A Senior Citizen in Key Largo Is Beaten, Bruised, and Bloodied in Another Violent Assault Upon a Volunteer Feeding Homeless Cats

Robert Smith Was Sucker-Punched in the Face

"My crime is feeding cats."
-- Robert Smith

Seventy-four-year-old Robert Smith has been caring for the homeless cats of Key Largo for seven years. He puts out food and water and exchanges pleasantries with them before moving on down the line to the next stop on his daily route.

"There's a one-eyed cat I look out for by the (Key Largo) Fisheries (and Backyard Cafe at 1313 Ocean Bay Drive). There's also two black and whites that I feed," he explained to the Florida Keys Free Press on May 22nd. (See "Elderly Man: Feeding Cats Led to Assault.") "There's a woman who lets me feed them outside her house."

Little did he realize as he dutifully went about his labors of love on May 15th that he was about to become the latest volunteer to fall victim to a spiraling crime wave that is being directed at compassionate and dedicated individuals like himself who have the temerity to care about those cats that society was cruelly abandoned and unforgivably forgotten. By 2 a.m. his nocturnal rambles had brought him to a wooded area located between the Upper Keys Humane Society (UKHS) at 101617 the Overseas Highway (also known as U.S. 1) and the Tradewinds Shopping Center at 101437 the Overseas Highway and that was when his years of doing good finally caught up with him in a rather violent fashion.

Specifically, a young ruffian suddenly materialized out of the darkness and began screaming in his face that it was illegal to feed homeless cats in Key Largo. The man additionally claimed that he not only was employed by the UKHS but that he also liquidated cats for it.

As far as his first accusation is concerned, it most definitely is not illegal to feed homeless cats in Key Largo. His second assertion is a good deal thornier to sort out because all shelters that claim to be no-kill, such as the UKHS, nonetheless do in fact kill cats and other animals.

The only real difference between conventional shelters and no-kill facilities is that the latter at least claim to liquidate far fewer of their inmates than do the former. (See Cat Defender posts of July 29, 2010 and October 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter" and "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care.")

The dilemma is compounded by the fact that all those who operate shelters are outrageous liars. The UKHS, for example, has space for only eleven cats and eighteen dogs so it surely must be either turning away or killing cats and dogs in droves.

By contrast, the Humane Animal Care Coalition (HACC) at 105951 the Overseas Highway also operates a shelter and while it admits to having impounded four-hundred-fifty cats and one-hundred-sixty dogs during 2017 it is careful to omit any mention whatsoever on its web site of what happened to those animals. If past experience is any guide, it is a sure bet that it slaughtered just about every one of the cats.

Regardless of the man's questionable credibility, Smith had no choice but to respond to his verbal assault in some fashion but what he said by way of rebuttal has not been reported in the press. It turned out to have been a very brief conversation anyway because as he turned to leave the cowardly hooligan sucker-punched him in the face.

The force of the blow knocked Smith to the pavement and he may even have temporarily lost consciousness. Once he was able to have regained his footing, his attacker had fled into a RV park across the highway.

Although dazed, bleeding profusely, and bruised, Smith heroically finished feeding the cats before his unidentified girlfriend, who had been waiting patiently nearby in her pickup truck, intervened and drove him to the Circle K gas station at 102525 the Overseas Highway where paramedics were summoned by telephone. Upon arrival, they treated him for multiple cuts and bruises to his face and head but he categorically refused to be hospitalized.

The force of the blow also left him with several broken molars that are going to cost him an arm and a leg in order to repair as well as a road rash on his arm. It is not known what, if any, internal injuries that he may have sustained.

The only thing that has been reported in that regard is that he was still not feeling quite up to snuff the following day. "My mind is still a little fuzzy," he confided to the Florida Keys Free Press.

Deputies Daniel Valdez and Paul Bean of the Monroe County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) also showed up at the Circle K where they took a statement from Smith. Most importantly, he described his assailant as a fair complexioned white man in his thirties. He also is believed to have been around six-foot, three-inches tall with facial hair.

Armed with Smith's description of his attacker and the fact that he, apparently, either lives or was visiting the RV park across the street, the MCSO should not have had any difficulty whatsoever in making an immediate arrest. Since at last report that has not occurred, the most logical explanation is that the MCSO has not bothered to even open an investigation into the attack.

Inexplicably, the MCSO still has Smith's unwavering support.  "...the police (sic) are doing what they can to find this guy," he mindlessly caroled to the Florida Keys Free Press.

With his cuts, bruises, broken teeth, and lost blood, Smith now has joined a growing list of high-profile volunteers who have been either beaten, verbally intimidated, arrested, threatened with eviction, and fired from their jobs for showing compassion for homeless cats. Most prominently, fifty-five-year-old Lisa Maureen Saunders of Orlando is currently facing up to five years behind bars for defending her lawful right to feed starving cats. (See Cat Defender post of May 16, 2019 entitled "An Orlando Woman Is Unfairly Arrested and Jailed for Defending Her Right to Feed Homeless Cats and as a Consequence Those Under Her Care Have Been Left to the Mercy of the Cold-Blooded Killers at Orange County Animal Services.")

In 2013, forty-seven-year-old Jennifer Stafford of Los Angeles was beaten nearly to death for feeding the homeless cats that reside in her West Adams neighborhood. (See Cat Defender post of May 19, 2019 entitled "The Savage Beating Meted Out to a Volunteer in Los Angeles by a Racist Hooligan Vividly Demonstrates Just How Dangerous It Has Become to Feed Homeless Cats.")

In 2010, Jeanne Ambler was nearly evicted from her dwelling in Temple Terrace, Florida, for doing likewise. (See Cat Defender post of August 2, 2010 entitled "Old, Poor, and Sickly Jeanne Ambler Is Facing Eviction for Feeding a Trio of Hungry Cats.")

A few years before that Janice L. Rolfe of Grandview Heights was actually arrested and forced to stand trial for feeding a homeless cat. "People don't get prosecuted for acts of human kindness," her attorney, Mark A. Serrott, successfully pleaded on her behalf. (See Cat Defender post of February 27, 2007 entitled "Charged with Feeding a Feral Cat Named Fluffy, a Retired Ohio English Teacher Beats the Rap.")

If only that were the case because individuals most definitely have run afoul of the law for feeding cats in jurisdictions that have outlawed such acts of kindness. Furthermore, individuals such as John Beck have been axed from their jobs for feeding cats. (See Cat Defender post of June 14, 2006 entitled "A Kindhearted Dairyman, Sacked for Feeding Feral Cats, Files a $20 Million Lawsuit Against Cornell University," the Courtland Standard, February 22, 2007, "Groton Man Appeals Dismissal of His Lawsuit Against Cornell University," and the Ithaca Times, January 11, 2012, "Groton Wins Court Case Against Beck.")

