NEWS AND COMMENT – FLORIDA, USA: This is the first time that I have seen a video on the Internet of a person being arrested for animal cruelty; specifically, cruelty to a cat. This is why I have published the video on this website. It is short and rather non-descript but, for me, interesting nonetheless. I believe that it was made with a bodycam on another police officer. It is published with the agreement of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office. You may have read this news story. It is about a Florida woman living in a mobile home on a trailer park next to a waterway (I believe this supplies water to the district).
She wanted her ex to leave her mobile home and he was taking too long to vacate and so she decided to kick him out. In doing that and to encourage him to go she allegedly grabbed his cat which was inside a cat carrier and threw it into a nearby waterway. He immediately went in after it and recovered his cat. Fortunately, the cat is okay.
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.
News media reports that the cat was submerged for about 20 seconds. I’m surprised to read this but all’s well that ends well as they say. The woman concerned is Christa Anne Thistle, 53, and you see her grumbling in the video as the police officer handcuffs her. You can hear denying that she threw the cat in the waterway. She’s obviously quite shocked that she is being arrested.
She was also charged with an assault on her ex-partner. In what appears to have been an act of defiance and belligerence she demanded to be taken to jail so she could be released on bond and then come back to her mobile home and kill her ex-boyfriend!
This was a classic domestic argument that got out of control and as is so commonplace in these domestic disputes, the family cat is the one who truly suffers and, in this case, could have been killed. With great good grace he survived thanks to the quick response from Thistle’s ex.
When the police arrived, he was wet from the waist down, which is another way of saying that the waterway was waist deep. It was, however, deep enough to drown a cat. He was shivering and I presume drying off his cat.
The cat’s name is Stanley and he was taken into custody by local animal services for evaluation.
SOME MORE CAT NEWS REPORTS:
