Cats on the Cross: Crucifixions in Ghana and Illinois Confirm That Civilization Has Not Advanced Much Since the Medieval Crimes of Catholics

"There is only one way to kill a cat and indeed to all animals and this is humane slaughter."
-- David Nyoagbe and Amasaba Adul-Yakeen Aluizah of GSPCA

There are numerous reasons to be thankful to the Internet but the use of it as a forum in order for cat-haters to showcase the end products of their unspeakable cruelty and moral depravity is not one of them. The recent posting on Facebook of a photograph of a bound, black and white cat that was crucified by Ghanaian youths is a good case in point. (See photo above.)

Whereas the fate of big cats, elephants, primates, and other endangered and abused animals justifiably garners widespread attention from conservationists around the world, little attention is paid as to how companion and farm animals are treated on the "Dark Continent." It therefore is difficult to gauge from afar whether the shocking manner in which this particular cat was abused is indicative of how most cats in Ghana are treated or whether this is merely as isolated case of moral degenerates seeking worldwide acclaim.

The photograph was posted online by someone who calls himself Kwabina Daniels, a.k.a. Popkon Sika-one. He possibly could be one of the youths shown in the photo but even that has been called into question by the Ghana Society for the Protection and Care of Animals' (GSPCA) plea for the public's assistance in identifying those pictured.

"To Facebookers and friends of the supposed perpetrator of this cruel act, it was fun and perhaps the most award-winning picture," David Nyoagbe and Amasaba Adul-Yakeen Aluizah of the GSPCA said in a joint statement released to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on October 5th. (See "Society for Animal Protection Decries Crucifixion of a Cat.") "It took friends of animals all over the world who begun (sic) criticizing this dastardly act for the picture on (the) Facebook page to be taken off."

To its credit, the GSPCA promptly condemned the killing and even went so far as to add that cats should be fed regularly, provided with veterinary care and sufficient space in which to exercise, and not be subjected to either threats or molestation. Beyond that, however, its position is a good deal more ambiguous.

For starters, the organization categorically states that it does not object to the use of animals for food, farm work, security, and in sports. Rather, its only concern is that when an animal is to be killed that the Islamic (and Jewish) tradition of slitting its throat be followed.

"There is only one way to kill a cat and indeed to all animals and this is humane slaughter," Nyoagbe and Aluizah avowed to GNA in the article cited supra. On the surface, that admission seems to negate not only what the GSPCA has to say about proper cat care but leaves open the possibility that it approves of the odious Ghanaian practice of consuming feline flesh.

After all, there could not be any valid reason for slaughtering cats in the Islamic tradition except to consume their flesh. If that were not the accepted practice in Ghana, the GSPCA surely would have issued a blanket condemnation of the torture and killing of cats under all circumstances.

The GSPCA concluded by accusing the youths of insulting Christianity. "If this is not blasphemy, then what is?" it plaintively asked in the GNA article cited supra.

For whatever it is worth, the CIA World Factbook claims that nearly sixty-eight per cent of Ghanaians profess to the Christians as opposed to only sixteen per cent who claim to be Muslims. It therefore is conceivable that this totally innocent cat became a pawn in the age-old conflict between these two mutually antagonistic and bloodthirsty rivals.

If the refrain of that old saw sounds familiar it is because that in medieval Europe cats were condemned and extirpated en masse by the Roman Catholic Church in its totally barbaric attempt to stamp out what it slandered and libeled as paganistic religions. Even in an industrial center like Ieper cats were rewarded for safeguarding the merchants' valuable textiles from rodents by having their brains splattered on the cobblestones of Grote Markt after they were flung from the belfry of Cloth Hall, two-hundred-thirty feet above. (See Cat Defender posts of August 6, 2009 and May 22, 2006 entitled, respectively, " Unrepentant and Totally Shameless, Ieper Once Again Makes a Mockery of Its Past Crimes Against Cats by Staging Kattenstoet" and "Belgian Festival of Tossing Stuffed Cats from Belfry Makes Jest of Hideous Crimes of Capitalists and Catholics.")

The dates on the calendar and the geographic location may have changed but that does not make what was done to this cat any less hideous and unjust. The same logic is equally applicable to the eating of cats.

Due to the elliptical nature of the GNA's reporting, it is not known either where the crucifixion occurred or if any halfway serious attempt is being made to bring those responsible to justice. More than likely, little or nothing is being done because the GSPCA seems to be more concerned with the youths "for dragging Ghana's reputation to scorn in the face of international animal lovers and organizations" than with apprehending them.

That is not only wrongheaded but shortsighted as well. Ghanaian authorities can best repair the damage done to their nation's reputation by acting swiftly to identify and arrest those responsible.

Although the gory details have not been disclosed, this totally innocent and defenseless cat was corralled and tortured, most likely over an extended period of time, and then nailed to a cross. Unlike with Jesus however, no miraculous resurrection is expected.

Even more alarming, the barbaric practice of crucifying cats cannot be blamed on either a lack of education, the backwardness of a nation, or an absence of anti-cruelty statutes. That assessment is vouched for by its persistence in the so-called enlightened West.

For instance on April 5, 2010, Andrea Bristol was on her way home to tiny Geneseo in rural northwest Illinois when on Ropp Road near Dutch Bottom Road she spotted what she auf den ersten Blick mistook for a raccoon stuck to a utility pole. Once she pulled over to investigate, she was sickened by what she discovered.

"It was a cat, and a nail had been pounded through its hind foot," she related to the Geneseo Republic on April 6, 2010. (See "Cat Found Tortured, Nailed to Pole.") "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I kept trying to tell myself that maybe it had just gotten caught but, no, the nail was pounded right through its foot."

As it later was to be revealed, the nail in his foot was the least of his injuries. "There was blood coming from its mouth and hair was missing, like it had been beaten up."

An Animal Control officer from Henry County arrived on the scene and used something akin to a wrecking bar in order to pry the striped male American Shorthair from the pole. It is a small wonder that thoroughly beastly act did not finish off the cat on the spot.

A far less painful alternative would have been to use a saw and chisel in order to have separated the nail from the pole. Surgeons later on could have removed the nail while the cat was under sedation.

Rushed to Miller Veterinary Service in Atkinson, twelve kilometers away, attending veterinarian Dana Miller confirmed Bristol's worst fears. The cat, dubbed Dutch in reference to where he was found, had been severely beaten about the head and as the result had developed swelling around his brain. (See photos of him above and below.)