In spite of the severe beating that was doled out to him, Smith has remained both defiant and steadfast. "My crime is feeding cats," he told the Florida Keys Free Press. "I'm not going to be bullied by this. I have to live my life."

True to his word, he was back on the job the day following the attack. Besides, he has considerably more on his mind these days than just his personal safety.

For instance, of paramount importance to him is the safety and well-being of the one-hundred or so homeless cats that currently call the Tradewinds Shopping Center home. Recently, the charity Casting for Cats of Islamorada, twenty-seven kilometers south of Key Largo, inaugurated a TNR program at the shopping plaza and during April forty-one cats were trapped, sterilized, vaccinated, and treated for parasites before being returned to the area.

Although it is heartening that none of them tested positive for either FeLV or FIV, they are far from being out of harm's way in that, as far as it has been reported, none of them have been placed in new homes. "They took thirty-nine cats from the Winn-Dixie (a supermarket in Islamorada) and slaughtered them three years ago," Smith related to the Florida Keys Free Press. "I just hope Tradewinds continues to work with Casting for Cats."

Tradewinds is owned by Kimco Realty of New Hyde Park in Nassau County on Long Island and, as a real estate investment trust (REIT), it owns four-hundred-thirty-six additional shopping centers across the United States. So far, it has been compassionate enough to grant Casting for Cats permission to trap its cats and to set up feeding stations at the shopping plaza.

Smith also Had Several Teeth Knocked Out

"This is the best way to keep our customers safe and humanely take care of the cats, which have grown in numbers," the real estate giant's Jennifer Maisch told the Florida Keys Free Press earlier on May 1st. (See "Group Pursues Non-Lethal Feral Cat Control.") "We're also hoping that the feeding stations will dissuade people from just throwing food down to feed the cats."

The trapping effort at Tradewinds has been aided by pet store Keys Kritters at 100636 the Overseas Highway which is offering some of the cats to the public for adoption. The UKHS has taken in an undetermined number of kittens that have been, for one reason or another, taken away from their mothers and, presumably, have to be bottle-fed.

HACC has reportedly performed some sterilizations for Casting for Cats while the Fleming Foundation of parts unknown has donated an unspecified amount of money to the effort. Huge concerns remain unaddressed, however.

The most pressing of which is the presence of such as large number of abandoned cats in a locale with a population of just slightly more than ten-thousand souls. Clearly an initiative that includes, inter alia, a public outreach program, on demand sterilizations, and a much greater emphasis upon adoptions is direly needed.

"It's not the cats' fault they're here," Sharon Mahoney-Ellenwood of Casting for Cats correctly deduced for the Florida Keys Free Press on May 1st. "Part of this is humans not taking care of their animals."

Getting to the bottom of the homeless cat conundrum in Key Largo as well as elsewhere in the Florida Keys remains, however, a sticky wicket. For example, although Mahoney-Ellenwood insists that TNR has succeeded in Marathon, eighty-one kilometers north of Key West, and Islamorada, it and Casting for Cats most assuredly failed those cats that used to live at Winn-Dixie.

That in turn segues into the disturbing question of exactly how many cats and kittens are being quietly liquidated every day in Key Largo, Islamorada, and at other locales throughout the Keys. Furthermore, even though divine retribution is largely a figment of the imagination, it nevertheless is pleasing to know that Winn-Dixie and its god-rotten Chek® cola are now themselves floundering on the rocks. (See Business Insider, March 27, 2018, "Winn-Dixie Is Closing Almost One-Hundred Stores as Its Parent Company Files for Bankruptcy -- See If Your Store Is on the List.")

Overall, supermarket chains are notorious for nakedly exploiting, neglecting, and killing cats. (See Cat Defender post of April 24, 2019 entitled "The Life, Times, and Tragic Demise of a Supermarket Cat: Brutus of Morrisons, 2009-2017.")

Acts of lawlessness directed at the volunteers are far from being the only menaces bedeviling the lives of homeless cats. Most prominently, whenever despisers of the species tire of targeting their caretakers they redirect their machinations toward the cats themselves. (See Cat Defender posts of January 5, 2011, August 24, 2017, July 12, 2011, November 18, 2011, and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Gunned Down by an Assassin and Then Mowed Down by a Hit-and-Run Driver, Big Bob Loses a Leg but Survives and Now Is Looking for a Home," "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provide an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Open the Champagne," "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," "Nico Dauphiné, Ph.D., Is Convicted of Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats but Questions Remain Concerning the Smithsonian's Role," and "Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

As the MCSO's steadfast refusal to make an arrest in the violent beating of Smith has once again demonstrated, the law enforcement community, humane groups, and the courts can hardly be expected to either enforce the anti-cruelty statutes or to protect the volunteers. Au contraire, it could even be argued that most of them are in league with the sworn enemies of the species.

Wild animals pose an additional threat to both homeless cats that are on their own as well as those that belong to managed colonies. For instance, wildlife biologists have driven out coyotes from their rural habitats just so that they can prey upon homeless and domesticated cats in both the cities and the suburbs. (See Cat Defender posts of October 2, 2006, December 4, 2007, September 15, 2011, and September 17, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Coyotes, Cheered on by Wildlife Officials, Join Raccoons in Killing Cats and Dogs in Washington State," "A Grieving Widow Risks Her Life in Order to Save Cosmo from the Jaws of a Hungry Coyote in Thousand Oaks," "Ravenous Coyotes, Cat-Haters, and Old Man Winter All Want Her Dead, Buried, and Gone but Brave Little Half Mask Is Defying All the Odds," and "Coyotes, Swimming from Connecticut, Are Blamed for Killing Twenty Cats on Remote and Exclusive Fishers Island.")

They also are using both raccoons and birds of prey in a similar fashion. (See Cat Defender posts of August 28, 2006, August 1, 2011, and February 16, 2012 entitled, respectively, "A Marauding Pack of Vicious Raccoons Rips Ten House Cats to Shreds and Terrorizes Residents in Olympia but Wildlife Officials Refuse to Intervene," "Eddie Is Saved by an Outdoor Umbrella after He Is Abducted from the Balcony of His Manhattan Apartment and Then Dropped by a Redtailed Hawk," and "Hawk Suffers Puncture Wounds to His Stomach and One Paw When He Is Abducted by a Raptor Hired to Patrol a City Dump on Vancouver Island.")

They even have reintroduced fishers to the densely-populated northeast in order to pick off cats. (See Cat Defender posts of July 19, 2007 and August 28, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Up to Their Old Tricks, Wildlife Officials Reintroduce Fishers to the Northeast to Prey Upon Cats and to Provide Income for Fur Traffickers" and "TNR Programs, Domestic Cats, Dogs, and Humans Are Imperiled by Wildlife Proponents' Use and Abuse of Coyotes and Fishers.")

The escalating pace of climate change is additionally making it more difficult for cats to survive in exclusively outdoor environments. For example, hurricanes Irene and Sandy exacted a heavy toll on Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats.

