Diabolically Mutilated in a Botched Back Alley Sterilization, Billy Is Promised Help by Blackpool Cats in Care Who, Predictably, Turn Right Around and Pull the Rug Out from Underneath Him

 Billy Shortly after His Rescue on September 20th

"We tried absolutely everything and more in our power to save this little fella. We even had a bank appointment this morning for a loan to get him the best (care) we could."
-- Janet Moores of Blackpool Cats in Care

When and where it all began for Billy in all likelihood never will be known for sure. If estimates of his age are credible, however, he entered this world sometime along about the middle of June.

Given his friendly demeanor, it would appear that he was a domesticated kitten as opposed to one that had been born in the wild. Even so that is not always conclusive in that some kittens of his tender age have yet to develop a healthy distrust, no matter how beneficial it may be, of humans.

For present purposes, the black, brown, and white kitten's story began at 8 a.m. on September 20th when a dog walker found him stuffed into a small box in an unidentified park in Preston, Lancashire. He was in shock and covered in blood, urine, and feces.

The Good Samaritan wasted no time in handing him over to an unidentified volunteer from Blackpool Cats in Care (BCC) who in turn delivered him to the charity's main office at 23 The Crescent in St. Annes on Sea, twenty-nine kilometers west of Preston via the M55. He soon thereafter was transferred to the Robert Jones Veterinary Centre at 64 St. Annes Road in Blackpool where an examination quickly confirmed the charity's worst suspicions.

"You can clearly see that the hair on his head has been cut with scissors, and the vet said his testicles had also been cut with scissors," BCC's Janet Moores told the London Metro on September 20th. (See "Tiny Kitten Left to Die after Having 'Testicles Cut Off with Scissors'.") "They have chopped off all of his fur as if they were playing hairdressers and when we looked underneath it's very clear they have cut his testicles off as well."

Press reports have not speculated upon when this botched sterilization took place, but likely it occurred either the night before or very early on the morning of September 20th. Toxicology tests, had they been performed, would have determined if he had been given any analgesics beforehand but that is hardly ever the case with back alley castrations of this sort.

Given that Billy also was dehydrated and emaciated he likely had been taken away from his mother much too soon and thereafter severely neglected by his owner, if he did indeed have one. The only other explanation that readily comes to mind is that he was mutilated sometime earlier and therefore had been languishing in that wretched park for days.

Upon his arrival at Jones, he was provided with the standard battery of supportive care that all cats in extremis receive. He first of all was likely placed on a heating pad and perhaps wrapped in blankets in an effort to rapidly elevate his body temperature.

A catheter then was inserted into one of his legs so as to facilitate the administration of intravenous fluids. A regimen of antibiotics and painkillers as well as a perfunctory blood test followed soon thereafter. No details have been disclosed as to what was done in order to attend to the back of Billy's head, which in photographs looks more like it had been attacked with a razor than a pair of scissors, but more than likely the injured area was inspected for cuts to the scalp and, if any were found, they were disinfected and treated with topical antibiotics. In regard to his horribly mutilated scrotum, the vets first had to stanch the flow of blood, clean and disinfect the area, and then to apply antibiotics and a bandage of some sort.

There can be little doubt that it was gruesome and heart-rending work. "In an ideal world he'd probably have an operation to remove the infected parts, but he is just too weak to pull through," Moores added resignedly to the London Metro.

While all of that was certainly distressing enough in its own right, it nevertheless was encouraging that the charity initially gave him a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. There was even talk of finding him a home.

"He's going to need an operation to fix his back end because his testicles are cut through," Moores amplified to the London Metro. "Fingers crossed he is going to pull through and we can get the poor little mite home because we'd love to find him a lovely family where he's never going to suffer like this again."

In an undated article that appears on BCC's web site, the charity actually sounded downright optimistic about Billy's prospects. "He was urinating, eating, drinking, and purring a couple of days later," it proudly announced. (See "Billy the Cat That We All Took to Our Hearts.")

By October 2nd, however, the dark clouds had gathered and the charity was singing an entirely different tune. "Billy is still poorly in the vets, although he did start to pass urine by himself he has relapsed and is now back to being unable to pass urine without being expressed (manual manipulation of the bladder from the outside)," Moores announced on BCC's Facebook page. "We still at this point do not know what his future holds."

