Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT

The Lovely PCAT in Happier Days

"She was a real asset to the college and had always been completely spoiled."
-- steward Angie Davies

Another sad and disturbing chapter in the annals of cats and colleges was written last month at Plymouth College of Art (PCA) in Devon when its resident reline of more than ten years, PCAT, was run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist on Ebrington Street. An unidentified veterinarian who examined her remains later declared, for whatever it is worth, that she had died instantaneously in the brutal attack which occurred approximately one block south of the metropolitan campus.

As per usual in killings of this sort, no arrest has been made and it would be nothing short of shocking if either the local police or humane groups had lifted so much as a lousy finger in order to bring the assailant to justice. That is all the more the shame because there possibly could have been eyewitnesses but without an investigation they never will be able to report what they observed.

Not much is known about the attractive brown and white female's prior life. She simply wandered onto campus one day and never left.

"Everyone loved PCAT," college steward Angie Davies told the Plymouth Herald on October 24th. (See "Staff and Students Say Farewell to Cat Who Had More Than One-Thousand Facebook Fans.") "She was a help to some students that were stressed. She calmed them down with a stroke."

That undeniably is true in that a cat's presence alone exudes a calming influence on those who are favorably disposed toward the species. Their nonjudgmental attitude, absolute honesty, and the unconditional love that they bestow on those who befriend them are priceless.

Unfortunately, in PCAT's case it appears that the vast majority of the benefits from the relationship accrued to the staff and students of PCA. According to the account rendered in the Plymouth Herald, for example, the only thing worthwhile that the school ever did for her was to build her what has been described as a "little kennel."

More than likely even it was unheated which is not a minor issue considering Plymouth's cold and rainy climate. For instance, overnight lows average around 38°F during the wintertime with daytime highs struggling to reach 48°F.

The city is, in fact, cold all the time with the thermometer dipping down at night to around 46°F throughout the year and climbing to only around 57°F during the daytime. That makes Plymouth about ten degrees colder than San Francisco whose summers Mark Twain once described as the coldest winters he had ever experienced.

The city also receives an average of thirty-nine inches of rain annually with an occasional snowstorm thrown in for good measure. A hardy outdoor cat is unlikely to die from exposure under such circumstances but her life would not be all that pleasant either.

From all accounts, the school was too cheap to even provide her with food and water. That in turn necessitated that she scrounge around for her next meal and cadge food from the school's two-thousand students.

"She used to hang about and now and then you'd do something like hand her a cheeky bit of ham from your sandwich," sophomore photography student Dan Richards told the Plymouth Herald in the article cited supra. "She was really chilled out and laid back -- pretty cool for a cat."

Additionally, there is nothing in the record that would tend to indicate that anyone connected with the school ever provided her with any form of veterinary care. With that being the case, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that no one ever bothered to either groom her, remove the parasites from her fur, or to attend to minor injuries.

PCAT

Presumably, she was spayed long before she arrived at PCA. If not, the school has considerable explaining to do regarding the disposition of her kittens.

Perhaps most telling of all, the thought of adopting this lovely cat and thus providing her with a secure, warm, and loving home apparently never once entered into the overly-inflated gourds of the tens of thousands of students, hundreds of teachers and staffers, and untold visitors who frequented the campus over the course of the past decade. England once was known as a nation of animal lovers but those lofty sentiments would appear to have been supplanted by callous indifference.

All of those gross derelictions of duty and abdication of moral responsibility pale in comparison, however, with the school's abject failure to provide for PCAT's personal safety. PCA is headquartered in a congested area and under no circumstances should she have been allowed to venture out into traffic.

No halfway sane person would allow a small child to cross a busy intersection unattended and the same rationale applies to cats as well. Surely the big brains at PCA have at least that much natural intelligence.

Furthermore, with an annual operating budget of £8 million the school cannot plead penury as a valid excuse for its failure to provide for and to protect PCAT. The same logic likewise applies to its students in that if they are capable of shelling out £1,385 per year in tuition they certainly were more than capable of doing far better than occasionally tossing her a crumb or two.

