Keller and Anne Are Waging Heroic Battles in Order to Stay Alive but They Are Trapped in Cruel and Inhumane Sioux City Where It Is a Capital Offense for a Cat to So Much as Dare to Exist

Keller, Tragically, Does Not Have Any Eyes

"They wanted to test it (the tumor) but we felt we just really didn't want to know."

-- Cindy Rarrat of Sioux City Animal Adoption and Rescue 

To abandon a cat under any circumstance is a simply horrific thing to do but to abandon two of them in one fell swoop is even worse. That is especially the case if both of them are suffering from life-threatening ailments.

As unconscionable and heartbreaking as that may be, it is nevertheless the cruel fate that has befallen a pair of good looking young tuxedoes named Keller and Anne. Their desperate plight first became known on August 9th when they were reportedly picked up by Animal Control officers belonging to Sioux City Animal Adoption and Rescue (SCAAR), which in turn is a privately owned business. Known as Hannah Incorporated, it does Sioux City's dirty work for it by rounding up, incarcerating, and exterminating en masse its unwanted, abandoned, and homeless cats.

The tuxedoes were supposedly snared on the 3300 block of Pierce Street and then impounded at SCAAR's shelter at 2400 Hawkeye Drive. Keller, who has been named in honor of the world famous pioneer for the blind, Helen Keller (1880-1968), is believed to be between nine and twelve months old and is, like his namesake, sadly blind. 

"It was obvious at the time that the male had visual impairment to the point of having no eyes," Chris Wall, vice president of Hannah, pointed out the obvious to the ever obliging  KCAU-TV of Sioux City on August 13th. (See "'Seeing Eye' Cat Helps Feline Friend at Animal Rescue.") "He's just sort of got the sockets where the eyes were."

As far as it is known, Keller's condition is congenital as opposed to having been the result of some despicable act of ailurophobia. It also would appear to be irreversible, save for him being adopted by a tycoon. Bad luck, like a malevolent shadow, just seems to follow the vast majority of cats from womb to tomb.

No mention whatsoever was made at that time about Anne's health but in a video that accompanied the story as well as in photographs of her that have been posted on SCAAR's adoption page there certainly did not appear to be anything wrong with her. Equally importantly, it was immediately evident that she serves not only as Keller's protector but as his eyes as well. The shelter accordingly named her in honor of Helen Keller's longtime teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan (1866-1936).

Owing to their striking similarities in appearances and the way that they walk in step and bounce off of each other in order to safely get around, it also was apparent that they are closely related and most likely mother and son. "Now these cats are probably the most bonded cats that I've ever seen," Wall swore to KCAU-TV.  

Their appearances and personalities additionally strongly indicated that up until fairly recently they had had a home and an owner. " ..."because they  appear to be so well kept, so nice (and) affectionate, we think that somewhere there is an owner," Wall speculated to KCAU-TV.

It could be that Keller's owner wearied of looking after him and decided to get rid of both him and his mother. Also, many owners go en vacances during the month of August and cruelly leave behind their cats with the hope that they will no longer be around once that they return home.

SCAAR therefore pledged to hold them for seven days, until August 16th, just in case their former owner should have a change of heart. The obvious problem with such thinking is that individuals who abandon cats do not have hearts to change.

When, not surprisingly, no one came forward to reclaim them they were put up for adoption with only two restrictions. First of all, the shelter  mandated that they should go only to a home that did not contain any other pets and children that could potentially make life difficult for Keller. Secondly, because his handicap would make it far too dangerous for him to go outside, it stipulated that he and his mother be kept indoors. 

Although most individuals are far too uncaring and selfish to ever even entertain the notion of adopting a blind cat, Keller's and Anne's scintillating personalities should have turned the tide in their favor. "They appear to be fabulously friendly cats," Wall added to KCAU-TV. "They were very, very lovey. As soon as I opened the cage door they came forward and wanted their loving."

Despite their obvious merits, SCAAR was unable to find any takers. It thus would appear that the hard-hearted citizens of Sioux City do not have any more regard for friendly cats than they do for those that are standoffish, unsocialized, and just plain frightened to death of humans..

Undeterred, the shelter vowed not to give up on them but even more importantly not to split them up. "I couldn't separate them with a crowbar," Wall swore to KCAU-TV.

That was the first indication that SCAAR was not being completely truthful with the public because in some early photographs of them that were posted on its adoption page they appear to be housed in separate cages. It was only later that photographs were posted of them together in a much larger cage euphemistically referred to as a condo.