Billy Was Able to Stand but It Is Unclear if He Could Walk

That was small potatoes compared to the next bombshell that she dropped. "He does need a big operation on his pelvis as he cannot use one of his legs but at the moment we need to concentrate on his bladder functioning," Moores added.

First of all, it is hard to believe that it took both the charity and the vets at Robert Jones twelve days in order to realize that there was something sorely amiss with Billy's pelvis. That is even more so the case in that radiographs, if not indeed MRIs and CT scans, most assuredly were taken of his rear end and scrotum upon arrival.

Although BCC's rather tardy announcement that Billy was experiencing difficulties with his pelvis, bladder, and one of his legs was discouraging, little clue did the outside world have of just how bad things had gotten for him. Three days later on October 5th Moores removed the scales from the eyes of those that it had been treating to a cruel game of ring-a-round the rosies.

"Yesterday Billy was taken to an orthopedic vet in Liverpool. This specialist had a look at his x-rays (sic) and unfortunately his pelvis is so badly damaged for them (sic) to be able to do anything for him," is how that she delivered the coup d'grâce to Billy's supporters on Facebook. "His pelvis is completely shattered which has damaged the nerves which controls (sic) his bladder and leg."

For the sake of completeness, on its web site the charity spoke only of a "broken pelvis." So to sum up, over the course of a fifteen-day period BCC went from making no mention whatsoever of Billy's pelvis to later admitting that he needed a "big operation" on it on the one hand to declaring that it was "broken" and "completely shattered" on the other hand.

From that moment onward, Billy's allotted time upon this earth had dwindled down to hours. "He is not in any pain," Moores acknowledged in her October 5th posting on Facebook. "(Nevertheless) the specialist has advised us to put him to sleep."

She did, however, hold out one glimmer of hope. "As a last resort we have now contacted Noel Fitzpatrick, the super-vet off the TV in London," she disclosed. "All his (Billy's) history has been faxed over and we are now awaiting a call."

As founder of Fitzpatrick Referrals in the Eashing section of Godalming in Surrey, the neuro-orthopedic veterinarian first skyrocketed to international acclaim in 2009 when he created an artificial knee for an eight-year-old brown and gray cat named Missy from Petworth in West Sussex. Later in 2010, he created a new hip, metal implants, and a pair of prosthetic feet for a thirty-month-old black tom named Oscar from the parish of Grouville on the Bailiwick of Jersey.

In Oscar's case, he had lost both of his rear paws when he was run down in the autumn of 2009 by a kamikaze combine operator harvesting maize. (See Cat Defender post of November 20, 2010 entitled "Celebrated as the World's First Bionic Cat, Oscar Has Been Turned into a Guinea Pig with a Very Uncertain Future" and Kate Allen, Oscar's owner, The Bionic Cat, published by Summersdale Publishers of Chichester in West Sussex back in 2013. An excerpt from the latter can be found in the Daily Mail, February 16, 2013, "The £50,000 Bionic Cat: The Pet Who Lost Two Paws in a Freak Accident and the Efforts to Get Him Back on His Own Two Feet.")

"If Noel cannot do anything for Billy then we will have absolutely no other option but to let him go," Moores concluded in her October 5th posting on Facebook.

Whether or not Fitzpatrick was willing to have helped Billy is a question that Moores never has answered. In fact, her October 5th mention of him was her first and last word on that subject.

Even if he had been willing to have done whatever he could for Billy, BCC never in a million years would have met his asking price, which surely would have been in the tens of thousands of pounds even if his surgery had been willing to graciously absorb the bulk of the cost as it had done with Oscar. More than likely she and BCC by that time had made up their warped minds to whack Billy and the appeal to Fitzpatrick was strictly a publicity stunt.

It is unclear exactly when BCC perpetrated its evil and despicable deed but, for whatever it is worth, it claims to have murdered him early on October 8th. "We are absolutely heartbroken to be saying this, but little Billy lost his fight this morning," Moores announced on Facebook that same day.

The problem with that is that her announcement was posted at 4:44 Greenwich Mean Time and that implies that she and Billy's executioner stayed up all night just to kill him and afterwards she immediately went online to inform the world. Such a scenario seems highly improbable to say the least.

More than likely Billy was killed on either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday and it took Moores until the small hours of Monday before she was able to summon the moxie in order to confess her despicable crime to the world. For the sake of the truth, Billy most assuredly did not loose his fight to live as she claims; au contraire, his life was violently taken from him by Moores and BCC.