Most important of all, the college cannot plead being ignorant as to the dangers involved in allowing PCAT out into traffic because it was only four miles to the north on Poole Park Road in the Barne Barton section of St. Budeaux that a handsome twelve-year-old longhaired tuxedo named Casper was run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist on January 14, 2010. He was killed while crossing the road in order to catch a bus that his owner, Susan Finden, foolishly allowed him to ride every day all by his lonesome.

After shedding a few perfunctory crocodile tears, Finden inked a book deal and Casper is now just a tragic memory. (See Cat Defender posts of August 27, 2009 and January 30, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Casper Treats Himself to an Unescorted Tour Around Plymouth Each Morning Courtesy of the Number Three Bus" and "Casper Is Run Down and Killed by a Hit-and-Run Taxi Driver While Crossing the Street in Order to Get to the Bus Stop.")

The problem of irresponsible individuals allowing cats to venture out into busy thoroughfares is by no means confined to Plymouth but rather is a nationwide concern. (See Cat Defender posts of January 25, 2012, December 5, 2006, April 19, 2007, and November 14, 2009 entitled, respectively, "The Innocence of Lambs: Unaware of the Dangers That Threaten His Very Existence, Dodger Charms Commuters on the Bridport to Charmouth Line," "Milo, Who Visits the Vet by Her Lonesome, Is Named Old Blighty's 'Most Adventurous Cat'," "Bus-Hopping Macavity Earns High Praise from His Fellow Commuters for Being the 'Perfect Passenger'," and "Percy Takes the Train All by Himself in Order to Visit the Penguins at an Aquarium in Scarborough.")

Cats most assuredly have a right to be outdoors but that does not entail being allowed out into vehicular traffic. Since students, teachers, and staffers at PCA were so acutely aware of the perils that lurk in the busy streets in and around campus their failure to have taken steps in order to have safeguarded PCAT's fragile life is not only inexcusable but criminal as well.

If it were feasible, the entire rotten lot of them should be indicted and charged with both gross negligence and animal cruelty. At the very least the school's administrators should be brought before the altar of justice and made to atone for their omissions and crimes. That is because they initialed PCAT's death warrant just as surely as if they had put a gun to her tiny head and pulled the trigger.

Even their tepid reaction to her death reveals not only how little they actually cared about her but also the depth of their moral depravity and runaway egotism. "She was a real asset to the college and had always been completely spoiled," Davies ludicrously chirruped in the face of all facts to the Plymouth Herald.

Quite obviously, as far as she is concerned an unheated kennel and an occasional bite from a ham sandwich constitute the very epitomes of generosity and compassion. She and the remainder of the eggheads at PCA are to be commended for not ratting out PCAT to the knackers at either the disreputable RSPCA or some other phony-baloney humane group in order to be liquidated but that is about the extent of anything positive that they ever did for her.

A Motorist Hurries Past Plymouth College of Art

"Everyone is talking about her," young Richards chimed in to the Plymouth Herald in the article cited supra. "It's felt weird in the college now she's gone."

Perhaps that is merely his inarticulate way of expressing himself, but the emotions of anyone who even cared one tiny bit about PCAT more fittingly would have run the gamut from profound sadness on the one hand to raging anger on the other hand at those responsible for her untimely death. With that being the case, it is difficult to comprehend the weirdness felt by Richards. Perhaps one day in the distant future those who knew him will return the favor by limiting their obsequies to expressions of weirdness at his passing.

An unidentified spokesperson for the administration added insult to injury by being so unfamiliar with PCAT as to be ignorant of even her gender. "The cat had visited the campus on a daily basis for over ten years and seemed to adopt the college as its home," the mouthpiece told the Plymouth Herald.

Students at the school did pony up £100 in order to have PCAT's corpse burned and her ashes placed in a miniature oak coffin with her name engraved on the lid. The inveterate cheapskates  sans doute figured that by having her remains burned they could save a few bob on a smaller coffin as well as a measure of sweat and elbow grease by scratching out a smaller burial plot.

It has not been disclosed either where PCAT's remains have been buried or whether her grave even has a marker. Given the school's simply abhorrent mistreatment of her while she was alive coupled with its complicity in her death, it likely has opted for an out of sight, out of mind solution as the best means of covering up its crimes as quickly as possible.