Ornithologists and wildlife biologists have pressured the national government in Washington into declaring cats to be personae non gratae on federal lands, such as Plum Beach in Brooklyn, and last August the American Bird Conservancy of The Plains, Virginia, successfully convinced both a federal court judge and New York State to get rid of the Jones Beach cats on Long Island. (See Cat Defender posts of August 7, 2014 and January 19, 2019 entitled, respectively, "The National Parks Service Racks Up a Major Victory by Expelling the Plum Beach Cats but It Is Thwarted in Its Burning Desire to Dance a Merry Little Jig on Their Graves" and "The American Bird Conservancy, a Stench of the Federal Bench, and New York State Parks Pool Their Resources in Order to Put the Screws to the Jones Beach Cats.")

Supplied with unlimited amounts of taxpayers funding, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the USDA's Wildlife Services have been waging an all-out war against cats in the Keys for decades. (See Cat Defender posts of May 24, 2007 and June 23, 2011 entitled, respectively, "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA's Wildlife Services Commence Trapping and Killing Cats on Florida's Big Pine Key" and "Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys.")

The USFWS even has been attempting to strong-arm state and local officials into enacting anti-roaming statutes, to require that all cats be either microchipped or tattooed, and to remove all feeding stations that are located in the vicinity of federal and state wildlife refuges. When the high-muck-a-mucks went after famed scuba diver Spencer Slate and his cat Rocky, however, they got considerably more than they had anticipated.

They began their devilry by illegally trapping Rocky on private property a scant fifty feet removed from Slate's residence. They followed that up by confining a bloody and bleeding Rocky to a shelter.

They next showed up on Slate's doorstep in order to issue him a citation for allegedly allowing Rocky to roam on federal land. The agents were so emboldened that they even went so far as to threaten to jail him on the spot.

Not being the type of man who tolerates such outrages lying down, Slate went toe-to-toe with the USFWS in federal court where he ultimately prevailed. (See The Daily Signal of Washington, November 30, 2016, "Federal Agents Threaten Pet Owners with a War on Cats.")

The fifty or so polydactyls that reside at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West were not nearly so lucky when the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service declared war on them shortly after the turn of the century. After nearly ten years of legal wrangling the museum ultimately was forced into not only confining them but also into erecting a fence around its perimeter. (See Cat Defender posts of August 3, 2006, January 9, 2007, July 23, 2007, and January 24, 2013 entitled, respectively, "The USDA Fines the Hemingway Memorial in Key West $200 a Day for Exhibiting Papa's Polydactyls Without a License," "Papa Hemingway's Polydactyl Cats Face New Threats from Both the USDA and Their Caretakers," "A Cat Behaviorist Is Summoned to Key West in Order to Help Determine the Fate of Hemingway's Polydactyls," and "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.")

With so many individuals, groups, and powerful interests aligned against them, the future has never looked bleaker for homeless cats and their dedicated caretakers. All is not lost, however, and the latter still have a few arrows left in their quivers.

One palliative would be to install surveillance cameras at the shelters and feeding stations of the cats that are under their care. Another option would be to have groups of two and three adults feed the cats in tandem. One person could therefore stand guard while the others fed them.

In Smith's case, he feeds his cats at night because there are fewer motorists on the road at that time in order to frighten them away but, considering the beating that he received, he may be forced into foregoing nocturnal feedings. Should he persist, however, he needs to arm himself with, at the very least, a canister of pepper spray.

In the long run, he and other caretakers may be left with little choice other than to relocate their TNR colonies onto private lands. Hopefully matters will not reach that point but that nevertheless is an eventuality that all of them should carefully contemplate.

The absolute last thing on earth that any fan of the species ever wants to see happen is for any cat to wind up at the mercy of its sworn enemies. Even being sentenced to serve out the remainder of their lives in a dog pound, as happened to those that once resided at Jones Beach, is a fate almost as bad.

Photos: Teresa Java of the Florida Keys Free Press.

The Savage Beating Meted Out to a Volunteer in Los Angeles by a Racist Hooligan Vividly Demonstrates Just How Dangerous It Has Become to Feed Homeless Cats

 Ian Justin Eulian Kept Fit by Beating Up a Woman

"It doesn't matter what career you have up until that point, you're going to have to be held responsible for that type of conduct."
-- Joshua Elliott Ritter, prosecuting attorney for the County of Los Angeles

The widely known and heavily financed national groups may get all the ink and glory but it is those kindhearted volunteers who care for homeless cats who always have been the heart, soul, and backbone of the feline protection movement. In the past, the most that their compassion was likely to cost them were time, labor, and money.

All of that has changed now and even so much as daring to feed a homeless cat can land an individual in jail, the hospital, and even the morgue. (See Cat Defender post of May 16, 2019 entitled "An Orlando Woman is Unfairly Arrested and Jailed for Defending Her Right to Feed Homeless Cats and as a Consequence Those Under Her Care Have Been Left to the Mercy of the Cold-Blooded Killers at Orange County Animal Services.")

Just how precarious such acts of compassion have become of late is perhaps nowhere more vividly demonstrated than in the brutal beating that thirty-nine-year-old Ian Justin Eulian of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) doled out to forty-seven-year-old Rebecca Stafford shortly after midnight on September 14, 2013. She was busily putting out kibble in the 2500 block of West View Street in Los Angeles in an effort to trap a cat when Eulian, who was off-duty at the time, ran up to her and yelled for her to stop.

Angry words were exchanged that culminated in Eulian's vowing to kill all the homeless cats in the West Adams neighborhood. She responded by throwing kibble in his ugly mug and he retaliated by leaping off his feet and delivering a series of hard punches to her face.

She then fled for her life into her Jeep but before she was able to start the engine and make her getaway, Eulian reached inside her vehicle and dragged her out where he delivered two additional punches to her face. While all of that was going on his seventy-year-old mother, Lionetta Fontaine, intervened by slapping Stafford in the face.

The savage beating inflicted upon her left Stafford lying unconscious on the pavement and bleeding from the back of her head. It is unclear exactly how long that she was out cold but once she came to she was suffering from temporary amnesia.

Her loss of memory afforded the opportunistic Eulian and Fontaine with what that they thought at the time was a sure-fire way of getting away scot-free with their violent crime. So, when Stafford asked them what had happened they concocted the outrageous lie that she had accidentally slipped and struck her head against the side of her car.

Since she was hardly in any position to refute what they had told her, that also provided the partners in crime with an opportunity to act magnanimously. They did so by having Fontaine graciously volunteer to drive Stafford home in her Jeep while Eulian followed behind in his tin lizzie.

When she went to the hospital the following day Stafford was diagnosed to have sustained a black eye, an injured left jaw, cuts inside her cheek, and a pair of swollen lips. All that was in addition to a concussion.