The Fur Was Removed from the Back of Billy's Head

In an utterly absurd and totally dishonest attempt to justify her crime, Moores claims that Billy's condition had deteriorated over the weekend. "This weekend little Billy started with bowel complications and was showing signs that he wasn't happy, uncomfortable -- maybe in pain and stressed...," she wrote October 8th on Facebook.

First of all, excretory difficulties are to be expected from almost any kitten in Billy's condition. A more likely explanation is that Moores and her fellow staffers quickly tired of cleaning up his poop and changing his bedding.

Nobody should ever underestimate the adverse consequences that a little bit of feline excrement can have upon the thinking and behavior of even the species' stanchest supports. For example in November of 2014, Bob Watterson of Portland, Maine, got rid of a six-month-old kitten named Spice almost as soon as he had adopted her all because she had the temerity to piss in his bed. (See Cat Defender post of December 11, 2014 entitled "Uprooted from Home and Left Stranded Thousands of Miles Away, Spice Discovers to Her Horror That Not All the Ghouls and Goblins in This World Are Necessarily to Be Found on Halloween.")

Secondly, to snuff out the life of a kitten because it supposedly "wasn't happy, uncomfortable -- maybe in pain and stressed" is simply ludicrous. Killing a kitten should require both stronger proof and a far better rationale than Moores has provided.

"We did say, and I know you all said the same...we didn't want any pain, suffering or distress as he had already been through so much," Moores persisted in her October 8th posting on Facebook.

If that indeed was the reasoning behind her and BCC's crime, they should have killed off Billy upon his arrival on September 20th because that was when he most definitely, not allegedly, was experiencing his greatest discomfort. Furthermore, Moores and BCC knew from the very beginning that his treatment and convalescence were destined to be long, tedious and, at times, unpleasant for him.

"I'm sorry we couldn't do more," Moores signed off. "Sleep tight, Billy, you were too precious for this world."

All of that would have been outrageous enough in its own right but Moores did not have the bon sens to have stopped there but instead she went on to indulge in a mother lode of mumbo-jumbo about gods and angels. She even had the audacity to post on Facebook a photograph of him crossing the fictional Rainbow Bridge.

It was however her posting of an anonymous bit of poesy entitled "Made It Home" that proved to be totally insufferable. Take, for instance, the following lines:

"Here there is no sadness, and no sorrow, and no pain. Here there is no crying, and I'll never hurt again.

Here it is so peaceful, when all the angels sing. I really have to go for now...I've just got to try my wings."

Besides being enough to have choked even the stoutest hippopotamus, that is precisely the same type of sottise that has been pressed into service by Moores and her misbegotten ilk ever since time immemorial in order to attempt to justify the heinous crimes that they perpetrate on a daily basis against cats and other animals. Furthermore, she and her confederates are truly fortunate that the gods, angels, and heaven do not in fact exist and that there is not so much as an iota of justice in this world because if there were they would surely be in a heap of trouble.

That likewise is an equally fortuitous state of affairs for the latter, especially considering all the evil that has been done in their names. "Je ne sais pas si Dieu existe, mais ce serait mieux pour sa réputation s'il n'existeit pas," nineteenth century writer Jules Renard once astutely observed.

Although Billy may very well now be free of all sadness, sorrow, pain, crying, and hurting as she alleges, he also is free of their opposites as well. That in turn can only mean that he has ceased to exist and is not coming back. A day of living that is completely free of pain and suffering is an impossibility for both cats and men.

Considering that a cat's tenure upon this earth is already so terribly short, to have taken so much as a second off of the approximately fifteen weeks that Billy was allotted is a crime of monumental proportions. That is even more so the case considering that the anti-suffering argument is one of the biggest lies ever concocted.

What proponents of such sophistry are really saying is that they are too cheap to foot the bill for a cat's care and far too lazy to nurse it back to health. No one is forthright enough to point it out but there most definitely exists an unmistakable correlation between an alleged precipitate decline in the health of a ca and a corresponding increase in the cost and effort required in order to treat it. C'est-à-dire, just about all cats are killed off for economic, as opposed to health, reasons and that ironclad rule of so-called humane care definitely held true in Billy's case.

If anyone ever could be persuaded to closely examine the lives of colossal phonies like Moores they invariably would quickly discover that they are some of the world's meanest exploiters of cats. They shoot the world a convincing line about their tremendous love for members of the species but once the chips are down they get rid of them just as if they were nothing more than worn-out pairs of shoes.