"Breaks your heart," Miller told WQAD-TV of Moline on April 6, 2010. (See "Cat Found Nailed to Post.") "You just wonder why?"

Miller bandaged Dutch's paw and placed him on intravenous fluids and, although he initially was given only a fifty per cent chance of making it, he rallied gallantly and by April 7th the veterinarians had upgraded his prospects to eighty per cent. In fact, by that time he was purring again and leaping into the arms of his caregivers.

Sadly, he was unable to sustain the momentum that he had built up over the course of the previous forty-eight hours and died unexpectedly either later that night or early the next morning. As things eventually turned out, the blood that he shed on the utility pole outlasted him by about a day in that it was still visible for up to a day after his death.

Since neither Miller nor the media have speculated on the cause of Dutch's sudden reversal of fortunes, it is impossible to say what went so terribly wrong. The fact that veterinary personnel were unable to pinpoint the exact time of his death is a strong indication, however, that he received lax care.

If that indeed were the case, it constitutes the very epitome of veterinary malpractice. Any animal that has suffered injuries of the magnitude of Dutch should have been kept in intensive care with a veterinarian monitoring his progress twenty-four-hours a day.

In all too many cases, seriously injured cats are treated by veterinarians, given clean bills of health, and then released into the care of either a shelter or a foster family where they in turn mysteriously die. That is precisely what happened to Malli back in 2008 after she arrived in Cleveland trapped inside a shipping crate that had originated in Malaysia. (See Cat Defender posts of March 21, 2008 and April 25, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Malli Survives a Thirty-Two-Day Voyage from Johor Bahru to Cleveland Trapped Inside a Shipping Crate" and "After Surviving a Lengthy and Hellish Confinement at Sea, Malli Dies Unexpectedly in Foster Care.")

An almost identical scenario was repeated in Billings, Montana, in March of 2010 only this time around the victim was a ten-year-old Snowshoe Siamese named Ally. (See Cat Defender post of April 18, 2010 entitled "Ally's Last Ride Lands Her in a Death Trap Set by an Uncaring and Irresponsible Supermarket Chain and a Bargain Basement Shelter.")

It is highly unlikely that practicing physicians and hospital personnel would be allowed to get away with dispensing such slaphappy treatment and veterinarians and humane groups should not be allowed to do so either. When an animal's life is hanging in the balance, minimalist care and hoping for the best are woefully inadequate.

Dutch's horrific abuse and cold-blooded murder sparked outrage all around the globe but no one felt it more than Bristol. "How could anyone do this to an animal?" she rhetorically asked the readers of the Geneseo Republic in the article cited supra. "When it happened, I was so upset, but the next day, I was very mad. I wanted to tell everyone I know in hopes that someone would know something and help this end in justice."

Concern and outrage do not solve feline murder cases, however; only sound detective work can achieve that objective. As a consequence, Dutch's killer is still at large in Geneseo and, no doubt, abusing other cats. A Facebook page entitled "Justice for Dutch" was set up shortly after his death but it has not been recently updated and apparently is not playing any role in helping to bring his attacker to justice.

Both Carl Vincent, a psychologist with Southpark Psychology in Moline, and Richard Hutchinson, a clinical psychologist with the Child and Family Psychology Center in Moline, believe that Dutch's assailants were adolescent teens. They base that assessment, in part, on the brazenness of the crime.

"(They put the cat) someplace they knew it would be seen," Hutchinson told The Dispatch of Moline on April 7, 2010. (See "Update: The Cat Nailed to a Pole in Henry County Died Overnight.") "In some ways they're thumbing their nose (sic) at all of us...They want that attention without the responsibility."

Hutchinson's opinion is buttressed by the fact that Dutch was found crucified the day after Easter. Although it is not known how long he was on the pole before Bristol discovered him, the crime itself is, like the crucifixion in Ghana, another blatant slap in the face of all Christians.

PETA was quick to offer up its customary, albeit paltry and insincere, $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Dutch's killer. If it were anything other than a rogue band of frauds and hypocrites, it would realize that its incessant demonizing and wholesale slaughter of cats serve only to encourage the commission of heinous assaults like this. (See Cat Defender post of October 7, 2011 entitled "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag About Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

The same applies in spades to ornithologists, wildlife biologists, the entire United States Government, certain professors, and segments within the capitalist media. (See Cat Defender posts of July 18, 2011 and June 15, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Are Routinely Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed" and "American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Unite to Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats.")

Dutch's horrible death was made all the more heartbreaking because he already was a cat well-acquainted with misfortune. For instance, he apparently enjoyed an extremely close relationship with his previous owner until that person recently died.

He then apparently wound up on the street although area resident Lester Forbes continued to feed him. "It's so cruel," he told WQAD-TV in the article cited supra. "We're supposed to take care of our animals, not abuse them."

As it is so often the case, Dutch's domestication made him an easy target for the person or persons who killed him. More than likely he did not suspect a thing until it already was too late.

The only positive development to come out of this sickening and infuriating act of animal cruelty was the creation of the Dutch Memorial Fund by the Geneseo Chapter of the Henry County Humane Society (HCHS). Established with surplus contributions that originally were made for Dutch's treatment, the Fund since has helped to save the lives of more than two dozen animals.

In particular, it has paid for leg amputations for two kittens named Tammy and Darlene. It also has been used to finance eye removals for Roamer and Cabela.

"All four of these unique kittens are very playful. They have adapted to their losses and are living life like they should," Cindy Avey of HCHS told the Geneseo Republic on October 28, 2010. (See "Dutch Fund Helps Injured Kittens.") "I think if you told them there was something wrong with them or that they were different, they would look at you like, 'What are you talking about'?"

So, in a manner of speaking, Dutch's indomitable spirit lives on in each of the kittens as well as in the other cats that have been helped by the fund that bears his name. "The Dutch Fund made all the difference in the world for these kittens," Avey concluded.

The cold-blooded and remorseless executions of Dutch and the forever nameless cat in Ghana once again vividly have demonstrated the extraordinary lengths that enemies of the species are prepared to go in order to achieve their objectives. The method of mutilation in each case also tends to indicate that the perpetrators could be pursuing agendas that have far wider societal implications than merely killing cats.

Even without imputing any ulterior motives to their killers, the loss of these two innocent lives is tragic enough in its own right. The pain that they were forced to endure could not have been anything short of excruciating and seemingly interminable. Frightened out of their wits and with all conceivable avenues of escape closed off to them, their helplessness and anguished cries served only to stoke the fires of their persecutors' runaway and malignant egotism.

