Kayden Is Run Down Three Times in Succession by a Van Driver in Yet Still Another Graphic Example of How So Many Motorists Intentionally Kill Cats

Lovable and Friendly Kayden

"It has sickened us that someone could be so barbaric. At the end of the day, no animal deserves to die like that."
-- Hannah MacDonald

As if any further proof were needed that motorists run down and kill cats intentionally, the events that unfolded shortly after midnight on April 28th of last year at the corner of Dunley Drive and Brockham Crescent in the New Addington neighborhood of the borough of Croydon surely constitute the clincher. Moreover, they graphically demonstrate the extraordinary lengths that some of these diabolical monsters are prepared to go to in order to kill cats.

On that tragic occasion, a sweet as pie two-year-old brown and white tom named Kayden was crossing the street when he was run down, not once, but three times in succession by the driver of a white delivery van. Not about to stick around and face the music, the cowardly brute immediately fled the scene and it is unlikely that the world ever would have known exactly what had transpired if an unidentified member of the public had not witnessed the premeditated attack and promptly reported it to the RSPCA.

"The description given was that a white van was seen deliberately running over the tabby and white cat three times," a spokesman for the charity later confirmed to the Croydon Advertiser on May 2, 2014. (See "New Addington Cat Owner's Fury after Beloved Pet Is Run Over Three Times by Van Driver.")

The gory details have not been made public but after initially knocking Kayden to the pavement the driver presumably stopped, backed up, and then took two additional runs at him. Whereas Kayden conceivably might have weathered one such attack, he never stood a chance when pitted against such a determined adversary.

"When we arrived sadly the cat was lying in the middle of the road and had already died," the spokesman added to the Croydon Advertiser. "We took it into our care and have passed on details of the incident to the police."

Kayden's owner, twenty-one-year-old Hannah MacDonald of Dunley Drive, learned of his cruel fate secondhand from her mother, Debbie. "My mother was at home and the (RSPCA) inspector knocked on the door and asked were we missing a cat," she confided to the Croydon Advertiser. "My mum said yes, and the inspector said: 'I am so sorry. We have got him in the van'."

The nature of Kayden's injuries has not been made public but it is difficult to imagine that his body could have been anything other than mangled almost beyond recognition. "I would like to know that he died straightaway," MacDonald wistfully told the Croydon Advertiser. "It would be hard to think of him in pain."

Although the eyewitness telephoned to the RSPCA at 12:10 a.m., it is not known when it arrived on the scene. It therefore is impossible to know exactly when Kayden was attacked and how long he was forced to suffer.

Hannah MacDonald Holds Up a Digital Photo of Kayden 

Nevertheless, there simply is not any way of getting around the horrible reality that the initial blow delivered by the driver must have inflicted unbearable pain upon him. Additional excruciating discomfort undoubtedly followed as his attacker continued to get his perverted jollies right up until Kayden's tiny little heart finally gave out on him and ceased to beat.

"My family are (sic) absolutely devastated, as Kaydon was not only a cat to us, but a member of the family," is how MacDonald eulogized him to the Croydon Advertiser. "He was such a lovely, friendly cat. He should not have been a cat: he should have been a kid or something."

Regardless of either their personalities or social status, cats are seldom able to come out on top in this ailurophobic world. For example, wary, homeless ones are systematically rounded up and exterminated en masse by wildlife biologists, ornithologists, and so-called rescue groups whereas their opposites are, more often than not, done in by the treachery of their owners as well as their own sociability.

In Kayden's case, he was far too trusting of humans for his own good. "He used to wait on the corner and then as soon as he saw someone, even if he had no idea who they were, he would follow them onto the street," MacDonald disclosed to the Croydon Advertiser. "He would even miaow at them."