Even though that was bad enough in its own right, it is doubtful that even then she had any earthly idea of just how lucky she was to still be alive. As a fitness freak and, in all probability, a body builder, Eulian is a powerful man and he easily could have killed her with any one of the powerful blows that he delivered to her unsuspecting and unprotected face.

For example, he once as a contestant in a contest sponsored by Men's Health magazine to name "America's Fittest Firefighters." (See the Daily Mail, July 2, 2015, "Man Who Once Tried to Be 'America's Fittest Firefighter' Jailed for Assaulting Cat Lady Who Wouldn't Stop Feeding Stray Felines.")

Now armed with more than sufficient evidence in order to cast serious doubt on Eulian and Fontaine's version of events, Stafford next took her suspicions to the Los Angeles Police and, fortunately, the entire assault had been captured on surveillance cameras mounted outside the nearby West Adams Community Center. Eulian eventually was arrested and charged with one count of felony assault as well as one count of felony battery. He remained as free as a bird, however, on a US$20,000 bond.

Rebecca Stafford Was Beaten Senseless by Macho Man Eulian

Inexplicably, Fontaine never was charged with anything even though she was her son's accomplice, conspired with him, and obstructed justice. Eulian's arrest did serve nevertheless to put a lid on his and Fontaine's high-fiving and pretenses of being slick. Instead, they were exposed as nothing more than cat-haters, thugs, liars and, above all, criminals.

The incident additionally unmasked them as hard-core racists. West Adams, for instance, is 37.6 per cent black and 56.2 per cent Latino but only 2.4 per cent white and some blacks resent honky-donkeys being in their neighborhoods and that is especially the case if they happen to be feeding homeless cats.

Ailurophobia is toxic enough in its own right but whenever it is combined with racism it become dynamite. (See Cat Defender posts of July 30, 2009 and May 1, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Ferals Living at a Baltimore Church Find Out the Hard Way That Hatred of Cats Is Every Bit as Christian as Unleavened Bread and Cheap Wine" and "When It Comes to Cats, Acts of Faith Count for Absolutely Nothing With the Good Christians at Northside Baptist.")

As is the case with many disputes of this nature, the events of September 14, 2013 were the culmination of a long-simmering dispute. Specifically, Eulian had complained in the past that the cats Stafford was feeding were using his garden as a toilet and that they had attacked his mother's blind dog.

Since cats are not in the habit of attacking dogs, Eulian is quite obviously lying about that. While it is entirely possible that they could have been fouling his garden that, too, is highly questionable.

First of all, cats normally stay away from both dogs and individuals who are openly hostile to them. Secondly, it is a sure bet that neither Eulian nor Fontaine were either sheltering or feeding them unless they were putting out poison for them to ingest. The cats therefore did not have any valid reason for venturing onto such violent turf unless Eulian and Fontaine had not been properly disposing of their garbage.

Despite the incontrovertible evidence supplied by the surveillance footage, Eulian's first trial in 2014 ended in a hung jury. At that juncture it sure looked like he was going to beat the rap and he likely would have done just that if anyone other than Joshua Elliott Ritter had been trying the case, People v Ian Eulian, for the County of Los Angeles.

It was a terribly long time in coming but judgment day finally arrived for Eulian on May 21, 2015 when a jury in Los Angeles took less than two hours in order to convict him of both felony assault and battery. Since he had been angling for yet still another mistrial and thereby to eventually exhaust both the prosecution's money and patience, defense attorney Robert A. Schwartz was anything but gracious in defeat.

"This was a farce. One hour, really, of deliberations?" he stormed to the Los Angeles Times on May 21, 2015. (See "Firefighter Is 'Crushed' after Being Convicted of Assault, Attorney Says.") "If a jury does their (sic) job and they (sic) reach a verdict, I can live with that. But when they (sic) just go through the motions, I do have a problem."

He quite obviously has never heard of either an open and shut case or his towering ego will not allow him to admit even to himself that Ritter kicked his rotten ass. Once he had calmed down a little bit, however, he decided to try his hand at improvising a little fiction.

"Ian is crushed by the verdict," he bellyached to the Los Angeles Times. "He's a kind, thoughtful person. He's done good all his life. He's never been violent before."

According to psychologists, an individual's character is formed early on in life and, if that is true, a thirty-nine-year-old man does not just suddenly out of the blue beat a middle-aged woman half to death and threaten to kill defenseless cats. It therefore is all but certain that if an exhaustive investigation ever were made into Eulian's past it would expose him to be an extremely violent man who has physically assaulted numerous individuals, cats, and other animals in the past.

Eulian Eventually Was Forced to Face the Music in Court

At his sentencing on June 30, 2015, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jose I. Sandoval gave him one-hundred-eighty days in jail, placed him on probation for three years, ordered him to perform twenty-five days of community service with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and to attend one-year of anger management classes. Even though he not only richly deserved but could have been sentenced to serve seven years in jail, Eulian was anything but grateful for the extreme leniency shown him by Sandoval.

"I've never led my life to even be in a situation like this, so to say I'm catching a break it's hard to say that when I never saw myself in jail or in court or arrested," he complained to the Daily Mail in the article cited supra. "My record has been extremely clean for thirty-nine-years."

As everyone should know, there is a huge difference between being a law-abiding citizen and never having been caught. Perhaps Eulian simply had been either too slick or lucky in the past for the authorities to have apprehended him.

Before judgment was passed on him, he did belatedly apologize to Stafford. "I'm sorry," he reportedly told her according to KCAL-TV of Los Angeles on June 30, 2015. (See "Former Firefighter Sentenced for Assaulting Cat-Feeding Lady.") "I've lost everything -- my reputation, my career. Please allow me the chance to continue to provide for my family."

Although there can be little doubt that he deeply regrets being forced to resign from the LAFD and thus having to forfeit his high salary and all the benefits that went along with it, the only thing that he truly was "sorry" about was getting caught red-handed on camera. Even if he had killed Stafford it is highly unlikely that he would have shed so much as a solitary tear.

"He really allowed his temper to get away from him to a shocking extent," Ritter summed up to KTLA-TV of Los Angeles on June 30, 2015. (See "Los Angeles Firefighter Sentenced in Caught-on-Camera Beating of Woman Feeding Cats.") "It doesn't matter what career you have up until that point, you're going to have to be held responsible for that type of conduct."

That was far from being the end of this case, however, in that Eulian remained free on bail while he appealed his conviction to California's Second District Court of Appeal, Division Five, and it was not until June 7th of the following year that it finally got around to rendering its decision. In a unanimous twenty-eight-page opinion authored by Justice Sandy R. Kriegler that was joined by Justices Paul Turner and Lamar W. Baker, the court rejected Eulian's appeal and affirmed his conviction.