A few weeks later, the slippery eels at SCAAR threw another monkey wrench into the works by announcing out of the blue on their adoption page that they had successfully introduced an eight-week-old brown female kitten named Trixie to Keller and Anne and that the trio was now up for adoption. That was especially odd given that the shelter had been unable to find a home for Keller and Anne and it is undeniably more difficult to secure a home for three cats than it is for two of them. 

Lovely Anne Is Fighting an Uphill Battle Against Nasal Cancer

For whatever it is worth, the story that the shelter is peddling to the public is that Trixie and her sister, Traci, 

were picked up by its Animal Control officers on the 400 block of West 03 (sic) Street and that she had been placed in Keller and Anne's condo because she could not stop crying. That in itself certainly seems plausible enough in that she surely was justifiably frightened to death after having been separated so early from both her mother and Traci.

 

As for Traci, nothing further has been heard about her and her photograph has not been posted on Hannah's adoption page. Like millions of other kittens and cats, she seemingly has vanished into the nether world of shelters, Animal Control, and cops.

Nothing further was heard about the trio for several weeks but when SCAAR finally did break its drought of silence it wasted little time in demonstrating that it had lied to the public about quite a few things. "It was a unique situation in the respect that we impounded the blind cat first, and the blind cat had no eyeballs and was not neutered," is the latest version of events that Cindy Rarrat, president and owner of Hannah, was peddling to her lackeys at KCAU-TV on September 23rd. (See "A Purrfect Trio: Kitten Introduced to 'Seeing Eye' Cat and Blind Feline.") "As soon as we got him in and he was lost, very confused. Within a day or so, we ended up getting the female in which we assume is his mother."

 
Several things need to be said about Rarrat's revelations. First of all, it was the very epitome of cruelty for her Animal Control officers to have taken Keller away from his mother in the first place. Secondly, it was callous of both them and the shelter to have believed for one moment that he would have been anything other than frightened to death and worried sick as the result of being subjected to such an upheaval.

Thirdly, that certainly was an odd way for Animal Control to operate in that its officers surely must have known from the very beginning that the cats were a pair and that Keller depended upon Anne to serve as his eyes. One possible explanation could be that they had frightened away Anne and thus were forced into returning to Pierce Street in order to subsequently trap her.

Fourthly, the mere fact that the officers were able have relocated and trapped Anne so quickly raises the possibility that she and Keller were not abandoned as Rarrat and Wall have claimed all along but rather voluntarily surrendered. The shelter accordingly could have willingly taken in Keller but once it found out just how difficult it is to care for a blind cat it ordered its Animal Control officers to go back and collect Anne. That also would explain how that they were able to so quickly relocate her.

While she was at it, Rarrat went on to admit that Trixie was not the first cat that the shelter had attempted to introduce to Keller and Anne. "The mother cat did not accept any other cats because she'd been protecting him all of his life, and so we took a kitten," she finally confided to KCAU-TV on September 23rd. "And it was one of our kittens that was very unique, he (sic) was, he's (sic) got a ton of personality and he (sic) just was just a different and a unique personality."

That ploy worked out even better than she could have imagined. "So we put him (sic) in with them and they love each other," Rarrat continued to KCAU-TV. "I've been here thirty-seven years and I've never come across a situation like this."

She even went so far as to disclose a tiny bit of her shelter's methodology. "We use balls, a ball with a bell in it, so that he can hear exactly where the ball is," she explained to KCAU-TV on September 23rd. "The kitten, it's just great to see them walk together because they walk together in unison, especially him and his mother, and the kitten is learning as well. So it's just learned behavior. They know that he has an eye issue."

It took Rarrat seemingly forever to get around to explaining the presence of Trixie but when she finally did the answer to that conundrum proved to be even more heartbreaking than Keller's blindness. "We found out that there was something wrong with her mouth, so after she was spayed, we took her back in and she had to have all of her teeth removed, and she had a large tumor in her sinus cavity," she revealed to KCAU- TV. "That has since been removed." 

It therefore is entirely possible that her former owner knew about the tumor and for that reason decided to get rid of both her and Keller. If so, that individual should be hounded down, arrested, and jailed for a very long time.

Given that nasal tumors account for only one per cent of all such afflictions in cats and even then they are primarily found in those that are middle-aged and elderly, it thus would be fair to conclude that Anne's luck is even far worse than that of her ill-fated son. The only positive thing that can be said about this tragic turn of events is that she, at least in the videos and photographs of her that have been posted online, has not exhibited any of the ugly bulges on her nose or the swelling and facial deformities that are found in many feline victims of this terrible disease.