Billy's Mutilated Scrotum

In fact, shelters and rescue groups have so little respect for the sanctity of feline life that they will gladly kill almost any cat if it is convenient for them to do so and that indictment most definitely includes so-called no-kill operations as well. (See Cat Defender posts of October 23, 2012, January 2, 2013, February 9, 2013, August 26, 2015, and February 17, 2016 entitled, respectively, "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuff Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care," "Alley Cat Allies Demonstrates Its Utter Contempt for the Sanctity of Life by Unconscionably Killing Off Its Office Cat, Jared," "New Start Cat Rescue Center Abruptly Kills Off Victoria after the Cancer Returns to Her Already Ravaged Ears," "A Myriad of Cruel and Unforgivable Abandonments, a Chinese Puzzle, and Finally the Handing Down and Carrying Out of a Death Sentence Spell the End for Long-Suffering and Peripatetic Tigger," and "Cats Protection Races to Alfie's Side after His Owner Dies and He Winds Up on the Street, Swears It Is Going to Help Him, and Then Turns Around and Has Him Whacked.")

Newspapers, libraries, ports, airports, railroads, retail outlets, and scores of other institutions and businesses keep cats as mascots and mousers but they seldom, if ever, forge any lasting moral bonds with them. (See Cat Defender posts of February 9, 2006, September 28, 2011, December 7, 2006, March 8, 2016, May 31, 2007, May 28, 2015, October 31, 2015, and January 15, 2015 entitled, respectively, "A Newspaper Cat Named Tripod Is Killed Off by the Journalists That He Befriended in Vermont," "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor," "After Nineteen Years of Service and Companionship, the Ingrates at an Iowa Library Murder Dewey Readmore Books," "Penny of the Swansea Public Library: A Remembrance," "Port Taranaki Kills Off Its World Famous Seafaring Feline, Colin's, at Age Seventeen," "Abandoned, Homeless on the Street, Expelled by the Ingrates at Manchester International Airport, and Finally Whacked by Her Last Guardian, So Ran the Course of Ollie's Sad and Turbulent Life," "Tama Is Finally Able to Escape the Merciless Clutches of Her Simon Legree Overlords at the Wakayama Railway but Doing So Has Cost Her Everything That She Ever Had, Including Her Life," and "Lewis, Ann Arbor's Much Celebrated Garden Shop Cat, Departs This World Under Highly Suspicious Circumstances.")

Owners who hire unscrupulous veterinarians to kill off their cats for them are every bit as uncaring and morally bankrupt as shelters, rescue groups, and businesses. (See Cat Defender posts of October 27, 2008, March 12, 2009, July 17, 2013, August 27, 2014, and October 18, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Loved and Admired All Over the World, Feline Heroine Scarlett Is Killed Off by Her Owner after She Becomes Ill," "Too Cheap and Lazy to Care for Him During His Final Days, Betty Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned," "Not Satisfied with Merely Whacking Meiko, Garrison Keillor Struts on Stage in Order to Shed a Bucketful of Crocodile Tears and to Denigrate the Entire Species," "After Traveling for So Many Miles on the Bridport to Charmouth Bus, Dodger's Last Ride Is, Ironically, to the Vet Who Unconscionably Snuffs Out His Precious Life at the Urging of His Derelict Owner," and "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect only to Have Him Killed Off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold.")

As was it the case with Billy, the common thread that runs throughout each and every one of the above crimes is characterized by declarations of undying love, pledges of care and steadfastness followed closely at heel by outrageous betrayals, the commission of the dastardly deed itself, and then the recitation of a simply outrageous pack of self-serving lies designed to justify it. Almost always overlooked amidst the self-congratulatory postering that follows afterwards is the petit fait that there is absolutely nothing that is either painless or humane about these unnecessary killings. (See Cat Defender post of April 8, 2018 entitled "A Rare Behind the Scenes Glimpse at the Ruthless Murders of Two Cats by an Indiana Veterinarian Exposes All Those Who Claim That Lethal Injections Are Humane to Be Barefaced Liars.")

Although Moores did not miss in beat when it came to trotting out all the usual arguments, dodges, and subterfuges, in the end she ultimately was done in by her own verbosity. "We tried absolutely everything and more in our power to save this little fella," she bellowed October 8th on Facebook. "We even had a bank appointment this morning for a loan to get him the best (care) we could."