While she was alive PCAT's page on Facebook attracted more than thirteen-hundred followers and approximately one-hundred of them have posted their condolences. Even the school's naked exploitation of her in cyberspace, as opposed to dutifully attending to her daily needs, is another outrageous example of its selfish and uncaring attitude.

Overall, everyone connected with PCA is guilty of failing to treat PCAT as a moral equal. Instead, they looked down their long, dirty schnozes at her and merely tolerated her presence on campus because she titillated their egos.

Far from being an isolated case, PCA's condescending attitude toward PCAT is merely par for the course as far as how the so-called intelligentsia treats cats. Students, for example, abandon them in droves on college campuses without so much as a second thought. Others either are dumped there or wander in on their own.

The point is moot, however, because no matter how they arrive college administrators still have a solemn moral responsibility to treat them humanely. The worst rotters in the woodpile quickly wash their hands of the matter by having them systematically rounded up and exterminated. (See Cat Defender posts of September 11, 2006, February 12, 2007, and July 31, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Selfish and Brutal Eggheads at Central Michigan University Target Colony of Feral Cats for Defamation and Eradication," "God-Fearing Baptists at Eastern University Kill Off Their Feral Cats on the Sly while Students Are Away on Christmas Break," and "Cal State Long Beach Is Using the Presence of Coyotes as a Pretext in Order to Get Rid of Its Feral Cats.")

The TNR policies in situ at Texas A&M, Stanford, and on other campuses are a huge improvement over trap and kill but they should not be viewed as ends within themselves. Rather, they need to be supplemented by adoption programs as well as measures that provide for the cats' physical safety. (See Cat Defender post of October 15, 2012 entitled "Texas A&M Ushers In a New Academic Year but Things Are Not Just Quite the Same Without Its Beloved Bisbee.")

Vivisectors at innumerable universities torture, carve up, and kill countless cats each year in the pursuit of their totally worthless and bogus research. That is in addition to the abuse and exploitation meted out to the species at the University of Georgia, the University of Illinois, Harvard, the Smithsonian, and other colleges and institutions by cat-hating ornithologists and wildlife biologists who shanghai countless numbers of them into becoming guinea pigs so that they can fabricate data later to be used in order to justify en masse eradication schemes. (See Cat Defender posts of July 18, 2011 and July 12, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed" and "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.")

Tom and Emily Hunt with Their Petition

Although the leaders at some colleges are beginning to deal with cats in a more humane manner, the overwhelming majority of them are an incorrigible lot who are only concerned with counting their coins, burnishing their plaques, and strutting. Accordingly, when it comes to treating cats humanely they are deserving of nothing but failing marks on their report cards. The same likewise applies to their naked abuse and exploitation of farm animals, wildlife, and other animals.

In spite of the intransigence and uncaring attitude of the universities, some steps, albeit baby ones, are being taken in order to better protect cats from the evil designs of motorists. For instance, New Start Cat Rescue Centre in Newent, near Gloucester, is lobbying the Transportation Department to make it compulsory for all motorists to report every cat that they run down.

Under the Road Traffic Act of 1988, section 170, they already are obliged to report all dogs, horses, sheep, cows, pigs, goats, asses, and mules that they hit but for some inexplicable reason cats were omitted from the strictures of the act when it was drafted. Earlier this year a petition on the charity's web site calling for the inclusion of cats collected eight-thousand-one-hundred-forty-five signatures.

In the Woodseats section of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, Tom and Emily Hunt are petitioning the local authorities to establish a twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit on Hackthorn Road where they live and in surrounding communities. They initiated this action after their cat, Rascal, was killed by a speeding motorist in October of 2011.

"I had adopted her as a rescue kitten eight years ago, when living in Shropshire, so her death hit us quite hard," he confided to the Sheffield Telegraph on April 17th. (See "'Speeding Motorist Killed Our Pet Cat' Says Sheffield Man.") "She was killed by a driver who was speeding on our roads."