"The critical issue in this trial was whether defendant used a reasonable amount of force in self-defense or defense of his mother," Kriegler stated. "The jury could rationally conclude that defendant provoked the conflict, and that he continued to be the aggressor until Stafford responded, at which point defendant knocked her out with a series of punches."

Even in ruling as such, Kriegler had some choice words for Stafford. "We do not suggest Stafford was blameless in this incident," he concluded. "It would be generous to say that her conduct left much to be desired."

By way of response, Stafford told My News L.A. on June 7, 2016 that the biggest problem that she had with the entire affair was "getting blamed for things that I didn't do." (See "Ex-Firefighter 'Lost Everything' in Conviction for Hitting Cat-Feeding Woman: Now He Loses Appeal.")

She also acknowledged on that occasion that ever since the attack she had been afraid to even so much as to go shopping at the neighborhood market. Press reports have not broached the subject but such an admission raises the possibility that either Eulian or some of his friends and relatives may have attempted to intimidate her from seeing this matter through to its logical conclusion.

Although Eulian certainly could have appealed his latest legal setback to the California Supreme Court in San Francisco, no record of such an appeal is to be found online. That does not necessarily mean, however, that he actually ever did serve the six months in the slammer that Sandoval meted out to him.

It would be heartening nevertheless if that indeed turned out to have been the case. Perhaps he was even forced into serving as what in jailhouse lingo is known as an "asshole buddy" to some drug kingpin. It would be even more just if he accordingly had come out of jail suffering from either Hepatitis C or AIDS.

These  Kittens Used Their Wings to Flee the Ghetto...

Deplorably, American society is chock-full of individuals just like him. They pretty themselves up and brown-nose those with the money and power in order to get on in this outrageously uncivil and corrupt society while simultaneously abusing and killing cats as well as beating up women whenever they think that no one is watching. The world and all of its treasures belong to the phonies, posers, hypocrites and, above all, criminals.

It has not proven possible to ascertain the fate of the cats that were under Stafford's care but given that she was scared to death to so much as go to the market it seems likely that she was forced into abandoning them. As a consequence, every one of them is likely long dead by this time but countless others have sans doute since then been abandoned in the neighborhood and they, too, are destined to face the same deprivations, violence, and cruel fate as their predecessors.

Unlike their English counterparts who do not hesitate to rescue cats that become stranded in trees, on electrical lines, and at other heights, American firefighters generally refuse to intervene in such emergencies and that raises the specter that most of them are every bit as virulent cat-haters as Eulian. Even if it ultimately should turn out that laziness, as opposed to ailurophobia, is the north star that guides their behavior, they nevertheless are another group of professionals whose conduct bears close monitoring. (See Cat Defender posts of February 20, 2007, March 20, 2008, and November 9, 2017 entitled, respectively, "A Stray Cat Ignominiously Named Stinky Is Rescued from a Rooftop by Good Samaritans After the Fire Department Refuses to Help," "Bone-Lazy, Mendacious Firefighters Are Costing the Lives of Both Cats and Humans by Refusing to Do Their Duty," and "Forest Is Rescued from High Atop a Dead Cherry Tree in an Exceedingly Rare Display of Ailurophilia on the Part of an American Firefighter," plus, the Telegram and Gazette of Worcester, February 24, 2018, "Massachusetts Firefighter Reprimanded over Handling of Cat Call.")

Overall, the black community's mistreatment, neglect, and abuse of cats can only be described as criminal. First of all, since so many of their neighborhoods are racked with gun violence some of it surely must spill over and onto cats.

Secondly, the vicious dogs that many blacks own surely must chew up countless cats. Thirdly, adolescents from these neighborhoods abuse and kill cats with impunity. (See Cat Defender post of October 5, 2006 entitled "New Jersey Teens' Idea of Fun: Beat Up a Defenseless Kitten and Then Burn It to Death.")

Even countless black adults fail to provide their resident felines with shelter, suitable food, and veterinary care. (See Cat Defender posts of December 23, 2010 and October 13, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Tavia's Desperate Pleas for Help Fall Upon the Deaf Ears of the Evangelical Who Abandoned Her and the Heartless Officials and Citizens of Kissimmee" and "Bart Has Courageously Overcome Being Run Down by a Hit-and-Run Motorist and Subsequently Buried Alive by His Owner but Another Dark Cloud Is Hanging over His Future.")

Furthermore, the black community's utter contempt for the sanctity of all animal life extends far beyond cats. For instance, throughout her long career Aretha Franklin shamelessly strutted around stage in an array of large furs that no doubt had to be specially manufactured in order to fit around her grotesquely obese frame.

It accordingly was not surprising last week when more than one-hundred-fifty black religious leaders rallied outside of City Hall in Manhattan in opposition to a proposed bill that would ban the sale of fur throughout New York City's five boroughs. (See the New York Post, May 14, 2015, "'Runway' Star Gunning for Fur.")

Perhaps most telling of all, the nation's first black president, Barack Obama, cared absolutely nothing for cats and other animals. (See Cat Defender post of November 23, 2017 entitled "For Eight Long and Tortuous Years, Barack Obama and His Bloodthirsty Henchmen Within the Federal Bureaucracy Waged a Ruthless, No-Holds-Barred War on Cats.")

That is by no means meant to imply that feline abuse and neglect is a dirty secret that pertains only to the black community; au contraire, just about all minority and insular communities are guilty of the same types of crimes. For example, Mormon fundamentalists have little or no regard for feline and canine lives. (See Cat Defender post of August 8, 2012 entitled "Polygamists Condemn Thomas to a Long and Excruciatingly Painful Death by Burying Him Up to His Tiny Neck Inside a Steel Post Filled with Wet Concrete.")

In their own countries, the Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Indians slaughter cats by the multitudes for the dinner table and, rightly or wrongly, the rumors persist that those living in this country do likewise. Even if they are no longer killing and eating them, their wholesale exploitation, abuse, and neglect of them is still reprehensible.

Jews in Israel mistreat cats horribly under the best of circumstances but when they pulled out of the Sinai in 1982 and Gaza in 2005 they cruelly left behind thousands of them in order to fend for themselves. (See Cat Defender posts of August 10, 2006, October 12, 2006, and August 9, 2007 entitled, respectively, "The Death Toll Mounts for Cats and Other Animals Slaughtered and Left Homeless in Lebanon by the Israeli War Criminals," "A Few Hundred Cats and Dogs Are Airlifted Out of Lebanon but Cluster Bombs and an Oil Slick Continue to Kill Animals and Marine Life," and "The Israeli Police Turn a Blind Eye to the Poisoning of Fifty-Three Cats and Dogs in Kiryat Tivon.")

Members of their Orthodox and Hasidic communities scattered throughout the United States sacrifice tens of thousands of chickens each Yom Kippur in a ceremony known as kaparot and while not much is written concerning how that they treat their cats it is nevertheless strongly suspected that they, too, suffer from horrible neglect and abuse. After all, the same people who bequeathed to posterity Genesis 1: 26-28 and Acts 10: 11-13 fervently believe that their god has endowed them an unqualified right to do with all animals as they see fit.