She quite obviously did not keep that appointment unless the banks in St. Annes stay open all night and, even more unlikely, have loan officers on duty during the small hours. Besides, the idea of borrowing money to pay for a cat's care sounds much more like a suggestion that would have come from a veterinarian as opposed to a rescue group. Moreover, given that BCC relies upon a web site that was designed by WIX of Tel Aviv, and most likely gratis at that, it is a bit difficult to believe that it would ever borrow money in order to save the life of any cat.

"We contacted specialist surgeons from north to south over the weekend and they all came back with the same reply," she continued. "There was nothing that could be done, his pelvis was badly damaged."

First of all, considering that regular, run-of-the-mill veterinarians are not all that accessible even during regular business hours, it would be interesting to know exactly how many specialists that she was able to have gotten a hold of, either in person or on the blower, on a weekend. Secondly, why did killing Billy suddenly become such an urgent matter?

In an October 4th photograph that she posted of him on Facebook, Billy's eyes are bright and he clearly can be seen resting comfortably on either a blanket or a pad. Moreover, he certainly does not give any indication of being in pain and if the viewer did not know differently he would surely pronounce him to be the very epitome of a healthy kitten.

In addition to the brightness of the eyes, there are several other considerations that need to be evaluated before snuffing out the life of a cat. For instance, is it still conscious and does it still possess the will to live?

Secondly, is it still eating and drinking? Thirdly, is it's excretory system still functioning? Fourthly, has it sustained any irreparable damage to its vital organs?

What a veterinarian has to say concerning life and death matters is not gospel. In making such momentous decisions, owners should rely upon their own intuition and morals. Regrettably, Billy did not have anyone in his corner in order to speak up for his inalienable right to live and to foot the enormous bill for his care.

Although treating Billy would have been unquestionably expensive and labor intensive, BCC had not been left hung out to dry. "We have had thousands of messages from people all over the world. We must have had three-hundred to four-hundred offers for homes for him," Moores acknowledged to the Blackpool Gazette on October 11th. (See "Castrated Kitten Loses Fight for Life.") "I have never known the whole of England to stand up for a little kitten. Everybody has taken him into their hearts."

The charity has not publicly disclosed how much in donations that it received earmarked for Billy's care but it is suspected that the amount was not insubstantial. Plus, additional funding would have flowed in if only it has chosen to have spared Billy's life. It is even remotely conceivable that some surgeries might have given the charity a huge discount.

Billy Looked Well Enough on October 4th 

Then there is the fact that St. Annes is one of the most affluent cities in all of northern England and that strongly suggests that BCC either has substantial resources of its own or, at the very least, has access to them. Rescue groups, however, are seldom willing to invest very much money in a single animal.

They feel that doing so is unfair to the thousands of other cats that desperately need their assistance and that argument is not without its merit. What they do instead is exploit kittens like Billy to the hilt as fundraising tools only to turn around and whack them and that is patently dishonest as well as immoral.

Given the incompleteness and glaring contradictions contained in BCC's assessment of Billy's health, it is difficult to speculate with any degree of certainty as to what could have been done for him. His principal ailment was, quite obviously, his broken pelvis and, owing to his tender age, repairing it would have been difficult due to the smallness and brittle nature of the ischium, pubis, and ilium of which it is comprised.

It is not even known how that it was broken. His attacker could have used either a blunt object on it or broken it with a swift kick. Another possibility is that he broke it when he stepped on Billy in an effort to hold him down while he cut off his testicles.

Considering the large number of cats that are deliberately run down by motorists every day, it is not surprising that broken pelvises constitute the second most common type of skeletal injuries sustained by members of the species. In turn, it only stands to reason that they would be preeminently treatable in some fashion.

In the vast majority of such cases, treatment consists primarily of a liberal application of painkillers and up to as much as six months of rest. According to veterinarian David Diamond, fractures of the ischium and the pubis usually fall into that category.

By contrast, bone plates, metal screws, and pins are used to mend a broken ilium. (See Pet Place, July 4, 2014, "Fracture of the Pelvis in Cats.")

For example, an eight-month-old brown and white female named Bristol from Florida was brought into one of Best Friends Animal Society's clinics a few years back suffering from a broken pelvis and incontinence. Her original rescuers wanted to kill her but the charity, headquartered in Kanab, Utah, not only spared her life but also was able to mend her broken pelvis through rest and time. (See Best Friends, February 2, 2016, "Young Cat with Pelvic Fracture Recovers.")