There accordingly must have been other less obvious symptoms which first attracted the attention of SCAAR's veterinarians, such as difficulties in chewing, bad breath, weight loss, lethargy, and possibly even anorexia. Other common symptoms of the malady include, inter alia, nasal discharges, bleeding, sneezing, and breathing difficulties. Some cats even have been known to suffer seizures and ocular impairments.

These tumors are usually treated with either radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery. It is only one opinion, but the practitioners at Long Island Veterinary Specialists in Plainview do not recommend surgery because it usually is extremely difficult to excise all of the abnormal growth. (See "Feline Nasal Tumors" an undated article posted on the surgery's web site.)

Furthermore, it normally takes several weeks for a cat to recover from one of these procedures and even then the administration of powerful NSAIDs, such as Piroxicam and Meloxicam, are sometimes prescribed in order to treat the pain and they in turn can be rather hard on the stomach, kidneys, and heart. Even after putting a cat through all of that hell, only an estimated fifty per cent of them live for as long as a year or longer.

Sometimes these cancers can not only return to their noses but also spread to their lungs, stomach, and brains. Fungal infections are another concern.

It therefore is imperative that Anne be closely monitored by periodical blood tests, urinalyses, radiographs, CT scans of her lungs, abdominal ultrasounds, and fine needle aspirations of her lymph nodes. Reprehensibly, SCAAR apparently does not have any intention whatsoever of providing her with either any monitoring or follow-up care.

Anne and Keller Together -- but for How Much Longer?

"They (the surgeons) wanted to test it (the tumor) but we felt we just really didn't want to know," Rarrat shamelessly acknowledged to her buddies at KCAU-TV on September 23rd.

Her refusal to provide Anne with the follow-up care and monitoring that she so desperately needs and so richly deserves in order to go on living is so cruel, cheap, immoral, and irresponsible as to constitute an egregious offense under the animal cruelty laws. Likewise, the veterinarians who are conspiring with her in order to let Anne flounder and die should have their licenses to practice veterinary medicine permanently revoked.

It thus is at long last finally became clear why that SCAAR has been making such a fuss over Trixie: she is being groomed to take Anne's place as Keller's eyes and protector once that she is gone.

There is not anything wrong with that but SCAAR has moral and professional obligations to Anne that it should not under any circumstances be allowed to shirk. Most pressingly, she needs monitoring and follow-up care. Beyond that, she needs a special diet because she no longer has any teeth and is battling cancer as well.

As for Keller, he should be fine so long as he has his mother to guide and watch over him. He might even be able to make it if Trixie remains faithful by his side but whether or not she is going to be willing to faithfully fulfill that role remains to be determined.

No cause has been given as to the source of Anne's cancer but secondhand tobacco smoke very well could be the culprit. If so, Keller undoubtedly has been subjected to not only the same toxic fumes but he also likely has ingested some of the carcinogens as well while grooming himself.

Therefore, if he has not already been tested for cancer, it is imperative that SCAAR not only do that immediately but continue to vigilantly monitor his health. (See Cat Defender post of October 19, 2007 entitled "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")  

The only thing percolating through Rarrat's warped gourd, however, is getting rid of Keller, Anne, and Trixie as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. "We have to find somebody that will adopt three cats, and let alone two cats and let alone one cat," she told KCAU-TV on September 23rd. "So, we've been looking for that special home, that special someone that would give these guys a chance."

Barring the unexpected materialization of a white knight in shining armor from out of the ether, that is not about to happen. If SCAAR were even halfway serious about finding them a home it would volunteer to pick up the tab for their continued veterinary care for anyone who would be willing to either foster or to adopt them but that does not seem likely. 

Even as things now stand, the only reason that SCAAR has not already whacked them is that all three of them have financial sponsors within the community. In particular, Kayla S. is financially backing Anne and Keller whereas Diane and Aubrey B. are generously doing likewise for Trixie.

Sooner or later, however, the money is going to run out and they are going to find themselves up the spout. The local PetSmart does take a few cats off of SCAAR's hands but it is not known how much patience that it has with those that are difficult to place.

Noah's Ark Animal Rescue at 2601 Myrtle Street is another possibility but it only accepts animals that it is able to place with fosterers. Besides, its primary interest lies in helping dogs.

It thus would appear that the only way that Keller's, Anne's, and Trixie's lives can be spared is for either an individual or a feline rescue group from outside of Sioux City to intervene and ransom them off of death row. It is a foregone conclusion that a bloodsucker like Rarrat is never going to voluntarily surrender them unless she is first paid and handsomely at that.

Like all professional cat killers, she is also a highly skilled liar. "Absolutely no animal is put to sleep just because he or she has been with us for a long time," SCAAR declares unequivocally on its web site. "There is no 'clock' ticking as soon as an animal is brought in."

