Grace Is Out of the Hospital and Has a New Home but Her Nail Gun Assailant Remains as Free as a Bird Thanks to the Authorities' Dereliction of Duty

The Attack Has Left Grace Blind in Her Left Eye

"She's adapted really well. She's spoiled. She's real playful and she's alive and she's just a ball of love."
-- James Symons

Amazing Grace, who was intentionally shot between the eyes with a nail gun back in May, is out of the hospital and has a new home.

Sadly, she is now blind in her left eye. Neurological damage, infections, seizures, and problems with balance, which are so common with these types of horrific injuries, remain a concern but hopefully none of them will manifest themselves and her recovery will be complete and she will be able to go on and have a full and happy life.

Her new guardian is Sioux City, Iowa, resident James Symons who was so touched by her plight that he came forward and generously offered to give her a home. "She's adapted really well," he told KTIV-TV of Sioux City on June 25th. (See "Update: Cat Shot with Nail Gun Improving, Adopted.") "She's spoiled. She's real playful and she's alive and she's just a ball of love."

Symons also has established a page for her on Facebook where her many supporters from around the world can follow her progress. More recently, she and Symons are believed to have relocated to Homer, twenty-three kilometers south of Sioux City, in the neighboring state of Nebraska.

Grace was discovered cowering underneath a parked truck on the 500 block of Center Street in Sioux City sometime in mid-May by an unidentified woman who in turn contacted Animal Control. She then was taken to Siouxland Animal Hospital where two days later surgeons removed a three-inch nail from between her eyes. 

Since she had been living underneath the truck for at least three days, it is likely that she was shot several days prior to that time. It therefore truly is a miracle that she was able to have held on for as long as she did before help arrived.

The Siouxland Humane Society, the Humane Society of the United States, and an anonymous donor are offering a $3,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who shot Grace. Predictably, no arrests have been made and none are expected. (See Cat Defender post of June 1, 2010 entitled "Grace Survives Being Shot Point-Blank Between the Eyes by a Monster with a Nail Gun but Sioux City Authorities Refuse to Even Investigate the Attack.")

Rewards of this sort are offered by humane officials as a public relations stunt designed to absolve them from the arduous task of actually conducting a criminal investigation and apprehending the individuals who commit these dastardly crimes. Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that humane officials in Sioux City have lifted so much as a little finger in order to bring this scumbag to the altar of justice.

Secondly, humane officials make a fair amount of moola off of the suffering of cats like Grace. Donations pour in from concerned citizens while, due to their calculated inaction, there is little danger that they ever will be forced to part with any reward money.

They thus win all the way around at the expense of cats. Instead of championing the cause of cats and other abused animals, humane officials actually are aiding and abetting their abusers in the commission of their crimes.

That in itself puts the lie to all of their morally indignant rhetoric and fraudulent claims about loving cats. Any true ailurophile would be willing to move heaven and earth in order to put the perpetrator of this despicable crime behind bars. In addition to securing a measure of justice for Grace, doing so also would deter some, but not all, individuals from committing similar crimes.

More to the point, it is utterly preposterous for anyone to believe that the offer of a minuscule reward is going to bring cat abusers to justice. There hardly ever are any eyewitnesses to these attacks and the perpetrators are not the sort of individuals who are likely to suffer from pangs of conscience and thus come forward and confess.

Grace with the Nail in Her Brain

Au contraire, it is only the expenditure of resources and manpower on sound detective work that is going to produce results. In America, however, that is precisely what humane groups and the law enforcement community are committed to not doing.

For example, in late August of 2009 a four-year-old orange and white cat named Brownie was shot through the head with a thirteen-inch arrow in Bloomington, Indiana, and despite the offer of a reward of $2,920 and an appearance on NBC's Today Show his assailant remains at large. (See Cat Defender post of January 6, 2010 entitled "Large Reward Fails to Lead to the Capture of the Archer Who Shot an Arrow Through Brownie's Head.")

The police are even far worse rotters in the woodpile when it comes to investigating animal cruelty. Their principal function in any society is to serve as the hired guns of the capitalists and the bourgeoisie. Whatever time and resources that they have left are in turn devoted to lining their own pockets with graft and abusing the poor.

Given such a mindset, the police are never going to take animal cruelty seriously. In fact, they kill their own fair share of cats, both big and small.

For example, the police in Cecil, Pennsylvania, murdered Roger Oldaker's ten-year-old Persian, Elmo, on March 22, 2008. Their counterparts in Raymore, Missouri, did likewise to Kelly Wesner's nineteen-year-old cat, Tobey, on Labor Day of last year.

Acting solely upon the uncorroborated testimony of cat-haters, the police in both instances appointed themselves as judge, jury, and executioners. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008 and September 16, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo" and "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey.")

In Granite Falls, North Carolina, one-hundred-seventy miles west of the Research Triangle, state trooper Shawn C. Houston illegally trapped and shot next-door neighbor Andrea Evans's five month-old kitten, Rowdy, in 2009. For that heinous crime, District Court Judge Carlton Terry Jr. let him off with the payment of $125 in court costs.

He was fired by the Highway Patrol in January of this year but his appeal of that decision is scheduled to be heard next month. (See News and Observer of Raleigh, May 29, 2010, "Trooper Kills a Kitten and Loses His Job.")

When it comes to big cats, just about all cops behave as if they were Jim Corbett on safari in India. For instance, the San Francisco Police murdered an Amur tigress named Tatiana on Christmas Day of 2007 while the Chicago Police did likewise to a cougar in April of 2008. (See Cat Defender posts of January 28, 2008 and May 5, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, Trio Taunted Tatiana Prior to Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by Police" and "Chicago's Rambo-Style Cops Corner and Execute a Cougar to the Delight of the Hoi Polloi and Capitalist Media.")

Any police department that categorically refused to investigate homicides and rapes would not be in business for very long unless, that is, they were headquartered in sleazy New Jersey. The same rationale accordingly should be applied to violations of the animal cruelty statutes.

Being politically ambitious with bigger fish to fry, prosecutors seldom can be induced to try cat abuse cases. Even on those rare occasions when they do step up to the plate they usually deliver lackluster, half-hearted efforts that end in failure and humiliation.

The obstacles standing in the way of bringing cat abusers to justice are thus many and formidable. Worst of all, even when convictions are secured judges invariably turn the abusers and killers loose with probation and inconsequential fines. Rarely if ever do any of them go to jail. (See Cat Defender posts of August 17, 2009, November 24, 2008, and January 17, 2006 entitled, respectively, "America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets Off with Time on the Water Wagon," "Kilo's Killer Walks in a Lark but the Joke Is on the Disgraceful English Judicial System," and "Loony Virginia Judge Lets Career Criminal Go Free After He Stomps to Death a Fourteen-Year-Old Arthritic Cat.")

The truly regrettable aspect of all of this is that with those who comprise the animal protection network being so feckless, disingenuous, and corrupt, cats are destined to continue to suffer and die needlessly. Worst still, the system is too far gone to be reformed in any meaningful fashion.

Photos: KTIV-TV (Grace) and Sioux City Animal Control (Grace with a nail in her head).