At the other end of the spectrum, a nine-year-old calico named Sophie who had suffered multiple fractures of her pelvis and nerve damage when she was run down by a motorist required a considerably greater amount of veterinary intervention. In her case, Bray, Ireland, veterinarian Pete Wedderburn was forced to employ physical therapy, ultrasound, lasers, and electrical muscle stimulation administered via electrodes in order to get her back on her feet. (See Pete the Vet.com, November 13, 2013, "Sophie, a Nine-Year-Old Cat Who Suffered a Broken Pelvis after Being Hit by a Car.")

The prognosis for Billy, if he had been allowed to go on living, is a good deal more problematic. In all likelihood the small bones in his pelvis would have continued to grow but it is far from clear if they would have fused together in a workable fashion. It likewise is unsure if surgical intervention would have materially aided that delicate process.

In a photograph released to the public by BCC, he was at least able to stand on his own and that was a positive sign. Even if he never fully regained the services of his pelvis and rear legs, it might have been possible to have fitted him with some type of prosthetic device that would have allowed him to regain his mobility.

For instance, a four-year-old tuxedo named Blacky from Seadown on New Zealand's south island lost not only his left eye but the use of both of his rear legs when he was run down and left for dead by a hit-and-run motorist in June of 2010. Brushing aside calls to have him killed, owner Louise Broomhall elected to spend NZ$2,000 in order to have his irreparably damaged eye removed and another NZ$600 on a two-wheeled prosthetic device that now allows him to move around on his own.

"Certainly he means a lot to our family and this is why we love him to bits and will do anything for him and this just proves it," she told The Timaru Herald on August 19, 2010. (See "Blacky (the cat) Gets His Wheels.") "He appreciates everything you do for him."

Even more amazing, a tortoiseshell named Callie Mae, who resides at the Theodore Veterinary Hospital in the Alabamian town of the same name, does not have any appendages at all. In 2008, she was chased up a tree by dogs where she subsequently became entangled in electrical wires and plunged to the ground breaking all of her legs.

Billy and the Fanciful Rainbow Bridge

Someone has to scratch, brush, and groom her and she uses Wee-Wee Pads but other than that she, at last word, was doing fine. "She's a good kitty," Sandy Tomlin of the surgery told WRKG-TV of Mobile in a video on August 9, 2010. (See "Legless Cat Ready to Start Another Life.") "She even caught a mouse one time."

It thus might not be totally unreasonable to suggest that, given care and treatment, the problems with Billy's pelvis could have been gotten around one way or the other. As far as his excretory problems are concerned, his bladder could have been manually expressed three to four times a day and laxatives and stool softeners could have been prescribed in order to have eased his passing of fecal matter. Chiropractic medicine and acupuncture could have solved, or at least greatly alleviated, the nerve damage that he had sustained and, possibly, restored service to his injured leg.

Billy therefore did not have to die. If it had possessed so much as half a mind to have done so, BCC could have at the very least provided him with an unlimited amount of time and rest in order to have seen if his pelvis would have healed on its own. Doing so would not have broken the bank and expressing his bladder and cleaning up a little poop would have not killed either Moores or anyone else for that matter. Best of all, such a course of treatment just might have succeeded


His life was preeminently worth saving not only because of its own intrinsic worth but also owing to the fact that he richly deserved to live. Keeping him alive also would have served as a slap in the face of the individual who perpetrated this monstrous crime.

Inexcusably, Billy lost all the way around. No one was willing to save his life and to date nobody has been willing to lift so much as a lousy finger in order to bring his attacker to justice.

Press reports have not broached the subject and it is far from clear if Billy was merely the victim of a botched sterilization or rather a sadistic attempt to torture and maim him for life. Examining veterinarians would likely know the answer to that but they have not publicly voiced an opinion one way or the other.

If the former were the case, it is conceivable that the patch of missing fur on his head could have been removed, not by a pair of scissors, but rather duct tape. Taping a cat to either a board or a table in order to hold it still is a common technique employed by those individuals who perform these types of utterly barbaric procedures. (See Cat Defender posts of February 26, 2008 and February 14, 2006 entitled, respectively, "The Dark Side of Spay and Neuter: Veterinarian Botched Surgeries and Back Alley Castrations Claim the Lives of Numerous Cats" and "Special Agent Fred the Cat Goes Undercover in Order to Help Nab a Quack Vet in A Brooklyn Sting Operation," the Essex Chronicle, February 15, 2014, "'A Sick Stranger Tried to Castrate My Cat' Says Owner of Sonia of Southminster," and the Bay of Plenty Times of Tauranga, January 27, 2011, "Owner Horrified at Castration of Prized Pedigree.")