...but There Is Little Hope for This Homeless Cat in West Adams

Owing to the dereliction of the capitalist media, little or nothing is reported concerning how that the Amish and Native Americans treat cats but the strong suspicion is that both groups horribly abuse, neglect, and nakedly exploit them. For example, the latter's killing of whales is repulsive enough in its own right. (See Cat Defender post of June 18, 2007 entitled "Alaskan Eskimos Bomb and Butcher a One-Hundred-Fifteen-Year-Old Bowhead with the Complicity of the United States, the IWC, and Sea Shepherd.")

The media likewise almost totally ignores the Hispanic community's crimes against the species with the notable exception of once in a blue moon naming some of its members who kill and eat cats. (See Cat Defender posts of September 13, 2007 and December 1, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Costa Rican Bull Rider Bites Off the Heads of Live Cats, Dogs, and Other Animals, Drinks Their Blood, and Then Eats Their Flesh" and "Peruvians Ludicrously Claim That as the Descendants of Slaves They Are Entitled to Massacre and Eat Cats with Impunity.")

To be fair about the matter it also must be acknowledged that the Swiss, Italians, and diabolical Australians also eat cats. (See Cat Defender posts of February 5, 2007, September 7, 2007, and November 18, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Fur Traffickers and Vivisectors Are Suspected in the Disappearance of Berlin's Katzen," "Australians Renounce Civilization and Revert to Savages with the Introduction of a Grotesque Plan to Get Rid of Cats by Eating Them," and "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

There are always multiple exceptions to all rules but it nevertheless is difficult to get around the overpowering impression that most minorities do not care for cats. For instance, they do not practice spay and neuter or even provide those that they own with proper shelter and halfway decent commercial food.

Perhaps even more revealing, it is almost unheard of to see minorities in veterinary clinics. The situation could be somewhat different in densely populated urban areas but not all that much.

Responsible and compassionate cat care and ownership therefore tends to be the almost exclusive preserve of middle and upper class whites but even amongst them it is not all that widespread. That dichotomy between groups is not due to financial and social considerations either in that many minorities not only have money but enough of it to burn.

While there certainly is not any legal requirement that minorities even so much as like cats, they nonetheless should be required to abide by the strictures of the anti-cruelty statutes like everybody else. They additionally should be held accountable under the law for abandoning cats.

Since society has so completely failed to protect those cats that, through no fault of their own, are trapped in minority neighborhoods, their lives are invariably, to borrow from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, nasty, brutish, and short. Even if against all odds they are somehow able to eke out a meager existence for a while, sooner or later Animal Control officers intervene and put an end to their lives.

Needless to say, any society that makes even the slightest pretenses about being just and humane owes them considerably more than trips to the gallows. As things now stand, however, it appears that most individuals have fallen under the sway of PETA, ornithologists, and wildlife biologists and accordingly subscribe to the abhorrent notion that the only good cat is a dead one.

With that being the case it is truly lamentable that all kittens and cats who suffer the outrageous misfortune of finding themselves in ghettos, shtetls, and similar hellholes do not enter this world equipped with wings as was the case with Mrs. Jane Tabby's litter of Thelma, James, Theodore, and Harriet in Ursula Kroeber Le Guin's 1988 inspirational little tome, Catwings. They then would be able to fly away to the countryside and thus be free of cat-hating racist hooligans such as Eulian, gun violence, motorists, vicious dogs, large hungry rats, and cruel people who hide behind religion in order to commit their evil deeds as well as all the rubbish and squalor that characterizes these miserable communities.

Since that is not a feasible solution to their god-awful plight, the next best palliative would be TNR but considering the beating that was doled out to Stafford few individuals and groups are willing to put their lives on the line by venturing into these hostile and often racist and violent neighborhoods. Perhaps groups of four or five volunteers could be prevailed upon to enter these communities during daylight hours but even that is a long shot.

Yet, as things now stand the sad truth of the matter is that these forgotten cats are beyond the reach of all morality and law and that must not be allowed to continue. It thus seems clear that they must, somehow and some way, be humanely trapped and physically removed from these hellholes and relocated to either existing TNR colonies or placed in good homes.

Photos: the Daily Mail (Eulian and Stafford), Al Seib of the Los Angeles Times (Eulian in court), Scholastic Press (Catwings' book jacket), and KTLA-TV (a homeless cat in West Adams).

An Orlando Woman Is Unfairly Arrested and Jailed for Defending Her Right to Feed Homeless Cats and as a Consequence Those Under Her Care Have Been Left to the Mercy of the Cold-Blooded Killers at Orange County Animal Services

Lisa Maureen Saunders Is Being Railroaded to Prison on a Bum Rap

"Those of us who have cared for community cats know how isolating and scary it can (be) trying to navigate the world of cats and the humans who either are not informed about unowned cats or (are) more concerned with being part of the problem than the solution."
-- Valisha Jackson

The ongoing war between homeless cats and the kindhearted volunteers who care for them on the one hand and those individuals and groups on the other hand who would like nothing better than to see the both of them dead and in their graves has claimed yet still another innocent victim. This time around the martyr is fifty-five-year-old Lisa Maureen Saunders who for the past two years had been caring for the dispossessed waifs that live in the Lake Sunset section of west-central Orlando near the Citrus Bowl.

The chain of events that culminated in her eventual downfall began to unfold at around 5:30 a.m. on March 30th while she was dutifully feeding those cats that reside in the 2200 block of West South Street. That was when she was accosted by an unidentified local resident who ordered her to stop putting out food for them. As it is customary with all such inveterate despisers of the species, the woman dishonestly claimed that the cats were spreading scabies throughout the neighborhood.

Saunders, who quite obviously was overwhelmed with fear not only for her own life but also those of the cats under her care, fled to her car where she pulled out a black handgun. "Don't fuck with me!" she reportedly warned the cat-hater, defamer, and practiced liar according to the April 7th edition of the Orlando Sentinel. (See "Orlando Woman Pulls Gun in Defense of Feeding Stray Cats, Affidavit Says.")

She then climbed back in her old jalopy and vacated the area. As far as it has been reported in the media, at no time did she ever strike her attacker. Plus, it is entirely conceivable that the woman physically attempted to prevent her from carrying out her filial duties to the cats.

After all, the two women had repeatedly clashed in the past over the cats but, owing to the customary biased, dishonest, and underhanded reporting of the utterly despicable capitalist media, it is not known either what was said or transpired on those occasions. Purposefully overlooked by the media and other commentators is the petit fait that it is not illegal to feed starving cats in Orlando.