In addition to inexcusably allowing him to roam the perilous streets of south London at all hours of the night without the benefit of a chaperon, MacDonald is guilty of turning a blind eye to the telltale signs of the myriad of dangers that she was exposing him to on a daily basis. For instance, it was only three weeks prior to his horrific murder that an abscess had developed on his head as the result his having been tortured by an unidentified cretin armed with a burning cigarette.

"He was always in trouble," she candidly admitted to the Croydon Advertiser. Yet, she inexplicably did little or nothing in order to shield him from the terrible abuses that those who hate cats inflict upon members of the species.

"It has sickened us that someone could be so barbaric," she told the Croydon Advertiser in reference to the criminal conduct of the driver of the van. "At the end of the day, no animal deserves to die like that."

Although the RSPCA initially pledged to investigate Kayden's death, it seems to have limited its response to making its customary appeal to the general public to do its job for it. It likewise is extremely unlikely that the Metropolitan Police Service has stirred so much as a muscle in order to bring Kayden's killer to the altar of justice.

Sox Relaxes with Logan and Ava Donoghue

No one knows where or how it all began for Kayden. MacDonald acquired custody of him when he was only five weeks old after he had been rescued by an  old boyfriend of hers from a car park in the Surrey Quays area of Rotherhithe in the adjoining borough of Southwark, twenty-one kilometers removed from New Addington.

From all outward indications, she and her mother cared deeply about him and it is beyond dispute that he grew into a loving and trusting cat. None of that in any way compensates for either the brevity of his life or his violent death.

He therefore is destined to always be remembered as a sad and tragic figure and absolutely nothing can alter that scenario at this terribly late date. If there is anything positive to be gained from his life and death it lies in the belated realization that owners like MacDonald simply must do a far better job in the future of safeguarding the fragile lives of cats like him.

Fifty-six-year-old grandmother Denise Donoghue of Charles Street in Carlisle, Cumbria, is well-acquainted with the heartbreak felt by MacDonald. That is because her black cat Sox was run down by a hit-and-run motorist at the intersection of Grey Street and London Road on Bastille Day back in 2013.

Although Sox sustained substantial injuries to both his face and one of his legs, he survived. Even in doing so he was facing the prospect of either being crippled for life or of losing the leg altogether.

His ordeal has been difficult not only on Donoghue but also on her thirty-four-year-old daughter, Alicia, and her two grandchildren, eight-year-old Logan and six-year-old Ava. "My daughter heard the cat screaming outside," she told the News and Star of Carlisle on July 17, 2013. (See "Anger after Driver Left Injured Cat to Die on Carlisle Road.") "They were going to operate and my daughter was distraught."

She additionally knows only too well the anger felt by MacDonald and so many others at motorists who make a sport out of killing defenseless, unsuspecting cats. "This person cannot have a conscience; they (sic) must have thought it was nothing," Donoghue added to the News and Star. "It would be nice if they could have come forward and said sorry."

If she genuinely expects an apology from Sox's assailant, Donoghue is living in a dream world. Far from feeling so much as a twinge of remorse, motorists who kill cats not only get an adrenalin rush out of perpetrating such vile crimes but they actually feel proud of their devilry.

Delilah Survived a Simply Heinous Act of Animal Cruelty

Merely running down cats with automobiles is, unfortunately, not always sufficient as far as some motorists are concerned; instead, they like to use the busy roads and highways as convenient sites in order to dump both cats and kittens. For example on August 20, 2013, a brown and black female subsequently named Delilah was tossed from a red hatchback on Cairngorm Drive in Kincorth, a suburb south of Aberdeen.

As if that were not horrific enough in its own right, the motorist traveling behind the hatchback then ran over Delilah without even attempting to either brake or veer around her. She was thrown to the side of the road upon impact but, amazingly, had both the prerequisite strength and presence of mind in order to scamper into a nearby garden before finally securing sanctuary on a window ledge.

"Understandably, Delilah was absolutely petrified when I came to collect her," Karen Hogg of the Scottish SPCA told the BBC on August 21, 2013. (See "Cat Thrown from Car in Aberdeen and Then Run Over.") "Delilah has used up at least two of her nine lives in what appears to have been an incredibly cruel act."