Those are totally disingenuous statements because there are, quite obviously, other reasons besides time constraints that prompt shelters to kill cats. "We rehome one-hundred per cent of the adoptable pets that come into the shelter -- regardless how long it takes; until a suitable placement is found, our home is theirs," the shelter continues with its verbal leger de main.

The operative words in that last declaration are "adoptable" and "pets." What Rarrat does is to simply classify all the cats that she does not want to be either feral, wild, aggressive, and sickly and in turn to slaughter them in droves. It likewise is superfluous to point out that she most definitely does not consider any of them to be pets.

Trixie Is a Noble and Kindhearted Kitten

The same load of malarkey is to be found on the web site of SCAAR's fellow partner in crime, the Siouxland Humane Society, at 1015 Tri View Avenue. "We find homes for one-hundred per cent of adoptable cats," it boldly declares.

In fact, SCAAR already has greased the skids for both Anne and Keller by refusing to provide them with the veterinary care that they so desperately require. It never will come clean in a million year but it most definitely whacks scores of cats for both financial and spatial reasons.

After all, Hannah is above all else a sleazy, bloodsucking capitalistic institution concerned only with how much money that it can get its hands on with, predictably, the least amount of effort. For example, according to Buff File it was founded in 1999 and has annual revenues of US$152,714.

Without being privy to either the minutiae of SCAAR's financial arrangement with Sioux City's equally greedy and murderous politicians or its actual operating expenses, it is impossible to know exactly how much to make of that limited data. Nevertheless, it would be surprising if Rarrat were not raking in the greenbacks with both hands. Needless to say, she is not operating SCAAR out of the goodness of her black heart.

Compounding an already abhorrent situation, Rarrat is too cheap to hire anything other than a skeleton crew. For instance, according to Buff File Hannah only has five employees and two of them are surely herself and Wall. Plus, as recently as 2010 two of the remaining three workers on Hannah's payroll were Animal Control officers Jake Appel and Cody Harrington. 

If the information contained at Buff File is accurate, that leaves only one other employee to take care of all the animals that its Animal Control officers round up and impound. The remainder of its manpower is supplied by unpaid volunteers.

It thus relies upon its web site, KCAU-TV, and PetSmart to save the handful of cats that it does not kill. That in a nutshell is Hannah's business model and it is sans doute a highly profitable one at that. 

Perhaps most damning of all, the Happy Tails section of its web page does not include a solitary cat; all of the successful adoptions that it advertises involve dogs. Its Facebook page likewise contains more of the same in that there are story after story about dogs but the only ones that relate to cats are lost notices that have been posted by aggrieved owners.  

SCAAR advertises cats and kittens for US$50 but it is surprisingly silent as to how much that it charges for its dogs. Based upon practices elsewhere, it surely must be getting either double or triple that amount for them.

It is the same old story with shelters everywhere in that their operators treat cats like second-class citizens and go out of their way in order to give them the shaft. Perhaps worst of all, almost none of these wretched hellholes even bother to so much as to bring them out alive whenever conflagrations erupt.

For example, when a fire broke out at the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando on Conroy Road on September 15th staffers safely rescued all twenty-six of their canine inmates but deliberately left twenty-three cats behind to be burned alive. (See WESH-TV of Orlando, September 26, 2021, "Officials Believe Twenty to Thirty Cats Killed in Fire at Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando.")

 

Mark Twain was most assuredly well aware of not only that difference in people but the corresponding prejudice that is manifested in their behavior. "A man's treatment of a dog is no indication of the man's nature, but his treatment of a cat is," he argued in 1902 in "Winter-end Excursion to the Sutherd." "It is the crucial test. None but the humane treat a cat well."

Furthermore, the feline death toll in Orlando was not by any means an isolated incidence. On the contrary, hardly a week passes by without there being at least one such report in the media with the same identical results.

There are two reasons as to why the outcome is always the same. First of all, dogs are far more valuable to shelters in that they are able to sell them back to the public for double or triple what they can get for cats. Secondly, since most shelters kill just about all the cats that they impound they do not see any reason to rescue them; consequently, they are more than happy to stand back and watch them being burned to a crisp.

Although SCAAR claims to save one-hundred per cent of its "adoptable" cats, it does not claim to be a no-kill facility and it would not make much difference if it did because most of them admittedly kill up to thirty per cent of the animals that they impound. (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.")

