Condemned to Die as Dog Bait, Courageous Buzz Perseveres Just Long Enough Until He Is Somehow Able to Not Only Regain His Freedom but also to Find His Pot of Gold at the Rainbow's End

Buzz Has Been Put Through Hell During His Brief and Troubled Life

"The vet and Cats Protection had put his details online to try to trace his previous owner, and a lady contacted me to say she had lived next door to his original owner and confirmed that he had been used as dog bait."
-- Abbie Garland

It is just too bad that cats never make speeches or write books because if they did they surely would have some hair-raising stories to tell. Since that is not the case, however, their histories and past travails can seldom be pieced together other than intuitively, anecdotally, and serendipitously.

Abbie Garland most assuredly did not have much of an idea of what she was letting herself in for when on June 26, 2019 she accidentally stumbled upon a handsome black and white tom named Buzz while she was visiting her partner's parents and their nine cats who live on the Lizard National Nature Reserve near Helston in Cornwall. With an announced population of slightly more than eleven-thousand souls and located nineteen kilometers east of Penzance, Helston proudly lays claim to the prestigious title of being the most southerly town in all of England; beyond it there is only the Atlantic Ocean.

"When I first spotted Buzz he was sitting on their driveway and looked incredibly skinny and ill," she related to Your Cat Magazine of Bourne in Lincolnshire on January 21st of this year. (See "Cat Rescued from Previous Life as a Bait Cat Enjoys His Forever Home.") "I mentioned this strange cat to everyone and I don't think anyone believed me as they knew all the cats in the area and his description didn't match any of them."

Under most circumstances that would have been the end of the matter and their paths likely never would have crossed again except that Buzz and the Fates had other plans in store for them. "However, about thirty minutes later, Buzz climbed through the kitchen window and started helping himself to (the) cat food," Garland continued to Your Cat. "I put down more food, and he started purring and let me pick him up. We had an instant connection." In other words, their fates had been sealed.

"The course of true love never did run true," as Lysander reminded Hermia in Act I, Scene I of William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that admonition applies as much to humans and their cats as it does to more conventional lovers. "Unfortunately, at that point, someone opened the door, which spooked Buzz and he ran off," she continued. "I followed him outside and spent the next three days in sixty mile per hour winds, crouching next to the bushes that he was hiding in, trying to coax him out, but he was too scared to move."

Garland was not about to give up, however, and after four fruitless days of trying she finally was able to successfully trap him on June 30th. Sadly, the estimated six- to eleven-year-old tom was in even worse shape than she had originally thought.

"He came to me purring and he was absolutely filthy and in a very poor state," she informed Your Cat. "He was so thin and I could see that his ears were badly infected."

Not only that but half of his left ear was completely missing and he was emaciated. Those and possibly other undisclosed ailments necessitated that Buzz was forced to spend the following three weeks in the hospital.

It is, however, the fateful trip to the surgery itself that sticks out in her mind. "Throughout the journey, Buzz rested his head in the palm of my hand and when the vet took him off me, he actually screamed," she recalled to Your Cat. "I will never forget that noise. I was in tears and just wanted to get him back."

It did not take her long, however, to abruptly change her mind and to cruelly dump him at Cats Protection's shelter in Carnon Downs, five kilometers southwest of Truro. Even so she did not completely forget about him.

"I was able to visit (him) and he became really excited each time he saw me," she told Your Cat. "The lady looking after Buzz said she never heard him make a noise, but whenever I visited, he purred and meowed all the time."

It was thus during Buzz's incarceration at Cats Protection that Garland belatedly learned the terrifying truth concerning how that he had lost half of his left ear. "The vet and Cats Protection had put his details online to try to trace his previous owner, and a lady contacted me to say she had lived next door to his original owner and confirmed that he had been used as dog bait," Garland informed Your Cat.

Most everyone is somewhat familiar with the cruel fate that awaits all dogs that are trained to fight. Those that are fairly proficient in the practice of their craft are, sooner or later, mauled to death in the ring. Even those that are able to persevere are eventually electrocuted, strangled, hung, shot, and drowned by their  owners who are too cheap and lazy to continue feeding, housing, and medicating them once that they have become either too old or injured to fight. Violent, pain-filled existences and early graves are the only thanks that any of them ever receive for all the money and fame that they have brought to their ungrateful and uncaring owners.

That which is considerably less well known is the large number of kittens, cats, puppies, dogs, rabbits, foxes, and badgers that dogfighters sacrifice while training their pugilists for the ring. Moreover, the dogs and puppies that these cretins use as bait often have had their teeth ground down to their gums and their mouths duct-taped shut so that they cannot defend themselves and thus harm the fighting dogs.

It therefore would not be surprising if dogfighters also removed the claws and teeth from their bait cats so as to also prevent them from defending themselves. This world has so little regard for feline lives that neither anyone nor any group is even willing to speculate as to extent of this barbaric and inhumane practice, let alone to eradicate it.