As per usual, whenever a cat is attacked all that ensues is a proverbial feast of highfalutin rhetoric, sporadic outbursts of self-righteous moral indignation, and a legion of utterly laughable excuses for doing absolutely nothing. "It's barbaric," Moores exclaimed to the London Metro on September 20th. "Whoever has done this are (sic) sick, sick people."

Nonsense! The individual who mutilated Billy is evil, not sick, and what he richly deserves is no less than a fatal dose of his own medicine.

"I really hope that karma is just around the corner to the person who did this to Billy," she added October 8th on Facebook. "You really are one sick individual."

Hope and karma do not solve animal cruelty cases. Money, hard work, dedication, and forensic science are needed but seemingly nobody or any agency on the planet has so much as a smidgen of those ingredients to spare.

"Whoever has done this has to be brought to justice because what are they going to do next?" Moores declared to the Blackpool Gazette in the October 11th article cited supra. "What they have done to a kitten is just barbaric."

Yet, there is absolutely nothing in the public record that would tend to suggest that she has done a solitary thing in order to bring about such a result. Also, as far as it is known, BCC has neither opened an investigation into this matter or so much as offered a monetary reward, no matter how minuscule, for information that possibly might lead to an arrest.

In that respect, it is far from being a lone wolf. "We are continuing to investigate this case as inquiries are ongoing," an unidentified spokesman for the RSPCA told the Blackpool Gazette in the same article. "We are unable to comment further at this stage."

It likewise is a sure bet that the thoroughly discredited RSPCA will not be have anything to say at any other "stage" or, for that matter, before Hell turns into an ice skating rink. The reason for its intransigence is really quite simple: it is far too busy killing cats to ever worry about others who do likewise. (See Cat Defender posts of June 5, 2007, October 23, 2010, and August 31, 2015 entitled, respectively, "The RSPCA's Unlawful Seizure and Senseless Killing of Mork Leaves His Sister, Mindy, Brokenhearted and His Caretakers Devastated," "The RSPCA Steals and Executes Nightshift Who Was His Elderly Caretaker's Last Surviving Link to Her Dead Husband," and "Beaten and Entombed Above Ground for Several Weeks, a Forever Nameless Cat from Colchester Is Finished Off by the RSPCA which Refuses to Even Investigate Her Death," and Daily Mail articles dated December 30, 2012, November 6, 2014, August 11, 2016, and August 14, 2016 and entitled, respectively, "Revealed: RSPCA Destroys Half of the Animals That It Rescues -- Yet Thousands Are Completely Healthy," "RSPCA Forced to Apologize for Wrongly Putting Down Cat Belonging to Family It Accused of Cruelty in Bungled Prosecution," "Distraught Saltney Family Blast RSPCA after Their Cat Was Put Down," and "RSPCA Is at It Again! Cat Saved Then Put to Sleep.")

An Example of BCC's Sophistry

The despicable crimes committed by the RSPCA are reason enough in themselves for enacting an across the board ban on the killing of all cats under any conceivable circumstances. Even in those cases where a cat is allegedly suffering great pain and there is little or no hope for its recovery, no fewer than three separate court orders signed by three different judges should be required in order for any rescue group, governmental entity, veterinarian, or owner to extinguish its life.

As BCC's cold-blooded murder of Billy has demonstrated, the killing of cats based solely upon a lack of money and an unwillingness to treat them is a racket that must be stopped. Furthermore, those that require top-notch veterinary care in order to go on living should be provided it by the state if their owners, rescue groups, and others are unwilling to do what is only right by them.

Not surprisingly, the Lancashire Constabulary, located a scant five kilometers southwest of Preston, has done absolutely nothing in order to bring Billy's attacker to justice. In fact, the attack has not merited so much as even a mention in the long list of crimes that are cataloged in the news section of its web site.

That is in spite of an online petition at Lady Freethinker having collected in excess of twenty-three-thousand-five-hundred signatures imploring it to act. With three-thousand officers and five-hundred auxiliary personnel at its disposal, it still cannot spare even one of them to even half-heartedly look into this matter.

