Both of these ordinances create cats at large while simultaneously prohibiting them, and create fertile ground for another illegal practice, cat dumping. Although it's against the law, police and prosecutors don't assemble cases because the sole penalty is jail time, a penalty
But, a local rescue group tells me cat dumping is becoming more and more common. There is a state law prohibiting the practice but no local ordinance, and the enforcement branch, the Edmond animal welfare officers, investigate the practice admirably. However, they don't assemble cases intended to penalize these slimy people. And, there is a good argument to be made it isn't appropriate to fill prisons with people who belong in mental hospitals. The better countermeasure would be rewriting a person's DNA, as the driving urge to torture and kill has a genetic indicator as certainly as does psychosis. The technology exists but is highly classified, and statutes don't provide for this remedy, of course.
What I've witnessed was always a horror show, and I didn't understand it was deliberate. My next door neighbors are a young, single mother and her daughter, who is now about seven. They have lived next door about five years, and the heavy practice began about three years ago. The behavior is driven by the mom's parents, who live about three blocks away, script events and provide dump animals. The family has experimented with different methods of depriving the animals of food and water, short and long term, and hurting or injuring them to achieve attachment separation, the dump. They are connected to a network of people who provide advice and animals.
I estimate between 40 and 60 animals have passed through their hands in the last five years, with only the two they appear to have now surviving. Up to a point I thought it was inadvertence, ignorance, stupidity or negligence, as the neighbor is anorexic and therefore not concerned with feeding pets if she is not concerned with her own nutritional needs. The first cat requesting my care had been slowly starved over the course of about a year. She was very thin, and once given regular food became a couple pounds overweight very quickly, but never ate hardly anything. A few others dribbled out, then they turned out a kitten that was skin and bones.
The little red tabby put out pure liquid diarrhea for four full weeks. He ate like a horse. When I went to fill bowls, he would run around my feet so fast his feet didn't touch the ground—a picture that will haunt me the rest of my life. After a couple months, he was old enough to neuter and vaccinate, and I sent him to the doctor. My step sister adopted him, and my neighbor's parents, who knew I had him and hadn't said a word, began insisting I return the cat, threatening to call the police.
I told them I didn't have the cat, but they could ask my step sister. I told them to go ahead and call the police, and that if I had the cat, I wouldn't give it back because they had almost killed it. They told me I was the worst person who ever lived, and would regret having crossed them!
They followed through with this threat, dumping dozens of cats in varying degrees of distress. I chose to ignore the poor animals, thinking they had simply escaped and that these possibly slightly responsible people would resolve the issue. They typically dumped them during hours the animal shelter is closed, so no officer was available, and when the temperature was very low or high. That caused them to quickly perish, and neighbors quietly talked about finding their bodies scattered around the neighborhood.
Simultaneously, my neighbor's parents complained to the management of this mobile home community that I should be evicted because of some alleged, unknown misconduct, allegations to which the office idiots listened and acted. However, they haven't been able to conjure legal grounds for producing the necessary notice of eviction to be tendered by the sheriff and I haven't had to move, although the process cost me somewhere around $10,000 last year.
When my neighbor's father took my cat Fuzzy to the shelter for euthanasia in October, I decided I'd had enough. Fuzzy was saved at the last minute by his microchip, and the shelter happily returned him to me without charges they could have assessed, much to this greasy family's dismay. But, the shelter warned me harshly about violating the city's stupid cat leash law.
Since October, they've dumped about another dozen cats. I witnessed a cat being beaten, and the young girl brought me a cat with feces smeared on its face and in its eyes, saying a dog pooped on her cat, laughing at the lie. I spoke with the shelter and submitted a written description of the events. They conducted an investigation, thanked me and asked me to keep them advised. They told me the cats I haven't "sent away" can be the source of multiple citations for violating the cat limit and leash ordinances; so, I get victimized by the dumping, then by being cited for not sending the cats out for adoption or euthanasia. I no longer have the ability to search a ready network of people who might adopt them, so for them it's either life or death, and I'm forced to make a stand. My officer talked with both households, and even though they know the police are watching them, they have dumped additional cats, and stood outside grinning like fools at me while they did it. And, I submitted another written description. I took one cat to the shelter, but have acquired three more I don't want but haven't wanted to kill. The other cats disappeared.
