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.