It is precisely for individuals of this sort that sure and swift justice in the form of capital punishment is merited. The sooner that societies resolve to eliminate this type of human filth, regardless of their ages, the better off that both animals and mankind are going to be in the long run.

Photos: GNA (crucified cat), The Dispatch (Dutch underneath blanket), and the Geneseo Republic (Dutch with eyes closed).

Chucked Out in the Trash, Tabitha Winds Up in an Oxygen Chamber with Four Broken Ribs, an Injured Lung, and Pneumonia

"She was truly left for dead and had some suffocation injuries. It's a touch-and-go situation right now."
-- veterinarian Andrea Looney

An approximately six-week-old black kitten named Tabitha is waging a valiant struggle to live after having been wrapped in a plastic grocery bag and then tossed in a Dumpster at an apartment complex in Albany, New York. Suffering from four broken ribs, a damaged lung, and pneumonia, she is confined to an oxygen chamber and veterinarians initially gave her only a thirty to forty per cent chance of living. (See photos of her above and below.)

Discovered on September 23rd by an alert maintenance man who was mowing the lawn, Tabitha weighed less than one pound and could barely either open her eyes or breathe. Rushed to Upstate Veterinary Specialties (UVS) in nearby Latham, she was placed on painkillers and antibiotics as well as oxygen.

"She was truly left for dead and had some suffocation injuries," Andrea Looney of UVS told the Albany Times-Union on September 30th. (See "Gravely Injured Kitten Lives in Oxygen Chamber.") "It's a touch-and-go situation right now."

Despite the overwhelming odds against her, Tabitha so far is holding her own. "If she didn't have a little wheeze-rattle, you'd be hard pressed to know that she was so seriously injured and at such risk just days ago," Orange Street Cats (OSC), which has assumed responsibility for her care, stated October 8th in an untitled posting on its Facebook page.

An earlier posting on October 7th stated that although she still was having difficulty breathing, her condition had not worsened. The veterinarians apparently are hoping that her injured lung will heal on its own and not require surgery.

Otherwise, she has been off of pain medication since October 6th and is said to be getting bored with life inside the oxygen chamber. For the time being, she is amusing herself by frolicking with a stuffed bunny and other toys and that certainly is a positive development.

It is unclear how she suffered the internal injuries. More than likely, her previous owner attempted to squeeze the life out of her before chucking her in the trash. It also is conceivable that she could have sustained the life-threatening injuries when additional refuge was deposited in the Dumpster on top of her.

It also is disturbing that press reports do not make any mention of either the police or humane officials even being willing to investigate this horrific and unconscionable act of animal cruelty. For starters, the authorities, if they were the least bit serious about apprehending the culprit, would have begun by searching the contents of the Dumpster for clues.

Secondly, they could have canvassed the apartment building door-to-door looking for additional kittens. Since most litters contains between four and six kittens, any resident in the possession of fewer than that number would have some explaining to do.

Even that would not have been conclusive since some kittens arrive in this world stillborn and others almost immediately are fobbed off by their owners on friends and strangers alike. Additionally, the perpetrator simply could have disposed of the remainder of the litter in the same fashion that he attempted to get rid of Tabitha.

Since some apartment dwellers tend to be nosey-parkers, they might know which tenants keep cats. The building superintendent and maintenance workers who are in and out of the units making repairs also would be in a position to possibly assist the authorities.

So far, Tabitha's emergency veterinary treatment has cost OSC in excess of $2,700 and that figure is expected to climb significantly higher in the difficult weeks and months ahead. That in turn has forced the organization, which specializes in rescuing and sterilizing cats, to appeal to the public for financial assistance. Anyone interested in helping Tabitha can do so by contacting OSC either by telephone at (518) 533-5242 or e-mail at osc@orangestreetcats.org.

OSC also needs help in finding homes for some of the remaining seventy-two cats that it, in justified defiance of the local authorities, trapped and rescued from a condemned house at 198 Orange Street during the summer of 2010. (See Albany Times-Union, August 18, 2010, "Cat Love Trumps Law.")

Although sterilizations are what the group does best, OSC was not about to turn its back on Tabitha. "But we're not going to say 'no' when a little Tabitha comes by," the organization's Diane Metz explained to the Times-Union in the September 30th article cited supra. "We've just gone with it. We've decided that's 'Bewitched's' daughter, and she's magical."

Although the kitten was given its moniker by her rescuers at the apartment complex, Metz's mentioning of Bewitched most likely is an obscure reference to the popular 1960's television sitcom of the same name whose plot centered around an advertising executive who unwittingly marries a real-life witch and their daughter, also a witch, was named Tabitha.

Tabitha's plight is strikingly similar to the fate that befell a kitten named Duff from Spokane in August of 2009. (See photo of him on the left above.)

That was when he was entombed in a black canvas bag which in turn was sealed up inside a duffel bag and then tossed out with the trash. After spending six days in the trash, Duff finally was rescued on August 20th when maintenance workers reprogramming a garage door overheard his plaintive cries for help.

"This kitten was very lucky to be found at 11:00 this morning, otherwise it probably would have died today," Nicole Montano of the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS) said at that time. "We are thankful to those who rescued this kitten from what would have been a (sic) horrific death."

Only rarely are those who abuse kittens in such a cavalier manner apprehended, but in this case the culprit, Donivan Crews, was arrested but inexplicably charged with only "confinement in an unsafe manner." As for Duff, although he was emaciated and covered in urine and feces when rescued, he otherwise was in remarkably good shape considering his trying ordeal.

Best of all, his rescuers were scheduled to have adopted him. (See Cat Defender post of October 3, 2009 entitled "Deliberately Entombed Inside a Canvas Bag for Six Days, Duff Is Saved by a Pair of Alert Maintenance Workers at an Apartment Complex in Spokane.")

Tabitha is by no means the only cat in recent memory to have been tossed out with the trash in upstate New York. For example, last December 23rd a gray cat dubbed Jack-in-the-Box was sealed up in a cardboard box and left by the curb between One-Hundred-Ninth and One-Hundred-Tenth streets at Third and Fourth avenues in the Lansingburgh section of Troy. (See photo of him with veterinary assistant Natasha Stalker directly above.)