In fact, SCAAR does not publicly disclose any of its intake and adoption statistics and even if it did they surely would be nothing but fabrications. First of all, for such statistics to have even so much as a shred of validity they would need to be compiled by an independent ombudsman not connected in any way to either SCAAR or Sioux City. Secondly, an outside monitor would need to accompany all Animal Control officers and cops as they make their daily rounds in order to record every cat and kitten that they summarily execute in the field and then surreptitiously dispose of their corpses.

For example, in North Sioux City, twelve kilometers northwest of Sioux City, a cop was caught in 2019 rounding up cats and kittens and then taking them to a graveyard and shooting them. It accordingly would not be the least bit surprising if the same dastardly deeds were not being perpetrated in Sioux City. (See Cat Defender posts of June 14, 2019 and January 2, 2020 entitled, respectively, "A South Dakota Police Officer Is Unmasked, Fired, and Arrested for Shooting Cats but It Is Highly Unlikely That He Will Be Punished or That This Will Be the Last of These Illegal Executions" and "A North Sioux City Police Officer Who Stole and Shot Cats Is Shown Nothing but Love by a Morally Depraved Good Old Girl Jurist Who Is Not Even Fit to Clean Toilets.") , 

Keller, Trixie, and Anne in Their Condo

If per chance there should be any lingering doubts as to the gargantuan amount of greed, laziness, cheapness, mendacity, and ailurophobia that lurks in Rarrat's malignant bosom, she quickly dispelled them when she appeared before city council about a year ago in order to demand that the seven-day holding period for feral cats be reduced to three. 

"We just ask that with the feral cat population, because we get so many of them, that we be able to reduce our time to keep them, so that we can place them, get them spayed or neutered and place them in farm homes or, sometimes euthanasia is going to have to happen," she told that five-member panel, which is comprised of Pete Groetken, Dan Moore, Julie Schoenherr, Alex Watters, and Mayor Bob Scott, according to the Sioux City Journal on October 26, 2020. (See "Sioux City Council Votes to Revise Ordinance Involving Feral Cats.")

First of all, nobody can distinguish with any degree of accuracy between a homeless and a domiciled cat. Much more importantly, the entire notion of dividing cats into domestics and ferals is just downright dishonest and stupid. Like humans, cats also exhibit varying levels of friendliness and sociability.

Secondly, those that are homeless should have just as much of a right to go on living as do those that have owners. Thirdly, any shelter that impounds and kills cats is not about to waste very much in the way of resources on either finding them homes or sterilizing them. Fourthly, euthanasia is not something that just happens; rather, it is cold-blooded, calculated murder that is carried out by diabolical monsters like Rarrat.

From that inauspicious beginning, she quickly moved on to align herself with the arch villains at PETA by endorsing the fraudsters' dogma that it is cruel to cage a cat for seven days. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007, February 9, 2007, and October 7, 2011 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in a North Carolina Courtroom," "The Verdict in the PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs," and "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

In making such a morally repugnant and asinine statement, Rarrat is implying that killing a cat is not cruel and that is more of her outrageous balderdash. (See Cat Defender post of April 8, 2018 entitled "A Rare Behind the Scenes Glimpse at the Ruthless Murders of Two Cats by an Indiana Veterinarian Exposes All Those Who Claim That Lethal Injections Are Humane to be Barefaced Liars.")

After throwing up that smokescreen, Old Rarrat Bird then proceeded to divulge her true motives. "It's dangerous for the people who are handling it," she declared to the Sioux City Journal. "It's very stressful for the animal. And, we're just trying to expedite this more quickly." (Note how that she is all the time referring to cats at "it" and is unable to even keep straight the sexes of her cats.)

C'est-à-dire, whacking cats and kittens soon after they are impounded is not only cheaper but it saves manpower as well. Being every bit as morally bankrupt and patently dishonest as she herself, city council wasted little time in unanimously endorsing her cost-cutting initiative.

To his credit, old Groetken did briefly broach the subject of TNR but Rarrat was not having any part of that. "We get a lot of complaints that come in from citizens that do not want them (the cats) in their neighborhoods," she countered to the Sioux City Journal. "They are destroying property and things like that, so we still have to deal with them no matter what we do."

In other words, dead cats are not only easier to deal with but cheaper and less trouble to boot.

If any of the lackeys who sit on city council had either any intelligence or responsibility they would have demanded that Rarrat quantified the number of complaints that she has received from the public. Considering the huge number of cats and kittens that she and her henchmen liquidate every day there could not possibly be all that many of them left in town.

Secondly, the politicians should have demanded that she explained exactly what "property and things" that cats have been accused of destroying. When not so much as a dissenting voice was anywhere to be heard in council chambers, the old fire-breathing capitalist hurried on to argue that TNR was expensive to implement and to maintain.