The intransigence of the authorities to take cruelty to cats seriously has in turn made Lancashire one of the most dangerous locales in the world for members of the species. For example in July of 2014, twenty-four-year-old Stephanie Curwen of 24 Walter Avenue in BCC's backyard of St. Annes sicced her Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Duke, on a six-month-old black kitten named Regi that was owned by Lesley-Anne Brocklehurst of Blackpool. She than sat back and laughed like a demon as Duke tore Regi apart.

When the case finally was heard in Blackpool Magistrates' Court on April 30, 2015, Curwen was let off with £280 in fines. Although the RSPCA did prosecute the case, it was not responsible for identifying and arresting Curwen.

"She's probably remorseful for the fact that she chose to walk down a road with cameras all over it. Had we not had the cameras she would have got away with it," Brocklehurst commented after sentencing. "I'm glad that we had the cameras and I'm hoping it will make people think twice about what they are doing." (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2015 entitled "Blackpudlian Thrill Seeker Who Sicced Her Pit Bull on Regi and Then Laughed Off Her Fat Ass as He Tore Him Apart Receives a Customary Clean Bill of Health from the Courts.")

Lancastrians additionally get a big kick out of using dogs in order to hunt cats. (See the Lancashire Telegraph of Blackburn, articles dated September 8, 2010 and July 12, 2014 and entitled, respectively, "Cats Savaged in Burnley" and "East Lancashire Gang Who Filmed Dogs Attacking Badger and Cat Jailed.")

As if all of that were not bad enough, they steal domestic cats for the purpose of feeding them to fighting dogs. (See the Bury Times of Bolton in Greater Manchester, January 1, 2011, "Cats Destined to Be Used as 'Live Bait' for Greyhounds.") F

They additionally kill them in droves by burning down shelters. For example on March 23, 2011, eighteen-year-old Jordan Morgan of Bloomfield Road in South Shore and twenty-three-year-old Karl Heaton of Smithy Lane in St. Annes deliberately set fire to the Easterleigh Animal Shelter on Queensway in St. Annes which resulted in the deaths of nine cats, sixteen chickens, and one rabbit. (See the Blackpool Gazette, April 17, 2012, "Court Told of Sick Animal Sanctuary Arson.")

Yet, for killing those twenty-six defenseless animals, they received only three-year jail sentences. (See the Blackpool Gazette, November 5, 2012, "Fury as Arsonists' Sentence Is (sic) Slashed.")

The only known group of miscreants who are on a par with Lancastrians when it comes to abusing cats are their cousins across the Irish Sea and that admonition applies equally to the inhabitants of both ends of the Emerald Isle. (See Cat Defender posts of September 18, 2008, November 20, 2008, January 5, 2010, and March 24, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Drunken Brute Beats, Stabs, and Then Hurls Fifi to Her Death Against the Side of a House in Limerick," "Trusting Domestic Cat Has Her Left Ear Blown Off with a Firecracker by Cretins Outside an Irish Bar," "Tourists and Consumers Alike Should Boycott Ireland and Its Exports in Response to Its Extermination of the Homeless Cats on Tory Island," and "Seven-Month-Old Bailey is Fed to Lurchers by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland.")

It thus seems perfectly clear that Lancastrians are not about to do anything in order to bring either Billy's mutilator to justice or to better protect the lives of all cats living in the county. That is in spite of having more than ample reason to at least think about doing the former.

That is because Billy has left behind a mother, father, and siblings and their lives are hanging in the balance while the authorities continue to twiddle their thumbs. Their failure in the past, present, and future to act in turn makes them complicit in Billy's death as well as in that of all other cats who have fallen, and are destined to fall, victims to violence.

"We are having a memorial plaque made for Billy which will be up in our stop permanently as a tribute to him," Moores announced October 10th on Facebook. "Billy must never be forgotten."

It is odd, however, that she is yet to make any mention whatsoever as to what was done with his remains and that in turn lends itself to speculation that she either had them incinerated or tossed out with the trash. If she had been even the tiniest bit sincere when she uttered those sentiments she would have provided him with a funeral service followed by a proper burial on the grounds of BCC. A tombstone, flowers, and a perpetually well-tended grave would have been essential along with seeing to it that his mutilator was brought to justice.

Reality can be a stubborn bugger in that it is not quite so easily gotten rid of even with a blizzard of lies and bullshit and therein lies, arguably, the most disturbing aspect of poor Billy's sad and short life: he already has become yesterday's news.

Photos: Blackpool Cats in Care.