Given His Past, Buzz Urgently Needs to Be Protected from Dogs

Considering what little is known about bait cats, it does not take much imagination to realize that it is truly a miracle that Buzz was able to have lived through that god-awful period of his life. All things considered, he actually was pretty lucky to have only lost half of his left ear to the dogs but at the same time it would be 

rather naïve not to believe that he also was not bitten and mangled on numerous occasions.

No indication has been offered as to how long that he was forced to endure such outrageous abuse but it could not possibly have been for a protracted period of time based solely upon the fact that he is still alive. Likewise, it is not known how that the dogfighter was able to have gotten his hands on him in the first place.

 

Quite often these despicable monsters are able to purchase their cats and kittens on such popular web sites as Gumtree. They also have had some success in perusing the classified sections of newspapers as well as community bulletin boards, such as those located at launderettes, for "Free to a Good Home" and "Cats and Kittens for Sale" advertisements. They additionally have been known to abduct cats from gardens and the street. 

Considering his age and the way that Buzz immediately took to Garland, it would seem likely that he at one time had had a home and a caring female owner. That individual in turn likely either dumped him or unwittingly gave him to a dogfighter and that sealed his fate.

He ultimately, however, more than likely owes his survival to the dogfighter's disdain for cats. "He'd never been allowed into the house and the RSPCA had been called out several times," the unidentified neighbor informed Garland.

C'est-à-dire, the man most likely had been too lazy and cheap to have gone to the trouble of regularly trapping and feeding him and that petit fait in turn allowed him to avoid tangling with the dogs most of the time. As far as the RSPCA is concerned, its reprehensible dereliction of duty in this instance is merely par for the course for it.

If it had acted responsibly, it would have arrested and jailed the dogfighter on the spot and seized all of his cats and dogs. On the other hand, given that the charity steals and kills an alarming number of the animals that it seizes, perhaps it was better after all that it is a good-for-nothing animal protection group.

There cannot be any denying, however, that cruelty to cats, dogs, and other animals is rampant throughout all of England and that the poor performance of the RSPCA is a huge part of that problem. (See the Daily Mail, December 30, 2012, "Revealed: RSPCA Destroys Half of the Animals That It Rescues -- Yet Thousands Are Completely Healthy," The Independent, March 29, 2016 editorial, "After Forcing Family to Have Their Cat Put Down, the RSPCA Needs to Rethink Its Priorities," and Cat Defender posts of June 5, 2007 and October 23, 2010 entitled, respectively, "The RSPCA's Unlawful Seizure and Senseless Killing of Mork Leaves His Sister, Mindy, Brokenhearted and His Caretakers Devastated" and "The RSPCA Steals and Executes Nightshift Who Was His Elderly Caretaker's Last Surviving Link to Her Dead Husband.')

Once his owner found out that the neighbor was feeding Buzz he cruelly abandoned him to fend for himself. Some time thereafter the neighbor, for whatever reason, also stopped feeding him.

So in the end although Buzz had, thankfully, escaped the clutches of the supremely evil dogfighter, he was now all alone in the world without any visible means of support and as a result he was half starved to death by the time that Garland came into his troubled life. No estimation has been given as to how long that he was forced to have gone without adequate sustenance but based upon his emaciated condition a good guess would be several months if not indeed longer.

Just as it so often is the case with individuals who have been abused, the scars inside of Buzz have proven to be longer lasting than those that are visible on the outside. "When I first brought Buzz home, my dog, Loki, was still a baby and slept in a crate in my room at night," Garland revealed to Your Cat. "The problem was that this was where Buzz wanted to be as well, and for weeks I had to put Buzz outside the room until Loki was safely in his crate, otherwise he would try and attack him, as he hated all dogs."

Garland has not disclosed how that she was able to have pulled off such a herculean feat, but Buzz has made peace with the now nearly three-year-old Border Collie. "Thankfully, he gets on with my other two cats, and Loki and Buzz are now the best of friends," she told Your Cat. "They sleep in the same bed at night and Loki leaves some of his biscuits to share with Buzz when he is eating."

Old injuries, insults, and prejudices die hard, however, and Buzz's newfound affection for Loki does not extend to other canines. "Buzz often comes out with us on local walks, but if he sees another dog in the distance, I have to put him up, or Buzz will go and attack it," Garland told Your Cat. "Recently, I had to pick him up and hold him close as he was about to attack a Husky!"

Such aggression is quite obviously the byproduct of being confined with dogs where he had no other choice but to fight back if he were going to survive. Normally when confronted by dogs, especially large ones, all cats will flee if given the opportunity.