Luckily for him, local resident Melissa Lombardo reached him before the garbagemen. Lombardo, who was out walking a pit bull named Phoebe whom she was at the time fostering, made the discovery when she heard the cat crying and Phoebe started sniffing at the box. (See photo below of the cardboard box in which he was found.)

"I was shocked and sad," Lombardo told WXXA-TV of Albany on December 23rd. (See "Abandoned Cat Found 'Miracle on One-Hundred-Tenth Street'.") "I felt bad for the cat. It was obviously scared. It was crying."

Lombardo telephoned the Troy Police Department who came and collected Jack and transported him to the Troy Veterinary Hospital where he was treated for exposure. Other than that, he was expected to make a full recovery. "Considering what he has been through he came in a really good condition and he's doing really good now," veterinarian Laura Engel told WXXA-TV.

Nevertheless, it was still a close shave for Jack. In particular, he very easily could have frozen to death in that Decembers in Troy usually are brutally cold and snowy. Even if the elements had not done him in, he easily could have been killed by either the garbage collectors or crushed to death later when they dumped their load, most likely at either a landfill, incinerator, or recycling facility.

Normally, that would have been the end of the matter. No one would have bothered to investigate it and the perpetrator would have gotten away with his crime. Fortunately, Captain John Cooney of the Troy Police is a rare bird amongst lawmen.

"It's just a horrible crime; it's cruel and inhumane. Every step that we can take including door-to-door canvassing of the neighborhood and probably a search of the garbage in the pile will be done in order to get some resolution to the crime that occurred here," he vowed to WXXA-TV in the article cited supra. "It's certainly a criminal investigation. The Cruelty Animal Statute which covers this type of incident is a misdemeanor but, this is going to get a little extra look. The box the cat was found in has been secured as evidence and its beer checked for trace evidence. We'll go as far as fingerprints, DNA evidence on the box."

Just as the Washington Humane Society (WHS) demonstrated back in May through its investigation and apprehension of Nicole Dauphiné of the Smithsonian Institution for allegedly attempting to poison a colony of homeless cats in Washington, good, old-fashioned detective work is the only way that animal abusers ever will be caught and made to pay for their crimes. (See Cat Defender post of July 12, 2011 entitled "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals.")

Police departments and humane groups that wallow in self-righteous moral denunciations and offer up only minuscule reward money as substitutes for undertaking concrete action had just as well keep their traps shut and wallets secured for all the good that they accomplish. Any group halfway serious about putting a stop to animal cruelty must do like Cooney and the WHS and commit the resources and intellectual acumen to the cause.

Cooney's due diligence paid off on December 30th with the arrest of forty-eight-year-old Michael T. Walsh of 10 Woodbridge Drive. (See photo of him on the right below.)


Walsh, who later pleaded not guilty to three counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty, had taken the cat off the hands of Robin Becker who had evicted him because he allegedly was urinating outside his litter box. Although he pledged to Becker to take Jack to a shelter, he instead dumped him in the trash once he, allegedly, starting fouling the box with still more piss.

Later in court, Walsh further claimed that in dumping Jack he was doing him a favor. "I did not want to bring it to a shelter because I did not want them to put the cat to sleep," he vowed to the Albany Times-Union on January 3rd. (See "Man Thought He was Protecting Cat.") "I took it to an alley in Lansingburgh and left it on the side. I figured that someone would find it and give it a good home."

In addition to espousing an overly sanguine view of human nature, Walsh's explanation does not hold water in that abandoning a boxed-up kitten in the cold and at a garbage pickup site is guaranteed to lead only to its succumbing to either hypothermia or a trash compactor. While it is true that just about all shelters are dressed-up extermination camps, anyone who cared the least little bit about a cat at least would abandon it in a secure wooded area, preferably where there are barns and other outhouses that would provide it with a measure of shelter.

For her part, old Becker bird has pleaded total ignorance as to Walsh's true intentions. "I looked up at TV and saw my cat on TV," she shrieked to the Times-Union in the January 3rd article cited supra. "I said 'Oh my God, that's my cat!' I heard the news story and flipped out."

Statements such as those prove that she is every bit as full of it as Walsh. First of all, it takes kittens that grow up indoors a while to get used to using a litter box.

Just as importantly, Walsh and Becker conveniently have forgotten that when they were young their mothers had to change their diapers and empty their pots de chambre for the first two years of their lives. Compared to humans, kittens are considerably quicker on the uptake.

Likewise at the other end of life's cycle, old men and women often loose control of their bladders and bowels and yet no one would dare suggest that they be either chucked out in the cold or killed. When either a cat or a dog becomes incontinent, however, a date with the hangman normally is de rigueur.

In the final analysis, anyone unwilling to clean up a little urine and poop left behind by either a kitten or a senior cat does not have any business adopting one in the first place. True love does not wane just because a bladder no longer is as resilient as it used to be and a sphincter no longer functions as it should.

Everything eventually turned out all right for Jack in that he was scheduled to have been adopted into a new home during the first week of January. That joyful denouement to this tragic incident served as a fitting bookend to what Cooney initially had termed "the miracle on One-Hundred-Tenth Street."

Just as Lombardo saved Jack's life by her timely intervention, an unidentified pedestrian did likewise for a black cat named Titch from Westcliff in Essex on January 8, 2010. Having overheard Titch's cries for help from inside both a plastic bag and a backpack, the pedestrian reached into the trash and freed her. (See photo above of Titch with RSPCA inspector Matthew Gough.)

Fortunately, Titch was unharmed and later adopted. (See Cat Defender post of February 24, 2010 entitled "Sealed Up in a Backpack Inside a Plastic Bag and Then Tossed in the Trash, Titch Is Rescued by a Passerby in Essex.")

On February 3rd of this year, a four-month-old nearly blind kitten named Pacman was found inside a small box in a Dumpster in Middletown, Connecticut. (See photo of him below.)

"I was behind the blade," Mike Armetta of Dainty Rubbish Service told the Record Journal of Meriden on February 7th. (See "Kitten Saved from Trash Compactor.") "It's a miracle that the animal didn't end up in there (the compactor)."

Pacman will require major surgery in order to save the sight in one of his eyes but other than that he was said to be doing well in the aftermath of his close brush with disaster. Taken to the Humane Society's no-kill facility in Meriden, he was said to be "eating like a horse."

Although Pacman's surgery and care will cost the shelter a pretty penny, its director, Marlena DiBianco, was not doing any more complaining about that than OSC is about the exorbitant cost of attending to Tabitha. "They saved it," she told the Record Journal. "I was really happy they did that."