It is, however, most definitely illegal to verbal abuse, physically threaten, and to prevent an otherwise law-abiding citizen from carrying out a perfectly lawful activity. Much more importantly, Saunders' attacker is neither an officer of the law, a politician, nor a lord of the universe. She therefore did not have either any business or authority accosting, verbally abusing, and issuing orders to Saunders.

The crux of the matter seems to boil down to the fact that the woman had become frustrated over her inability to convince the police, whom she had telephoned several times in the past, to do her bidding by arresting and jailing Saunders. She accordingly decided to take the law into her own hands which, by the way, is the usual modus operandi of just about all cat-haters.

Since Saunders was not breaking any law, it therefore was the duty of the police not only to have protected her and her cats but also to have arrested and jailed her attacker. In fact, it is preeminently the fault of the good-for-nothing police, who stood idly by laughing off their fat asses, that this situation spiraled out of control in the first place.

Instead of being proactive, they spend their careers just hoping that someone of is going to break the law and as a consequence they can make an arrest and therefore earn a promotion and a fatter paycheck. The practical implications of such a policy are most readily observable in the almost total absence of cops walking beats and patrolling the streets in their cruisers. Their objective therefore is not to prevent crime but rather to cash in on it.

At the time of the altercation, Saunders was working as a delivery driver for Domino's Pizza at 2108 Bruton Avenue, which is located approximately four kilometers south of 2200 West South Street, and that gave her another valid reason for packing in addition to her legitimate fear of her attacker and other inveterate cat-haters. Specifically, delivering food to perfect strangers is an extremely dangerous job.

For example, delivery personnel in New York City, Philadelphia, and elsewhere had been lured to addresses where they have been robbed and, even on some occasions, murdered. Those who work for Chinese restaurants have been repeatedly targeted by these types of criminals.

Malheureusement as far as Saunders was concerned, a few days later on April 4th she was called upon to unwittingly deliver pizza to the residence of her attacker. It has not been reported either what transpired or was said on that fateful occasion, only that the opportunistic woman immediately recognized her and wasted no time in ratting her out to the gendarmes.

They in turn hightailed it to Domino's where the store's unidentified manager was only too happy to sell his faithful and hard-working employee down the river. "Yes, it's Lisa," he gleefully chirruped to the police according to the April 6th edition of the Belleville News-Democrat in Illinois. (See "'Don't Fuck with Me!' Orlando Cat Lover Uses Gun to Defend Right to Feed Hungry Strays.")

What happened next is not exactly clear but according to the Orlando Sentinel the complainant picked out Saunders' mug from a photo lineup and she was promptly arrested. Logically, it would appear that the newspaper has placed the cart before the horse in that the police surely must have taken Saunders into custody beforehand in order to have obtained the photograph that they later showed to her sworn enemy.

Regardless of the precise order of events, the police charged Saunders with aggravated assault with a firearm and she was lodged in the Orange County Jail with her bail set at US$10,000. The mere fact that she was not charged with illegal possession is conclusive evidence that she had a legal permit to carry a pistol.

According to a story that aired April 6th on WPLG-TV of Pembroke Park, three-hundred-fifty-six kilometers south of Orlando, she also was ordered to stay away from her accuser and not to possess any firearms. Under the circumstances, however, it is extremely difficult to understand how that she either could have gotten anywhere near her accuser even if she had wanted to do so or procured another roscoe. (See "Woman Pulls Gun on Neighbor Who Told Her to Stop Feeding Strays, Police Say.")

At the time of her booking, Saunders requested that a public defender be appointed to represent her but as of April 10th the authorities had not seen fit to oblige her. Nothing further has appeared online regarding her fate and, as a consequence, it is not even known if she eventually was able to have made bail. It likewise is not known when she is due in court.

That which is not in dispute is that she is in serious trouble. As best it could be determined, merely verbally threatening someone with a firearm is considered to be a third-degree felony in Florida. Even worse, a conviction carries with it a mandatory sentence of a minimum of three years in jail and possibly a fine of as high as US$5,000 to boot.

Saunders accordingly has only two avenues of defense. Her best option would be to claim that she was acting in self-defense because she feared for her life owing to her accuser's actions not only on March 30th but prior occasions as well.

She also could claim that she was acting in defense of the cats and their right to be fed but she would have a difficult time of convincing a judge of that considering how biased the American legal system is against the species. Regardless of which alternative she ultimately decides upon, she likely would be better off in asking for a jury, as opposed to a bench, trial.

That was the tactic that amateur ornithologist James Munn Stevenson of Galveston employed back in 2006 when he was caught red-handed shooting cats. Furthermore, he even bragged online that he had gunned down as many as two-hundred-fifty of them.

Because those impaneled to hear his case could not reach a verdict, his trial ended in a hung jury and he strutted out of court as free as a bird with his dirty schnoz poked high in the air. (See Cat Defender posts of November 22, 2006, May 1, 2007, November 20, 2007, December 8, 2007, and August 7, 2008 entitled, respectively, "An Evil Galveston Birder Is Finally Arrested After Having Gunned Down Hundreds of Cats," "The Houston Chronicle Launches a Propaganda Offensive on Behalf of Serial Cat Killer Jim Stevenson," "Bird Lovers All Over the World Rejoice as Serial Killer James M. Stevenson Is Rewarded by a Galveston Court for Gunning Down Hundreds of Cats," "All the Lies That Fit: The Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support for James M. Stevenson," and "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank.")

To say the least, it would indeed be the very epitome of injustice if Saunders is sent to the slammer for feeding cats whereas Stevenson was let off scot-free for gunning down hundreds of them. In order to avoid such a catastrophe, she needs the assistance of, not a public defender, but rather a team of skilled trial attorneys.

That, of course, is going to require a ton of money in that neither competent legal counsel nor the expert witnesses needed for her defense come cheaply. From all appearances, however, it sure looks like she has been left hung out to dry by her colleagues in the feline protection movement.

In particular, none of the nationally-known groups have seen fit to come to her aid. In a way that is not all that surprising in that the vast majority of them care only about fundraising and mindlessly running off at the mouth.

For instance, during the summer of 2010 eighty-one-year-old Jeanne Ambler of Nantucket Bay Apartments in Temple Terrace, seventeen kilometers northeast of Tampa, found herself in a similar pickle when both management and tenants alike commenced calling for her head all because she was feeding the homeless cat population at the complex. "They all feel hunger. They feel affection. They all feel pain," the former tutor at Hillsborough Community College argued in vain. "They're beings, God's creatures, just as we are."

Just when it looked like she had run out of all hope and options the international law firm of Holland and Knight in Tampa came forward and volunteered to represent her pro bono. (See Cat Defender post of August 2, 2010 entitled "Old, Poor, and Sickly Jeanne Ambler Is Facing Eviction for Feeding a Trio of Hungry Cats.")