What emerges is a pattern that says the ordinances and their enforcement want you to do what my neighbor family does: acquire cats in large numbers, starve and torture them, then release them into a neighborhood, creating a nuisance, and aggressively produce turnover. Anyone who so much as glimpses the animals assumes ownership, in the eyes of the shelter, and can get tickets. I never argue with animal welfare, but am happy to tell them about the origin of the ordinances, and they ignore me. It turns out the AAV, the Association of Avian Veterinarians, is not a professional organization, but a fraudulent charity. As you can see in the article below, the ordinances are drawn from a policy statement by the AAV, which states it wants to protect pretty little birdies. The hallmark clue is that AAV's website has a link that lets you donate to this worthy cause.
Legitimate professional associations don't solicit donations for causes. The website also doesn't make it clear what this protection of pretty little birdies entails: a death crusade against kitty cats. That's right, AAV exists to create war to the death for kitty cats, making the specious claim domestic felines spread disease to humans, which they don't, and pose the greatest threat to pretty little birdies, which they don't.
Cats kill mice, rats and snakes, but an association of mouse, rat or snake veterinarians soliciting funds to battle kitty cats wouldn't get many donations, so we get the AAV. Donations to AAV buy lobbying for cat limit and leash ordinances of the smarmy sort, and apparently buy such things as recent press release "news" stories like this terrible example. This story was a headline feature every day for a week on NBC Nightly News, so you can know it's pure baloney. It was widely reported, claiming the United States' 80 million plus cats kill 3.7 billion birds annually. The story expresses shock about this number, and tells cat owners to have a serious talk with their pets.
Are you kidding me? The article apologizes for the fact the number of dead birds is estimated, or extrapolated, from a study of many different countries plus the U.S., meaning the number is unreliable, as in pulled from thin air. The study criticizes trap-neuter-return (TNR) because it spares cats from euthanasia. The gall of it.
Cats carry zero diseases communicable to humans. Birds, on the other hand, carry avian flu and west Nile virus, communicable to humans. If these diseases don't kill you, they make you very sick for a very long time, and you probably suffer for the rest of your life. So, if the cats of our country are killing only 3.7 billion birds, I'd say they're dragging their feet, and can eat as many additional birds as they want, so far as I'm concerned. Generally, I haven't observed cats are much interested in birds, but in an individual's life, it may eat three or four.
The rules are intended to keep cats indoors, and recognized, accepted studies say this helps them live longer and in better health. The rules don't take into account cats aren't built for it. After one cat realized he would be indoors and only out on a leash, he backed out of the harness, ran away and never came back, so my attempted compliance created a cat at large, which is what the rule is really intended to do.
My neighbors have shown me they are determined, ruthless, cold-blooded serial killers and have targeted me. I don't know if all cat dumpers have that as a purpose, but my dumpers do. This is not an actionable problem for police, who would like it if these nuts crack and kill me, too. It's eerily prophetic that I mentioned "Crazy Pat" Sherrill in the original article, because both my neighbor's parents look just like him and act just like him, with a bigger body count. These rules are pure New World Order, Agenda 21, Common Purpose, Machiavellian bullshit. They are un-American and un-Christian. They promote the unhealthy idea death is a solution. My neighbors put the young girl in the center of this activity, so I get to see them teaching the skill to her, and the behavior is passed along generation to generation. Using a child in a setting including killing animals is a hallmark of devil worship or summoning. Along with a report from a neighbor people have been seen marking the perimeter of this little community with the blood of a headless chicken, that may be what they think they're doing. Caring for these animals has overwhelmed my life, and keeps me busy every hour of every day and night. This level of harassment is unacceptable, with no simple or morally tenable options.
If every square inch of Edmond's city limits were piled a thousand feet high with these killers' dump animals, it would not be actionable to law enforcement. If you help one of the animals, you're a vile, despicable violator. I shouldn't be, but I admit I'm surprised.
If you read the story about Sherrill linked below, you see that none of the "gun control measures" being discussed now would have addressed his shooting spree at the Edmond post office.
I think of this conflict as The Pussy War, in honor of the cats who bravely gave their lives and the pussy cowards who killed them.
