is going to kill more cats. The accused woman says that she didn’t poison any cats by which I presume that she is defending her actions as being within the law which they clearly aren’t if she is the culprit. She said that “the animal control people found the glue trap with nothing in it.”
Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
She denies being responsible for the carcass and the dying kitten found in the trashcan. She claims “the reason I wouldn’t do that is because I have a problem with fleas and ticks”. I am not sure what that means. Perhaps it means that she doesn’t want to be near cats because she has problems with fleas and ticks and therefore is not responsible for putting down the glue trap. If that’s her argument it doesn’t work.
Animal control are investigating. It seems possible, but probably unlikely, that the woman will be prosecuted if an investigation finds that she is culpable. On the face of it, it is a clear case of violation of animal welfare laws. Any advanced country has animal welfare laws which protect animals under these circumstances.
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