"It would have to be a collaboration of veterinarians, of ourselves, along with getting grants and things like that to be able to provide a good program," she, with an eye trained on her own bottom line, howled to the Sioux City Journal. 

It is difficult to imagine a bigger and fatter lie than that! On the contrary, all TNR programs are run by private individuals who not only foot the bill for their cats food, water, and shelter but additionally pay for their sterilization vaccinations, and emergency veterinary care.

As far as members of the scurvy veterinary medical profession are concerned, their only involvement in TNR is the exorbitant fees that they charge TNR practitioners in order to sterilize, vaccinate, and medicate their cats. They dearly covet all the money that they make off of TNR but, being the colossal hypocrites and phonies that they are, they expect a bonus for their meager toils and they get it by constantly publicly denigrating all cats but especially those that are homeless.

In that respect, their attitude is much like that of the honky-donkeys and Asians who get filthy rich by peddling rotgut at their highly profitable ghetto liquor stores but yet are all the time running down their clientele for being drunkards and bums. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2021 entitled "Amazing Little Juicebox Overcomes Not Only a Near Fatal Mauling at the Hands of His Owner's Dog but also Penury and Being Cruelly Abandoned to Shift for Himself Inside the Snake Pit World of Veterinary Medicine.")

It is almost superfluous to add but shelters and Animal Control never have had much of anything to do with TNR. Finally, if any TNR practitioners ever waited around for a grant to come through both they and their cats would be long dead and their bones turned to dust before any moola was forthcoming from either the public or the private sectors.

Rarrat next went on to claim that it was virtually impossible to locate a neighborhood where cats could be safely released. On the face of it that is an amazing admission considering that Sioux City has an area of sixty square miles but a human population of only eighty-three-thousand.

Grace with a Three-Inch Nail Embedded in Her Brain

If that is indeed the case, then the blame for the rabid ailurophobia that grips Sioux City can be laid at the feet of Rarrat and city council for fostering such a toxic environment. Besides, it is her responsibility to enforce the anti-cruelty statutes but she is too cheap and lazy to do even that.

For example, in May of 2010 a beautiful, brown-colored female named Grace was robbed of the vision in her left eye when she was shot in the face by an assailant armed with a nail gun. The only justice that she ever received from Rarrat, however, consisted of a feast of insincere public posturing.

"If we've got somebody out there with a nail gun that's doing things to animals, the whole community should be concerned 'cause this is just a (sic) horrific act the owners need to be prosecuted for and they will be" she vowed to Radio Iowa on May 24, 2010. (See "Sioux City Cat Recovering from Nail Driven in Its Head.")

That certainly never occurred and it is extremely doubtful that Rarrat even bothered to so much as to open a cursory investigation into that despicable act of cruelty to a cat. (See Cat Defender posts of June 1, 2010 and July 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Grace Survives Being Shot Point Blank Between the Eyes by a Monster with a Nail Gun but the Authorities in Sioux City Refuse to Even Investigate the Attack" and "Grace Is Out of the Hospital and Has a New Home but Her Nail Gun Assailant Remains as Free as a Bird Thanks to the Authorities' Dereliction of Duty.")

By this time Old Rarrat Bird was wound up as tight as a spring, blowing like a hurricane, and feeling her oats even more so than usual. Not surprisingly, she next informed the blockheads on city council that if they wanted to implement a TNR program they would have to amend the city's leash and licensing laws pertaining to cats.

Like North Sioux City, Sioux City requires that all cats be vaccinated, licensed, and walked on leashes whenever they are outside. Such draconian laws in effect criminalize cats for so much as daring to exist and legalizes their seizure and extermination without first providing them with so much as an iota of due process of law.

Worst of all, there are not any known feline protection groups in either Sioux City or the Siouxland and that in turn has left all cats to the mercy of Rarrat, her Animal Control officers, and the cops. No one speaks up for them at city council meetings and the only thing that the local media are good for is parroting the lies and sottise that is being spread so profusely by Rarrat and Sioux City's disgraceful and heartless politicians.

Not about to rest on her considerable demerits, Rarrat polished off her anti-cat screed by falsely claiming that all homeless cats are diseased. "Then, you've got the disease factor as well. Most of these wild or feral (cats) before you release them, have to be tested for feline infectious peritonitis or leukemia," she continued in her customary tortured syntax to the Sioux City Journal. "If they test positive for that (sic), you cannot release them because they will infect the whole colony of cats."