Similar campaigns are currently being undertaken in Berlin and in other cities across Deutschland although roadside memorials in honor of feline traffic victims are still strictly verboten in Möhnesse, Nordrhein Westfalen. (See Cat Defender post of October 9, 2010 entitled "Feline Traffic Fatalities Are Unworthy of Commemoration According to a Möhnesse Bureaucrat Who Orders the Destruction of a Roadside Memorial to Jule.")

Cat Crossing signs, such as those erected in Milford, Connecticut and on the remote Japanese island of Iriomote, definitely are worth a try. (See Cat Defender posts of January 26, 2007 and November 27, 2006 entitled, respectively, "Cat Activists Succeed in Getting Connecticut Town to Erect a Cat Crossing Sign" and "After Surviving on Its Own for at Least Two Million Years, Rare Japanese Wildcat Faces Toughest Battle Yet.")

Another good idea would be to permanently close exclusively residential streets to through traffic. This would put an end once and for all to speeding motorists terrorizing animals, children, and adults in an effort to get around main arteries that often are congested.

Contrary to the propaganda so profusely disseminated by the capitalist media, cars do not kill cats; rather, it is motorists and they do so deliberately. Much too craven to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, they instead get their jollies by running down cats and other defenseless animals.

Such aberrant behavior furnishes them with an adrenaline rush and gives them a feeling of power and superiority. For that reason and others, it is imperative that pressure be brought to bear on lawmakers so as to force them to take substantive measures in order to make streets and roads safer for all animals.

None of that in any way helps PCAT who still would be alive today if so much as a solitary soul at PCA had cared enough about her to have safeguarded her life. Her violent death is a tragedy that could and should have been prevented.

No matter how hard all those connected with PCA may attempt to divert blame, there can be no denying that PCAT's blood is all over their hands. Yet despite that, none of them has shown any willingness to either accept responsibility for their negligent behavior or even to utter so much as a syllable of contrition.

Accordingly, none of the them have learned anything as the result of her death and that is perhaps the most damning indictment of all. It is, after all, the hallmark of any halfway intelligent individual to learn from mistakes and to strive to do better in the future.

Photos: Facebook (PCAT), Creative Torbay (college), and Sheffield Telegraph (the Hunts with their petition).

In Utter Desperation, Victoria Claws Off Her Rotting Ears after She Is Stricken with Cancer and Abandoned to Aimlessly Wander the Forbidding Streets of Newent



Victoria with Dangling Left Ear



"The cat had been in so much discomfort it had resorted to ripping its own ear off to try and relieve itself of its constant agony, leaving it in such a state of self-disfigurement."
-- Sue Cowlishaw of New Start Cat Rescue Centre

It is difficult to imagine a much more crueler fate than to be all alone, in horrific pain, and dying but yet unable to procure life-saving veterinary intervention. That is especially the case for those cats who are tormented by skin cancer.

On Sunday, October 14th, an unidentified Good Samaritan in Newent, a small town of five-thousand souls located eight miles northwest of Gloucester, discovered a homeless white cat with grayish-black spots whose ears had been severely injured. The cat, since named Victoria, was rushed to New Start Cat Rescue Centre (NSCRC) where she promptly underwent emergency veterinary surgery twenty minutes after her arrival.

"It became apparent that the cat's ears had been ravaged by skin cancer. Due to non-treatment of this condition for months, this cat's ear had rotted away," Sue Cowlishaw of the charity told The Citizen of Gloucester on October 16th. (See "Cat with Cancer Rips Its Own Ears Off after Owners Abandon Her.") "The cat had been in so much discomfort it had resorted to ripping its own ear off to try and relieve itself of its constant agony, leaving it in such a state of self-disfigurement."

Her left ear, which was left dangling uselessly at the side of her face, attests to the months of unrelenting pain that she was forced to endure. That was in addition to the daily struggle in order to procure food, shelter, and to avoid predators, both human and animal.

The staff at NSCRC would like to believe that their surgeon removed all the cancer but that will not be known for some time. Victoria later was forced to make a return trip to the surgery due to an infection but, at last word, that problem had been resolved.