Both Pacman and Tabitha would have faced entirely different fates if they had been found by anyone associated with PETA. (See Cat Defender post of October 7, 2011 entitled "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag About Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

Armetta has expressed an interest in adopting Pacman as soon as he recuperates from his surgery so things may eventually work out for him. No arrests have been made in the case.

In September of 2010, a six-month-old cat named Smokie from Kingston upon Hull in Yorkshire was discovered at the last minute trapped in a trash can inside the crushing machinery at a recycling center. Luckily, the alert staff overheard his cries and saved him from being crushed and recycled. He then was taken to a veterinarian where an implanted microchip identified him as belonging to Susan and Philip Hirons who live a quarter of a mile from the recycling center.

Smokie also had the good fortune to come through his death-defying ordeal physically unscathed although his nerves, quite understandably, took a beating. His owners additionally believe that, as so often is the case, his trusting nature made him an easy target for this type of horrific abuse.

"Smokie had a miraculous escape. I am really annoyed by this. Whoever did this to him must be sick," Susan told the Yorkshire Post on September 21, 2010. (See "Copycat Fears as Kitten Found in Bin at Crusher.") "How did they sleep knowing he was hungry, cold, frightened and about to go into the landfill site and get buried alive?"

The circumstances in this case leave little doubt that Smokie was purposefully stuffed into the trash can. "There's no way he could have got in the bin by accident," Susan added to the Yorkshire Post. "I wonder if people are copying that woman who threw a cat in a wheelie bin?"

By that she is referring to forty-five-year-old spinster Mary Bale of Coventry who on August 21, 2010 was captured on a surveillance camera stopping to pet Stephanie and Darryl Andrews-Mann's four-year-old cat, Lola. After making sure that the coast was clear, she picked up Lola and stuffed her in a trash can before hurrying on her way. (See photo of her and Lola above.)

Lola was rescued fifteen hours later when Darryl overheard her crying from inside the trash can and the surveillance tape eventually led to Bale's arrest. Once her case finally came to trial, she was let off with a £250 fine plus £1,171 in court costs. (See The Sun, October 20, 2010, "Cat Chucker's Claim Trashed.")

Although the incident led to her being fired from her job as a cashier at the Royal Bank of Scotland in nearby Rugby and made her the bête noire of cat lovers everywhere, Bale remained unrepentant to the very end. "I don't know what the fuss is all about," she complained to the Daily Mail on August 26, 2010. (See "Grey-Haired Bank Worker Who Dumped Cat in Wheelie Bin Could Face Court as RSPCA Prosecutors Review Case.") "It's just a cat."

"It's the 'only' that's the problem: they're only animals, and we're the only species that matters," Michele Hanson pointed out in The Guardian on August 28, 2010. (See "Cat Litter Episode Shows How Our Pets Are Both Protected and Persecuted.") "But we're not."

Even when malice aforethought is not intended, innumerable cats either wander into trash recycling centers on their own or wind up there by accident. Some of them, such as seven-week-old Penny from Chester in Cheshire and Aflie from Kirknewton in West Lothian, Scotland, are saved at the last minute but countless others are crushed to death. (See Cat Defender posts of August 23, 2007 and May 4, 2010 entitled, respectively, "An Alert Scrap Metal Worker Discovers a Pretty 'Penny' Hidden in a Mound of Rubble" and "Picked Up by a Garbage Truck Driver and Dumped with the Remainder of the Trash, Alfie Narrowly Misses Being Recycled.")

As all of these cases demonstrate, disposing of unwanted cats, especially kittens, by throwing them out in the trash is not only pervasive but pretty much the perfect crime to boot. Nothing short of compelling everyone who handles trash from maintenance workers to haulers to personnel at recycling centers to either inspect or electronically scan everything that they handle before permanently disposing of it ever will be able to put an end to this horrifying loss of innocent lives.

While that is unlikely to become a reality, the eventual abolition of both Animal Control officers and conventional shelters is a real possibility. If a free and humane alternative that respected life were available, most inviduals would willingly surrender their unwanted cats to these facilities.

Free sterilization services, as opposed to jabs of sodium pentobarbital, would be another step in the right direction. (See Cat Defender post of February 12, 2011 entitled "Disabled Former Casino Worker Is Sent to Jail for Shoplifting Food in Order to Feed Her Twelve Cats.")

Photos: Orange Street Cats (Tabitha), SCRAPS (Duff), Southend Standard (Titch and Gough), Cindy Schultz of the Albany Times-Union (Jack and Stalker), Troy Police Department (Jack's Box and Walsh), Dave Zajac of the Record Journal (Pacman), and Darryl Andrews-Mann via the Daily Mail (Bale and Lola).

PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed

"The veterinarian immediately put the suffering cat out of his misery, giving him more comfort in his final moments than he had likely known for much of his life."
-- Alisa Mullins of PETA

"Our service is to provide a peaceful and painless death to animals who no one wants," PETA's head honcho, Ingrid Newkirk, declared a few years back. Even in making that frank, albeit morally reprehensible, admission she could not resist the temptation to once again shade the truth.

Actually, it is only live and breathing cats that get the old phony's goat. As a consequence, Newkirk and her two-million acolytes devote a disproportionate amount of their time and resources to combing the highways and byways in search of cats to kill.

One of the organization's recent murder victims was a forever nameless white-colored cat that it claims had an injured ear and was suffering from cancer. (See photo above.)

Although PETA is careful not to disclose the locale, it trapped the cat and took it to an unidentified veterinarian who promptly dispatched it to the devil. "The veterinarian immediately put the suffering cat out of his misery, giving him more comfort in his final moments than he had likely known for much of his life," the organization's Alisa Mullins, as proud as punch over the success of her evil deed, trumpeted in an August 24th press release. (See "A Kind End to a Harsh Life.")

First of all, a cancerous growth, unlike a bloody nose, is not detectable au premier coup d'oeil. Diagnostic tests are required for that and since PETA is such a miserly organization there is not any way in Hell that it ever would have footed the bill for them.

Secondly, although a cat's socio-economic status should not have any bearing whatsoever on its inalienable right to live, PETA had no way of knowing whether the cat was domiciled or homeless. After all, even a domesticated cat can look down-at-the-heel after a few days of roughing it.