Rarrat, like everyone and every group that preaches the gospel that all homeless cats are dirty and diseased, is a bare-faced liar. For example, the Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) cannot be spread from cats to humans and although it can be transmitted to other cats via the use of shared feeding dishes and litter boxes even that is rare. Besides, outdoor cats do not use litter boxes and whatever remnants of the virus that might be left in their food and water dishes can be easily killed with an application of soap, water, and diluted bleach.

In fact, not all cats that test positive for the virus actually come down with it. Moreover, cats can live normal lives for many years with it and it even sometimes goes away on its own.

Furthermore, studies have shown that FeLV is not any more prevalent in homeless cats than it is in domesticated ones. (See the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, March 1, 2002, "Prevalence of Leukemia Virus Infection and Serum Antibodies Against Feline Immunodeficiency Virus in Unowned Free-Roaming Cats.")

Much more to the point, tests for FeLV are unreliable at best and for that reason Alley Cat Allies (ACA) of Bethesda, Maryland, strongly recommends against testing homeless cats for the disease. "There is no need for particular concerns about community cats, who thrive in their outdoor environments," the charity declares in an undated article entitled "Feline Leukemia Virus" that can be found on its web site. "In addition to low rates of FeLV and poor viability of the virus, the cost of testing makes regular community cat FeLV testing irresponsible. Plus these costly tests can provide inconclusive results."

There is yet another far more important reason as to why homeless cats should not be tested for FeLV. "Not only can testing needlessly endanger community cats' lives if their results are positive, it simply isn't worth the money spent," ACA continued.

To make a long story short, ACA persuasively argues that testing for FeLV should be only undertaken "with a plan to help the cat if she tests positive, not to end her life." By contrast, Rarrat and her cronies on city council only use such testing in order to kill cats and as an excuse not to sanction TNR. 

In furtherance of its worthy goals of not only safeguarding all felines but of helping them to live long and healthy lives, ACA counsels that sterilization, not extermination, is the key to controlling the spread of disease. Not only does such an approach interrupt the cycle of the congenital spread of diseases such as FeLV but it also helps to curtail the unnecessary biting that often occurs during mating season. 

Much of ACA's reasoning concerning FeLV applies equally to Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP). Although that disease can be transmitted congenitally as well as through saliva and feces, it is not highly contagious.

In fact, it is more of a concern in domesticated cats as opposed to those that are homeless. "FIP most commonly affects cats in multi-cat households and is not as common in outdoor cats," Alley Cat Rescue (ACR) of Mount Rainier, Maryland, states in an undated article entitled "Feline Viral Diseases: FIP, FeLV, and FIV" which can be found on its web site. "This may be because outdoor cats bury their feces away from other group members, while indoor cats usually use the same litter boxes."

The Cat-Killing Monster of Sioux City, Cindy Rarrat

By way of prevention, ACR recommends that food and water bowls be cleansed with soap and water and then rinsed with a 1:32 dilution of bleach and water. Tragically, there is not yet any cure for this almost always fatal feline malady. (See Cat Defender post of September 15, 2016 entitled "Lacey and Her Devoted Owner Wage a Lonely, Terrifying, and Grossly Underfunded Battle Against Feline Infectious Peritonitis but in the End the Deadly Malady Refused to Yield.")

Finally, even a five-year-old child should have the prerequisite smarts in order to see through the dishonest game that Rarrat and the politicians in Sioux City are playing. Every bit as bogus as the common practice that shelters have of shoving pens and pencils into cages in order to allegedly test the aggressiveness of cats, slandering and libeling them as being dirty, diseased, wild, unsocialized, ferals, and strays are simply made-up excuses and derisive monikers designed to justify killing of them in droves.

If Rarrat and her buddies on city council had so much as an ounce of honesty in their rotten bones they would simply come out and admit that they not only hate cats with a passion but that they kill every one of them that they get their filthy on, but they are far too devious for that.  Instead, they attempt to cover their tracks by spewing a pack of lies and in doing so they provide the rationales and sow the seeds for the commission of horrendous acts of animal cruelty against the species.

It therefore is difficult to imagine are more loathsome group of rotters. In this wicked old world, however, it is always the supremely evil people who prosper whereas the animals, Mother Earth, and decent individuals are plowed under and forgotten.

That is the so-called good news. The bad news is that Rarrat has been with SCAAR in one capacity or another for thirty-seven years and she, like the rock of Gibraltar, is not going anywhere. For instance, earlier this year city council renewed her contract for another three years. (See KTIV-TV of Sioux City, May 10, 2021, "City Council Renews Animal Control Contract with Hannah Incorporated.")

Moreover, considering the underhanded way in which business is conducted in Sioux City, she is a sure bet to remain in the catbird's seat until the day that she keels over and dies. As everyone knows, it is hard to kill a bad thing. 