"She's not out of the woods yet but she's certainly on the mend," the charity's Wendy Hyde, who is serving as Victoria's foster mother, told The Citizen on October 27th. (See "Support Pours In for Victoria -- the Abandoned Cat With No Ears.") "...she is a lot more perky now and she's taken over my living room."

The charity also has been heartened by the more than £500 that have poured in from places as far away as Canada, New Zealand, and China in order to help defray the thousands of pounds that it is spending on Victoria's surgery and rehabilitation. "We have been absolutely bowled over by the messages of support from all over the world," Hyde added to The Citizen in the October 27th article cited supra.

Victoria additionally has received offers of a permanent home from individuals living in both London and on the Isle of Jersey. "She's a truly international star now," Hyde marveled.

Victoria after Surgery

While that certainly is encouraging news it is equally undeniable that the road to a full and complete recovery is destined to be a long and painstaking one. Of immediate concern is for NSCRC to make absolutely certain that all the cancerous cells have been removed from her ears and that new ones do not manifest themselves. In that same vein, her nose and eyelids need to be closely monitored for potential outbreaks of the deadly disease.

Vigilance therefore is the order of the day on both the part of NSCRC and her future guardian. With that being the case, it perhaps would be preferable if a new home could be secured for her in Newent where there are professionals who are intimately familiar with her condition.

Apparently her hearing per se has not been impaired but even that is difficult to gauge since cats cock their earlobes in order to better pinpoint the direction and nature of sounds. Nevertheless, if the cancer has been confined to the earlobes and she has not in any way injured the ear itself she should be just fine in that regard.

She will, unfortunately, require specialized care for the remainder of her days. Most obvious of all, her ears must be protected against punctures, insects, rain, and flying debris, such as sand and dirt.

In addition to close supervision of her activities, protective headgear, if she could be prevailed upon to accept its presence, is one option worth exploring. Prosthetic ears are another option although the cost would be great.

It should be possible to treat any lingering discomfort that she may experience with topical ointments thus eliminating the necessity of having her declawed. She already has been disfigured and the last thing that she needs now is a second mutilation.

Above all, it looks like her days spent in the sun are pretty much at an end. That does not necessarily mean, however, that she must be cooped up indoors all the time.

For instance, she safely could be allowed out into an enclosed yard early mornings and after sunset. On those rare occasions when she must be out in the sunlight for whatever reason it would be a good idea to bathe her face and head in a proven sun blocker.

The truly sad thing about Victoria's plight is that she is far from being an isolated case. Innumerable cats, especially those with white fur, develop painful and deadly skin cancers each year that go untreated.


Victoria with Louise Barrow

For example, in the spring of 2010 a brown and white nameless cat without ears showed up unannounced at Gasthof Linde in Löffingen, Baden-Württemberg. She hung around for two months until management cruelly fobbed her off on Löffinger Tierheim and that was the last ever heard of her.

Veterinarians who examined her speculate that her ears had been surgically removed after she, like Victoria, had contracted skin cancer. (See Schwarzwälder-Bote of Oberndorf am Neckar, July 29, 2010, "Katze ohne Ohren sucht Besitzer.")

In addition to the ravages of Old Sol, hatred of the species has cost numerous cats and kittens their ears. For example, in July of 2010 an eight-week-old kitten named Harrison was found with his ears cut off in Harrisonburg, Virginia. (See Cat Defender post of September 2, 2010 entitled "Only Eight-Weeks-Old, Harrison Is Maimed for Life When an Assailant Cuts Off Both His Ears with a Pair of Scissors.")

Earlier in 2006, another diabolical monster used a pair of scissors in order to cut off the ears of a tiny kitten named Zoe in Kingsville, Texas. Having had his fun, her assailant then deposited her in a Dumpster. (See Cat Defender posts of October 27, 2007 and September 2, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Tiny Kitten Named Zoe Has Her Ears Cut Off by Fiends but Texas Police Do Not Seem to Care" and "Zoe Rebounds from Having Her Ears Cut Off in a Savage Attack to Become the Heroine of a New Series of Children's Books.")