The cat's mangled ear raises the prospect that he may have belonged to a managed colony. His ear could have been sliced up by a veterinarian in order to denote that he had been sterilized and afterwards became either infected or injured when it became snagged on some foreign object.

Since the foul deed already has been perpetrated, there is absolutely nothing that can be done for the cat at this late date. The only thing that can be hoped for it that either his owner or the caretaker of the colony will, against all odds, recognize his face and bring appropriate criminal and civil action against PETA.

It is, however, Mullins' assertion that the cat found more comfort while being murdered than he had known throughout his life that is the most revolting. Applied to human affairs, such spurious reasoning would imply that the victims of genocide ought to feel indebted to their murderers.

Much more mundanely, Mullins is guilty of wallowing in her own self-serving sottise without having had the benefit of knowing a blessed thing about either the cat's past or his current situation. For instance, he very well could have had a wonderful life before ending up on the street and even then he might have been doing all right except for a few rough patches here and there. Life is not always a bed of roses for either cats or humans.

Along about the same time that PETA was snuffing out this cat's life, journalist Jane Ganahl and Ken White of the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo were busy abducting and killing a senior cat named Marvin in Half Moon Bay. Although he had been living on his own in a parking lot for sixteen years, they got the wind up one day and unilaterally decided that he could not be permitted to go on living for so much as another day.

Like Mullins and PETA, they attempted to justify their abhorrent crime on the grounds that they cared deeply about Marvin. "He was failing, and this was the last gift from people who cared about him," White lied through his rotten teeth. (See Cat Defender post of September 28, 2011 entitled "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor.")

The cat killed by PETA needed food, veterinary care, and a bath and a good brushing, not an appointment with the hangman. His killing was murder, not euthanasia, and Mullins and her associates accordingly belong in jail.

The same holds true for the veterinarian who cruelly and unjustly took away his life. Moreover, he and all like-minded practitioners should have their licenses permanently revoked and never be permitted to practice veterinary medicine again under any circumstances. (See Cat Defender post of July 28, 2011 entitled "Tammy and Maddy Are Forced to Pay the Ultimate Price after Their Owner and an Incompetent Veterinarian Elect to Play Russian Roulette with Their Lives.")

Saving lives and doing a little pro bono work from time to time are alien concepts as far as most practitioners of veterinary medicine are concerned. Without so much as a moment's hesitation they will, however, kill off most any animal for a hefty fee.

In addition to being a vile and murderous organization, PETA also is stingy. Although it took in $34 million in 2009, it is not about to spend so much as a sou on treating, feeding, sheltering, and finding homes for cats.

Instead, it summarily executes approximately ninety-eight per cent of the cats and dogs that it impounds at its facility in Norfolk, Virginia. Thousand more never even make it to its shelter because PETA kills them inside its vans and then dumps their corpses.

For example, on May 19, 2005, June 2, 2005, June 9, 2005, and June 15, 2005 the police in Ahoskie, North Carolina, retrieved the corpses of eighty-two dogs and seventeen cats from a Dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly supermarket where they had been dumped by Andria Hinkle and Andrew Cook of PETA. In January of 2007, they were tried for animal cruelty in Hertford County Criminal Superior Court but were convicted of only one count each of littering. (See photo immediately below of them celebrating their victory.)

"There were no intentions of cruelty, only good intentions to help animals which these two young people have dedicated their lives to," Daphna Nachminovitch, supervisor of PETA's motorized death squads, declared with a straight face after the verdicts were read. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007 and February 9. 2007 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in North Carolina Courtroom" and "Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs.")

Nachminovitch is every bit as big of a liar as Newkirk and Mullins in that the only assistance that PETA ever provides to cats and dogs is a one-way, no return ticket to Hades.

As for those owners and shelters who are so uncaring as to surrender animals to PETA, all that they receive in return is more lies with a free snow job thrown in as an added bonus. For example, in North Carolina PETA told shelter operators that it would secure good homes for the animals that it took off of their hands and to substantiate that claim it took photographs of them gamboling in fields of flowers which it then mailed back to the shelters.

Of course, the animals were long dead before the shelters ever received the staged photographs. PETA thus was allowed to indulge in its murderous rampages whereas the operators of the shelters were relieved of the burden of caring for their impounded animals. Whether the shelters believed PETA's blatant lies or simply did not care one way or the other is a debatable point.

Adding insult to injury, the stiffs who sit on the North Carolina Court of Appeals threw out the littering convictions of Hinkle and Cook on April 15, 2008. So in the end PETA got off scot-free. (See the News and Observer of Raleigh, April 15, 2008, "PETA Workers Cleared of Animal Cruelty (sic) Convictions.")

The wholesale and indiscriminate en masse slaughter of cats and dogs is nothing new as far as PETA is concerned. In fact, it has been the business model employed by Newkirk ever since she operated a shelter in Washington way back in the 1970's.

"I went to the front office all the time, and I would say, 'John is kicking the dogs and putting them in freezers.' Or I would say, 'They are stepping on the animals, crushing them like grapes, and they don't care'," she admitted to The New Yorker on April 4, 2003. (See "The Extremist: The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America.") "In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that. I must have killed thousands of them, sometimes dozens every day."

Based upon that confession, she should have been arrested on the spot and put behind bars for the remainder of her life. She is not only a morally warped sadistic mass murderer but poses an imminent danger to all cats and dogs.

Secondly, since she was in charge of the shelter it was her responsibility to train and discipline the staff. Since she failed to do that, she should have been promptly fired along with the imbecile who hired her in the first place.

PETA's inveterate hatred of cats and ingrained cheapness is further attested to by an e-mail letter that he organization's Teresa Chagrin sent to Hancock County Administrator Chuck Svokas on December 13, 2010. In it she extolled the virtues of a two-hundred-fifty milliliter bottle of sodium pentobarbital which she claims is more than sufficient in order to do away with eighty-three cats.

She went on to point out to the West Virginian politician that the cost of the deadly barbiturate was "extremely minimal" when compared to the price of rabies vaccinations, property damage, and feline predation of wildlife. (See Wheeling News-Register, December 16, 2010, "PETA Peeved at Hancock County's Feral Cat Problem.")

Although she is far too dishonest ever to admit it, what Chagrin really meant to say is that it is far cheaper to operate an extermination factory than it is to feed, water, shelter, medicate, and procure homes for cats. After all, the needs of the vanquished are indeed few.

Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone "who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" and that description certainly applies in spades to PETA. Contrary to what it and just about all American veterinarians and practicing physicians wholeheartedly believe, a price tag cannot be placed on either animal or human life.

Such a policy also relieves the mental midgets at PETA from coming to terms with difficult moral conundrums and, just as importantly, ensures that none of them ever will be forced to look upon any cat as an individual, sentient being endowed with legitimate rights and needs. Like the practitioners of genocide, Newkirk and PETA do not think anymore of perpetrating mass slaughters of the innocent than they do about draining their bladders.

Chagrin's scurrilous missive, and the hundreds like it that PETA floods the web with each year, unmasks the totally fraudulent organization as being every bit as obsessed with maligning and killing cats as ornithologists and wildlife biologists. Like them, the higher-ups at PETA sit glued to their computers day and night in an all-out quest to identify, smear, and throttle cats and the groups that champion their cause.

Such a policy aligns PETA with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies within the bloated federal bureaucracy and demonstrates conclusively that it is anything but the radical animal rights group that it and The New Yorker claims; au contraire, it is every bit as conservative and bedrock establishment as the wildlife biologists, ornithologists, Animal Control officers, and conventional shelters that it strives so hard to emulate. After all, any group can kill cats, fan the prejudices of the unenlightened, and suck up to those in power.

Based upon the foregoing, it should not come as any surprise that PETA is violently opposed to the feeding of homeless cats. "If there are feral cats in your neighborhood, please don't prolong their agony by simply putting out food and hoping for the best," Mullins implores the heartless and uninformed in the press release cited supra.

In addition to being a totally morally repugnant philosophy, it is interesting to note that Mullins does not advocate that individuals refrain from feeding birds, wildlife, and dogs. Likewise, although it claims to be opposed to vivisection, factory and fur farming, the exploitation of animals in sports and entertainment, hunting, and a host of other evils, PETA never publicly has advocated that any of the animals so horribly abused by those commercial concerns be starved to death. It is only cats that it has singled out as not being fit to be fed.

From attempting to starve to death homeless cats PETA now has graduated to advocating that their domesticated brothers and sisters, along with dogs, be compelled to become vegetarians. "Most dogs' and cats' health improves on a vegetarian diet, but occasionally an animal may not thrive, so use common sense if this occurs," PETA recently postulated on its web site in an undated posting. (See "Meatless Meals for Dogs and Cats.")

As per usual, the cat-hating blowhards at PETA do not present one scintilla of scientific evidence in order to substantiate their ludicrous claim that obligate carnivores can thrive on a meatless diet. The organization's often repeated mantra that "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment" obviously does not include either respecting the sanctity of their fragile lives or their genetically determined dietary needs.

As far as it is known, the only cat who prefers a vegetarian fare is a black and white former stray named Dante who lives with his owner, Becky Page, in Tasburgh in Norfolk. (See photo above of him chowing down.)

"I tried feeding him meat, fish, everything else that cats like, but he turned his nose up," Page told London's Mirror on April 14, 2009. (See "Meet Dante, the UK's Only Vegetarian (sic) Cat.") "Just when I thought nothing would work, he wolfed down a plate of veg I was going to throw out."

In spite of Dante's preference for melons, bananas, broccoli, rhubarb, asparagus, aubergine, and Brussels sprout, it would be incorrect to label him as a vegetarian. "I have to smuggle bits of meat among the veggies so he gets all the nutrients he needs," Page continued. "But sometimes he spots the meat and leaves it. He has a unique appetite but he's certainly healthy."

Dante's fondness for fruits and vegetables can be explained by the fact that as a kitten he nearly starved to death and therefore was forced to eat almost anything that he was able to procure. Contrary to popular belief, cats will eat almost anything that either necessity or their upbringing dictates.

Kittens, for example, who grow up in households where they are permitted to cadge food from the table have been known to develop a taste for such oddities as, inter alia, oatmeal, cereal, bread, cake, cheese, pizza, pasta, and even fruit and vegetables. The fact that they can be conditioned to eat carbohydrates certainly does not mean that such a diet is good for them. After all, a good portion of what most humans ingest is anything but beneficial to their health.

"This is extremely rare," Maggie Roberts, a veterinarian with Cats Protection in Chelwood Gate, Sussex, told the Mirror in the article cited supra. "Cats are obligate carnivores and cannot be vegetarian (sic)."

Ottawa veterinarian Marie Haynes took PETA to task on August 16th on her web site, Ask a Vet Question.com, by pointing out that cats have neither the molars and premolars necessary for grinding up food nor the enzyme amylase in their saliva that is needed for breaking down starches. (See "Should Cats Be Vegans?") They have a little bit of it in their intestines but not a sufficient amount in order to do the job.

Carbohydrates therefore pass through cats' short digestive tracts without being absorbed. Furthermore, undigested carbohydrates alter the bacteria in their intestines and thus make it difficult for them to even properly process proteins.

Healthy cats also need the animal-derived amino acids taurine and arachidonate in addition to vitamin B12. If these amino acids along with arginine, methionine, cysteine, and tyrosin are lacking in their diets serious health problems and even death can occur.

Since PETA sans doute is acutely aware of the negative health consequences associated with feeding cats meatless diets, its attempt to transform them into vegetarians only can be regarded as another sinister ploy designed to do in the species. It also once again highlights the folly of those individuals and groups who compromise with the species' sworn enemies.

Being that mulehead Mullins is so fervently committed to starving homeless cats to death it logically follows and she and PETA are adamantly opposed to both TNR and no-kill shelters. "Trap them and bring them into your home; take them to a reputable open admission shelter (not to a so-called no-kill shelter that warehouses frightened, unadoptable animals in cages for years); or take them to a veterinarian for a peaceful release from a world that has turned its back on them," she counseled in the press release cited supra.

If all of that were not odious enough, Mullins is such a delusional egomaniac that she expects the public not only to go along with her sophistry but to feel sorry for her to boot. "I've personally done all three, and the last option, while the hardest on me, was the easiest on the cat," she concludes in an utterly amazing display of twisted logic and morality.

First of all, if cats could talk like Saki's Tobermory it is doubtful that a single one of them would approve of either her nonsense or malice aforethought. Much more pertinently, no one cares what she thinks; it is the needs of cats that are paramount and not hers and PETA's.