She was taken to the charity's shelter in Drumoak, twenty-two kilometers south of Aberdeen, where she was treated for only a minor scrape on her nose and unspecified damage done to the pads on her feet. That was the very last that ever was heard of her although the good news is that she was expected to have made a complete recovery. Although the charity did issue an appeal for information regarding the identity of the perpetrator of this unconscionable crime, it is extremely doubtful that such a half-hearted effort produced the desired result.

Nevertheless, Delilah owes her life to not only the Scottish SPCA but also to having had the good fortune to have been born in a civilized country. If, for instance, she had been born in the United States her fate could have been entirely different.

In an almost identical case, a pretty five-week-old forever nameless orange and white kitten was thrown from a black, four-door car at around noon on July 8, 2010 on I-24 in Chattanooga. It then bounced off a retaining wall and was struck, like Delilah, by another motorist.

It was spared an almost immediate and horrific death when David Livesay stopped and scooped it out of harm's way. He then spent the next four hours unsuccessfully attempting to procure life-saving emergency veterinary care for it but was stiffed by every veterinarian that he contacted.

"It's a life! It's a life!" he pleaded in vain. "Anything alive is worth saving."

The Ill-Fated Chattanooga Kitten

He eventually gave up and surrendered it to a notorious feline extermination factory that falsely bills itself as the McKamey Animal Care and Adoption Center where whatever residue of life that remained in its tiny body was quickly snuffed out. (See Cat Defender post of July 16, 2010 entitled "Tossed Out the Window of a Car Like an Empty Beer Can, Injured Chattanooga Kitten Is Left to Die after at Least Two Veterinarians Refused to Treat It.")

In retrospect, Livesay should have known better than to have asked his fellow Americans for assistance in that the only things that they care about are their respective tribal groups, money, killing, mindless self-indulgence, and the putting on of an endless charade designed to convince a skeptical outside world that they are the direct opposites of what they are in reality. Seldom, if ever, do they allow any other considerations to penetrate their exceedingly thick craniums.

There are at least three common threads that run throughout each of these cats' stories. First and most prominently, is the senseless waste of feline lives and the ruinous injuries inflicted upon even those cats lucky enough to survive the lawless machinations of motorists.

Secondly, whenever a cat is run down there are always significantly wider ramifications. For instance, there is the pain and anger that is inflicted upon not only owners like MacDonald and the Donoghues but also upon those kindhearted individuals like Hogg and Livesay who come to the assistance of those that have been abandoned and are now homeless.

Thirdly, none of those individuals involved in the commission of these dastardly crimes ever has been apprehended. Even more disturbingly, there is not a scintilla of evidence in the public record to even suggest that either the police or any animal protection group has ever lifted so much as a finger in order to even look for their assailants.

These types of assaults most definitely not only could be stopped but their perpetrators located and jailed as well if only the will to do so existed. Since that quite obviously is not the case, the only sensible recourse left open to owners is for them to do their utmost in order to keep their cats out of the street.

Despite their best intentions, however, even vigilant caretakers cannot always be there for their cats. For example, their beloved companions sometimes inexplicably escape from houses, fenced-in yards, and even pet carriers.

Others are cruelly abandoned either near or, worst still, on busy thoroughfares. Topping all of those concerns is the safety of those cats that are altogether homeless as well as those that belong to managed TNR colonies.

Accordingly, merely restricting the liberties of cats does not go nearly far enough. Rather, it is imperative that the roads and streets be made safe for both them and all other animals alike and the only way to achieve that lofty goal is for the authorities to not only arrest and jail all motorists who refuse to stop for them but to permanently revoke their licenses as well.

Photos: Croydon Advertiser (Kayden, MacDonald), News and Star (Sox), Scottish SPCA (Delilah), and WTVC-TV of Chattanooga (kitten).