Even some veterinarians have been known to inexcusably cut off large chunks of cats' ears as a way of identifying them as having been sterilized. This entire business of mutilating sterilized cats should be outlawed and a better identification method substituted in its stead.

Almost nothing is known about Victoria's past although the prima facie evidence tends to suggest that she is a local feline who was abandoned by an owner who was too uncaring, cheap, and lazy to attend to her pressing veterinary needs. "It looks like the owner has abandoned her. How could anyone do that?" Louise Barrow of NSCRC complained to The Citizen in the October 16th article cited supra. "We, more than anyone, know just how expensive vets' bills are at the moment, but it is awful."

Victoria's friendly demeanor and the fact that she snuggles up with Hyde's nine-year-old son, Harrison, all tend to add credence to Barrow's theory that she previously had a home. Even if procuring veterinary care for her was out of the question due to financial considerations that still was not a valid excuse for her previous owner to have abandoned her.

That individual could have applied topical pain relievers to her ears and used whatever home remedies that were available to her. Most important of all, Victoria would have had a home with food, water, and care.

It is a difficult deal to swing these days but perhaps a veterinarian eventually could have been found who would have allowed Victoria's guardian to have paid on time. Nevertheless, even on those rare occasions some practitioners demand collateral in exchange for extending credit.


Löffinger Katze

Despite Barrow's self-righteousness, it would have been interesting to have seen what type of response Victoria's guardian would have received from the charity if either he or she had come to it hat in hand. Would it have extended emergency treatment to Victoria or concocted some lame excuse in order to have allowed her interminable suffering to continue?

All charities talk big but most of them are as full of it as the nearest septic tank. They have their own agendas and are constantly on the lookout for projects that will enhance their reputations and bottom lines.

With that being the case, there is very little time, effort, and even the will power to pay much more than lip service to the highfalutin ideals that they profess. Of course, there can be no denying that need always far exceeds resources. Nevertheless, such an attitude is cold comfort to cats, other animals, and humans who are knocking on death's door.

An analogous situation exists in the response of animal protection groups to animal cruelty. Specifically, instead of committing the resources in order to apprehend abusers, they content themselves with declarations of moral outrage and insignificant offers of reward money that they know that they never will be forced to honor. (See Cat Defender post of January 7, 2010 entitled "Large Reward Fails to Lead to the Capture of the Archer Who Shot an Arrow Through Brownie's Head.")

Since its inception in 1948, the National Health Service has admirably provided health care on demand to all citizens of the United Kingdom as well as to visitors. The time now has come for it to do likewise for its cats and dogs.

That is not about to happen anytime soon, especially considering Prime Minister David Cameron's austerity policies, but it is nonetheless an obvious omission that urgently needs to be addressed. Contrary to what some people think, cats and dogs are not merely the superfluous toys of the bourgeoisie and the rich; rather they are intimate family members of all classes, including the working class and poor. Ergo, to deny life-saving veterinary intervention to any cat and dog because of a lack of money is an egregious and odious form of class discrimination.

It goes almost without saying, however, that such sentiments would be scoffed at in the land of the dollar bill. Americans are such a misanthropic lot of rotters that they are adamantly opposed to even universal health care, let alone anything even remotely approaching equality in veterinary care.

Since veterinarians, the government, and most animal protection groups could care less whether either a sick or an injured cat lives, the only alternative for dedicated ailurophiles is self-help. For example, unlicensed veterinarians already are proliferating in the United States. (See Cat Defender post of February 14, 2006 entitled "Special Agent Fred the Cat Goes Undercover to Help Nab Quack Vet in Brooklyn Sting Operation.")

There is a wealth of sound veterinary information available online and many minor ailments can be treated with home remedies. Veterinarians practicing in the Caribbean and Mexico also are worth exploring. In some cases it actually is cheaper to have a cat treated abroad than in America and that includes paying air fare and a hotel bill to boot.

Photos: Daily Mail and Hot Spot Media (Victoria with dangling left ear), The Citizen (Victoria's cancer-ravaged ears), Paul Nicholls of the Daily Mail and SWNS (Victoria with Barrow), and Schwarzwälder-Bote (Löffonger Katze).