In an amateurish attempt to justify her hideous crimes, Mullins goes on to allege that homeless cats are infected with every known disease under the sun, preyed upon by motorists and other ailurophobes, and often either starve or freeze to death. Since she has so cleverly dismissed all other alternatives, it follows that she now expects everyone to immediately vacate the playing field and to leave matters in the hands of PETA's exterminators.

"TNR may prevent future generations of cats from suffering the hardships of life on the street, but they (sic) fail to address the misery experienced by cats trying to eke out an existence in alleys and behind Dumpsters," she bellowed in another of her anti-cat screeds posted October 24, 2010 on OpEd News.com. (See "Don't Turn Your Back on Feral Cats.")

Everything that she and PETA have to say about TNR and homeless cats is pure fabrication. In particular, cats that belong to managed colonies are fed and watered daily, provided with winterized shelters, vaccinated, and taken to veterinarians when they become ill. The world has anything but "turned its back on them."


Even cats that do not belong to managed colonies usually make out all right. Kindhearted individuals feed them and there usually are buildings that they can get underneath in inclement weather. Furthermore, since they are territorial they quickly learn to avoid the dangers that exist in their environment.

According to several studies cited by Alley Cat Allies (ACA), less than one per cent of homeless cats need to be killed due to illness, trauma, and infectious diseases. Moreover, research does not support PETA's claim that homeless cats are more prone to disease than domesticated ones. (See "Feral Cat Health Analysis: Living Healthy Outdoors" at www.alleycat.org.)

ACA's assessment of the healthiness of homeless cats is attested to by veterinarian Shelia Dobson of the Kansas City area who is on record as saying that homeless cats are every bit as healthy as domesticated ones. (See Cat Defender post of May 16, 2006 entitled "Kansas City Vets Break Ranks with AVMA to Defend Cats Against Bird Advocates, Wildlife Proponents, and Exterminators.")

Because of their sedentary lifestyles and as the result of being cooped up all day and night in polluted houses and apartments, it could be argued with some force that indoor cats actually are far less healthy and physically fit than their outdoor cousins. (See Cat Defender posts of August 22, 2007 and October 19, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Indoor Cats Are Dying from Diabetes, Hyperthyroidism, and Various Toxins in the Home" and "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")

Obesity and cancerous implanted microchips also are taking a heavy toll on domesticated cats. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007 and November 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs" and "Bulkin Contracts Cancer from an Implanted Microchip and Now It Is Time for Digital Angel and Merck to Answer for Their Crimes in a Court of Law.")

PETA also makes much ado about homeless cats being preyed upon by ailurophobes and that, admittedly, is a major problem but the same holds true for domesticated ones as well. Generally speaking, homeless cats with a healthy fear of humans suffer less horrific abuse than do trusting, socialized cats. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2011 entitled "Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop.")

TNR programs also have the added advantage of being fully funded by volunteers and therefore do not cost the taxpayers a solitary cent. That is likely one of the principal reasons that conventional shelter operators, like PETA, are so stridently opposed to them.

Groups such as Neighborhood Cats in Manhattan and the Humane Society of the United States in Washington are attempting to usurp the prerogatives of the volunteers and thus bring the colonies under their control. Should they ever succeed, they in quick order will sell the cats down the river. (See Cat Defender post of June 15, 2009 entitled "American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats.")

It stands to reason that the rogue band of cutthroat killers who comprise the ranks of PETA additionally would be strenuously opposed to no-kill shelters. While there can be no denying that the movement is rife with impostors, it nevertheless is a step in the right direction. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter.")

The task confronting the advocates of no-kill is to expose and weed out the pretenders and thus restore credibility to the movement. No-kill should mean exactly what the name implies and nothing less.

TNR colonies, barns, adoption, legitimate no-kill shelters and, if nothing better is available, a policy of live and let live all are preferable to the onerous and morally repugnant trap and kill policies practiced by PETA and conventional shelters. "...it is in no animal's best interest to be killed," ACA responded on its web site last October to Mullins' October 24th broadside defaming homeless cats. (See "Alley Cat Allies' Response to PETA: Feral Cats Deserve to Live.")

A sixth option in the form of retirement communities for elderly and sick cats and dogs also is now available in a few select communities. Capacity is extremely limited and all funding must be raised privately but they nonetheless are a step forward in providing cats and dogs with the compassion that they so richly deserve.

It was in recognition of that glaring need that the Deutscher Tierschutzbund of Bonn last month awarded its Deutschen Tierschutzpreis for 2011 to Klein'en Gnadenhof of Letschow. Located just outside the former Hanseatic city of Rostock in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Klein'en Gnadenhof is a four-thousand square meter rural sanctuary that houses twenty-five cats and twelve dogs that are either elderly or sick.

It has been in business for ten years and is operated by Christel and Manfred Klein. (See photo of them above.)

"Wir schenken alten, verletzen and unheilbar kranken Hunden und Katzen wieder Lebensqualität," Christel told the Schweriner Volkszeitung on September 19th. (See "Preis für 'Gnadenhof' aus Rostock.") "Ich konnte das Leid der Hunde und Katzen nicht mit ansehen."

That certainly comes as a refreshing breath of air after listening to PETA's incessant drumming that all homeless cats must be killed on the spot. So, too, is the Kleins' decision to invest the €3000 that came with the award on enlarging the facility so as to accommodate additional needy animals.

Although the Kleins recognize that cats and dogs, like humans, are entitled to their Lebensabend, that does not stop them from killing them off in droves once they become incapacitated. In that regard, their sanctuary is not all that much of an improvement over PETA's Norfolk facility.

"Selbst alte und kranke Tiere geben uns Menschen viel an Liebe zurück," Christel pointed out to the Schweriner Volkszeitung in the article cited supra. If she and Manfred truly believed that and the rest of their highfalutin rhetoric, they would immediately renounce killing and simply allow nature to take its course.

In conclusion, PETA is nothing short of a malignant cancer that slowly is undermining the legitimate animal rights movement. With its hands fouled by the blood of the tens of thousand of cats that it has killed and with nothing but lies and a perverted, abhorrent immorality gushing forth from the lips of its members, it has retarded the animal rights movement by at least one-hundred years.

At best, the organization is a caricature of a legitimate animal rights group and as such is worthy of only scorn and ridicule. At worst, it is a deadly killing machine that needs to be confronted, exposed, and thwarted.

Photos: PETA (murdered cat), Cal Bryant of the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald (Hinkle and Cook celebrating), Mirror (Dante), and Dirk Eisermann für Funk UHR via Bild (Christel and Manfred Klein).