"It's not a fair process, never has been a fair process. I have a problem with the process around here," Mayor Scott belatedly told the Sioux City Journal after the vote on May 10th. (See "Sioux City Council Votes to Negotiate with Hannah Incorporated for Animal Control Services.") "It's weighted for the incumbent in everything we do around here."

He then went on to spell out the shady details. "That means somebody that is inexperienced and younger is never going to get this contract, so I don't know why we bid it. We bid this stuff when we know what the answer is. I don't get it," he continued in that same vein to the Sioux City Journal. "When you automatically give an incumbent extra points, you automatically eliminate any other bidders on a point system."

Scott, quite obviously, has never heard of either bid rigging or public relations stunts but those issues are small potatoes when compared with several far more important issues which, apparently, do not concern him in the least little bit. For starters, the four-person panel that selected Hannah and Rarrat was made up of Sioux City police captains Chris Groves and Marti Reilly, retired police chief Doug Young, and city finance director Teresa Fitch; Scott and his cronies on city council merely rubber-stamped their decision.

Historically, the police always have operated Animal Control and municipal shelters and, not surprisingly, they have always done a terrible job. (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2006 entitled "An Animal Control Officer Goes on a Drunken Binge and Leaves Four Cats and a Dog to Die of Thirst, Hunger, and the Heat at a Massachusetts Shelter.")

Whether acting in their capacity as Animal Control officers or as uniformed fascist cops with licenses to kill, police officers never have been known to be anything other than notorious cat killers. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008, September 16, 2009, July 8, 2010, September 22, 2011, March 22, 2012, September 27, 2014, June 18, 2015, July 2, 2015, and September 1, 2016 and entitled, respectively, "A Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes a Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo," "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, the Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey," "A North Carolina State Trooper Who Illegally Trapped and Shot His Next-Door Neighbor's Cat, Rowdy, Is Now Crying for His Job Back," "The Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Coldblooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop," "In Another Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, Rogue Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Is Let Off with a $50 Fine for Savagely Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat," "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun," "Harry Is Run Down and Killed by a Pair of Derbyshire Police Officers Who Then Steal and Dispose of His Body in an Amateurish Attempt to Cover Up Their Heinous Crime," "After Allowing One of Their Dogs to Maul McGuire to Within an Inch of His Life, the Toronto Police Do Not Have Even the Common Decency to Summon Veterinary Help for Him," and "The Legal and Political Establishment in a Small Pennsylvania Backwater Close Ranks and Pull Out All the Stops in Order to Save the Job and Liberty of the Bloodthirsty Cop Who Murdered Sugar," plus The Orange County Register, August 23, 2017, "Police Are Killing a Shocking Number of People's Pets.")

Big cats do not fare any better whenever the cops come calling. (See Cat Defender posts of January 28, 2008, May 5, 2008, and November 3, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, a Trio of Miscreants Taunted Tatiana Prior to the Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by the San Francisco Police," "Chicago's Rambo-Style Cops Corner and Execute a Cougar to the Delight of the Hoi Polloi and the Capitalistic Media," and "Sheriff Matt Lutz Settles an Old Score by Staging a Great Safari Hunt That Claims the Lives of  Eighteen Tigers and Seventeen Lions in Zanesville.")

Considering how that they have always mistreated cats, cops and Animal Control officers should not under penalty of law be allowed to come within three-hundred yards of any of them. Shelters likewise should be outlawed from impounding them. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock. Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Proposed Remedy? Keep Them Out.")

All matters relating to cats should in turn be handled by legitimate feline rescue groups and volunteers. Those group likewise should be allowed to investigate cases of cruelty and to make arrests as well as to practice veterinary medicine.

Considering that cops, Animal Control officers, shelters, and veterinarians are only good for denigrating and killing cats, who needs them? The time therefore is long overdue for getting all of those rotten, no-good bastards out of the game.

As far as Sioux City is concerned, it is quite a racket that Rarrat and Hannah, the Siouxland Humane Society, the cops, city council, local veterinarians, and KCAU-TV and other media outlets have going for themselves. They are making money hand over fist and a lion's share of it can be traced back to their wholesale slaughter and outrageous denigration of cats and kittens.

Even more disturbingly, the mere fact that they have been able to get away with their despicable crimes for such a very long time is a rather telling indictment of the moral depravity of the citizens of Sioux City. It therefore would be surprising if anyone or anything in Sioux City operates on the level.

Photos: Sioux City Animal Adoption and Rescue (Keller, Anne, and Trixie), KCAU-TV (Keller, Anne, and Trixie together), and the Sioux City Journal (Rarrat).