In Saunders' case, however, the only known pledge of support has come from Orlando resident Valisha Jackson who on April 7th established a Go Fund Me page entitled "Orlando Community Cat Feeder Lisa Saunders" that was intended to raise US$5,000. Sadly, by April 30th only US$280 in contributions from eight individuals had been received and that total includes US$25 from Jackson herself.

"Those of us who have cared for community cats know how isolating and scary it can (be) trying to navigate the world of cats and the humans who either are not informed about unowned cats or (are) more concerned with being part of the problem than the solution," she wrote on Go Fund Me. "We also understand being fearful for the safety of the cats and how they will manage if we are unable to continue caring for them."

Indeed the fate of the cats that Saunders had been caring for is even direr than that of herself. If she is still languishing behind bars, she obviously is unable to care for them.

Even if she has made bail, she would be risking arrest once again if she so much as sets foot in the Lake Sunset neighborhood. Her accuser is sans doute lying in wait for just such an opportunity so that she can either accost her again or sic her buddies in blue on her.

Even more troubling, Orange County Animal Services (OCAS) is trapping and systematically exterminating just about all cats in Lake Sunset. The only individual who stood between them and their executioners was Saunders and she bravely pulled off that leger de main by repeatedly changing the locales at which she fed them.

She is now out of the picture and it is not believed that anyone or group has seen fit to fill the void created by her demise. The data contained on its web site are a bit tricky to interpret but for whatever it is worth OCAS claims to have released only fifty-nine per cent of the cats that it impounded in 2017 and sixty-seven per cent of those that it took in during 2018.

A closer look at its 2018 statistics reveals that OCAS killed one-hundred-ninety-five cats at the request of their owners. It whacked another eight-hundred-eighty-five of them for unspecified medical reasons in addition to seven-hundred-seventy-three of those whose personalities it did not like.

Nine were rubbed out for a lack of space, one-hundred-thirty-six died of unspecified causes after they were falsely imprisoned, fourteen were killed by state laboratories, and another two-hundred-forty of them were disposed of in some unspecified manner.

Since all shelter operators lie their ugly little faces off about the number of cats that they kill, the statistics supplied by OCAS are without a doubt gross underestimates. Specifically, they not only lie about the large number of cats that they kill inside their facilities but also those that their staffers as well as Animal Control officers kill in the field.

Most shelters even farm out the killing of cats and kittens to other likeminded institutions. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "The Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter.")

There accordingly is not any way that OCAS can hid the ugly truth. It is simply a feline slaughterhouse that pretends to be a shelter. Much more importantly, it is long overdo that it and all shelters were shuttered and their staffers, not Saunders, arrested and sentenced to long jail terms.

Jackson is doing what she can for both the cats and Saunders but the response from the public has not been encouraging. "While we don't know all the specifics surrounding the case, this campaign is focused on what we do know, and that there are community cats who are absent a caretaker during this time," she wrote on Go Fund Me. "The funds raised as part of this campaign will be used to support Lisa in her future ability to fund the care of her community cats, legal trap-neuter-return efforts and all associated costs which benefit the best interest of the cats that she has been caring for up until this point."

Throughout this entire sorry affair the conduct of the capitalist media has been nothing short of reprehensible. First of all, they have plastered Saunders' name and photograph all over the Internet while simultaneously refusing to even so much as to name her accuser.

Secondly as any simpleton should know, cats do not spread scabies. Rather, they sometimes become infested (not infected) with different types of mites than those that infest humans. As a consequence, whenever feline mites come into contact with the human skin they fail to thrive and instead produce only a mild itch that goes way on its own.

Human scabies (Sarcoptes scabieu), on the other hand, is transmitted human-to-human through sexual intercourse and by holding hands and as a result there are around two-hundred-thousand such cases reported in the United States each year. If Sanders' accuser therefore has become infested with scabies it is due to her whoring around with either unclean men or dirty women, depending upon her sexual preference, rather than the homeless cats that reside in Lake Sunset.

In their rush to hang both Saunders and the cats under her care, neither the Orlando nor the national media have been willing to point out that petit fait. While it is entirely possible that some of them may look a little down-at-the-heel that by no means proves that they are either unhealthy or spreading diseases.

What they richly need and deserve is more of the compassionate care delivered to them by Saunders and, above all, permanent loving homes. It is just too bad that Saunders' accuser does not reside in either Rockland County, New York, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Lakewood, New Jersey, Los Angeles, or any of the other locales across the nation where the measles are being indiscriminately spread by Orthodox and Hasidic Jews as well as individuals who have arrived from foreign countries that do not rigorously vaccinate their populations against the disease.

Perhaps if she did she would have something really serious to worry about as opposed to concocting outrageous lies about homeless cats and Saunders. It additionally is a sure bet that she would not dare to open her trap to the Jews because she knows bloody damned well that they not only would shut it but permanently to boot.

Most Americans are such nothings that even a small child can see through them. They blow long and hard about how brave and great they are but in reality it only those individuals and animals, both at home and abroad, who cannot defend themselves that they attack. If they were truly so courageous and great they would follow in the footsteps of Napoleon and Hitler and dispatch their imperialist war machine to Russia as opposed to crapping on Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, and other small countries.

Thirdly, this is hardly the first time that the capitalist media in Orlando have gone to such gargantuan lengths in order to hang cats. Most notably, in 2013 the Orlando Sentinel gleefully published an article by Ted Williams of the National Audubon Society wherein he called for all cats to be poisoned with acetaminophen.

The mere fact that such behavior is not only morally repulsive but also patently illegal did not bother the Orlando Sentinel at all. (See Cat Defender post of May 18, 2013 entitled "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It.")

Whenever the rulers and denizens of Orlando tire of going after cats and their caretakers they redirect their machinations in the direction of the city's sizable homeless population by banning such groups as Food Not Bombs from handing out food to them. (See the Orlando Sentinel, articles dated July 25, 2006 and July 27, 2006 and entitled, respectively, "Eola Homeless Meals Banned" and "Food, But No Fight, at Eola Park.")

With its wonderful weather, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, Sea World, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon as well as having Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center nearby, Orlando really rakes in the big bucks and its denizens, quite naturally, are known for feeling their oats and exerting their dominion. None of that has proven sufficient, however, to hide the fact that the city is nonetheless a moral backwater inhabited primarily by low-life and scumbags who not only support but enthusiastically cheer on every atrocity committed against cats, their caretakers, and the down-and-out.

That is the principal reason that the city perennially ranks near the top of almost every survey that is taken of the nation's meanest and most unfriendly cities. (See the Orlando Sentinel, July 30, 2006, "Orlando Heads Back to List of Meanest Cities.")

Fourthly, anyone who even remotely cares about cats should immediately inaugurate a boycott of Domino's Pizza. Not only did the chain rat out Saunders to the police but it likely has fired her as well. That should not prove to be all that difficult of a sacrifice for anyone to make considering that its lousy pies are not worth purchasing in the first place.

Photo: the Orlando Police Department.