Buzz's ingrained antipathy for canines is nonetheless a huge headache for Garland. She presumably puts him in a harness and on a leash whenever she takes him out for walks with Loki but that is not sufficient. Rather, she needs to either fence in her garden or to confine him indoors at all times for his own safety.

Buzz with What Appears to Be a Real Sweetheart of a Playmate

Although it has not been disclosed exactly where that Garland hangs her hat in Cornwall, Helston is only twenty-four kilometers east of Madron where back on March 6th a pack of out of control foxhounds belonging to the Western Hunt invaded Carly Jose's garden and killed her cat, Mini. (See Cat Defender post of July 1, 2021 entitled "Fourteen-Year-Old Mini Is Ripped to Shreds by a Pack of Vicious Hounds but Those Responsible Never Will Be Punished Because the Limeys Value the 'Unspeakable in Full Pursuit of the Uneatable' Far More Than They Do Her Right to Live.")

Besides marauding packs of foxhounds, Garland needs to be concerned about the presence of dogfighters in Cornwall. The mere fact that Buzz was found near Helston is a pretty good indication that they very well could be operating in that area.

After all the fine work that she has done in rescuing and socializing Buzz it would be a tragedy beyond words if she were now to lose him to either a Husky, a pack of foxhounds, another dogfighter, or some other vicious canine. Fortunately, now that he has been sterilized he apparently does not do all that much roaming.

"He rarely moves off the sofa or my bed," Garland told Your Cat. "He goes out for an hour, but just sits near my car and then comes back in and goes back onto my bed"

By allowing him out into her driveway and garden for even brief periods of time Garland is playing Russian roulette with his life. That is because neither dogs nor most of their owners have so much as an ounce of respect for either private property or the lives of cats.

Most harrowing of all, it only takes a few seconds for a dog to stray onto private property and to kill a cat. Worst still, there are many owners who deliberately sic their dogs on them.  (See Cat Defender posts of March 24, 2010,  October 28, 2013, July 18, 2015, and September 22, 2019 entitled, respectively, "Seven-Month-Old Bailey Is Fed to a Lurcher by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland," "Slow to Recuperate from Life-Threatening Injuries Sustained in a Savage Mauling by an Unleashed Dog, Stubbs Announces His Intention to Step Down as Mayor of Talkeetna," "A 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," and "Sparkle Is Killed on the Front Stoop of Her House by an Unleashed Dog in the Latest of Centuries-Old Deadly Attacks That Bear the Unmistakable Imprimatur of the House of Commons.")

Now that he is all grown up, even Loki poses a potential threat to Buzz. After all, it is awfully easy for seemingly innocuous playing and horsing around between a cat and a dog to turn deadly. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2021 entitled "Amazing Little Juicebox Overcomes Not Only a Near Fatal Mauling at the Hands of His Owners' Dog but also Penury and Being Cruelly Abandoned to Shift for Himself Inside the Snake Pit World of Veterinary Medicine.")

In addition to persuading Buzz to get along with Loki, Garland has additionally succeeded in getting him to accept her partner and other people as well. "Buzz also used to be very fearful of other people and would try to bite them whenever anyone tried to stroke him -- particularly my partner," she told Your Cat. "Now however, Buzz will let total strangers stroke him; he's so trusting and happy."

That is all right but only so long as Buzz is confined and Garland is present. People are far more evil than vicious, unsocialized dogs and no stranger can ever be trusted to be alone with a cat.

The objective therefore should be not to socialize a cat too much. A healthy distrust of all individuals, except their owners and other family members, is highly beneficial for the continued safety and well-being of any cat. 

On the other hand, trusting strangers has led to many cats being murdered. (See Cat Defender post of July 14, 2016 entitled "Missy, Who Was Too Kindly Disposed Toward Humans for Her Own Good, Is Memorialized in Wood at the Bus Stop That She Called Her Home Away from Home for Almost a Decade.")

Judging from the photographs of him that have been posted online, Buzz appears to have put on a considerable amount of weight and that, although fairly common for castrated toms that no longer roam

as well as for those cats that have been forced to endure prolonged periods of hunger, does not bode well for his long-term health. Considering that it is far too dangerous to allow him to roam, that leaves Garland with the only alternative of either reducing his caloric intake or of improvising a safe way in order to get him more exercise. If she has not done so already, putting him in a harness and walking him on a leash would be an option worth considering.

"...Buzz is without a doubt the most affectionate cat I've ever had," she vouched to Your Cat. "I love Buzz

to bits and we are so lucky to find each other."

Although it is highly commendable that she feels that way, love is not always sufficient in itself. Rather, she additionally needs to be willing to adopt measures that will keep him both safe and healthy.

Considering all the hell that he has been put through, he most assuredly is deserving of at least that much. He is above all else a survivor and that is not any mean achievement for a cat in this miserable, ailurophobic world and that goes double for one that has survived being used as dog bait.

Photos: Your Cat Magazine.