Mr. Krabs Is at Long Last Exonerated, Released from Custody, and Provided with a New Home after Having Been Unjustly Locked Up at a Shelter for Seven Months on a Bum Rap

Mr. Krabs in His New Home

"Mr. Krabs ist eine ganz normaler Kater."

-- his new owner                                                                    

As 2021 hurdles towards its inevitable conclusion, it is unlikely that Mr. Krabs is going to be shedding any tears to see it pass into history. To say that he has been put through hell during the past twelve months would be a gross understatement.

Although it is strongly suspected that life never has been easy for the four-year-old, cream-colored British Shorthair with captivatingly beautiful turquoise eyes, his world collapsed underneath him on March 30th when his unidentified owners decided to get rid of him. Worst still, they could not even do that in a humane fashion by securing another home for him.

Rather, they had come to detest him so intensely that they could not resist the temptation to stick it to him good by not only verbally slandering his character but also by making an obscene public display of surrendering him to Tierheim Köln-Dellbrück in Köln (the Kölner Tierheim). "Diese haben ihn noch nicht einmal selbst gebracht, sondern mit der Feuerwehr abholen lassen, weil sie Angst um ihre Kinder hatten," the shelter told Radio Television Luxemburg (RTL) of Köln on April 22nd. (See "Sieht so ein Schläger Kater aus? Mr. Krabs sucht ein neues Zuhause.") 

What potential threat, if indeed any, that he posed to his former owners and their children never has been explained. Likewise, it never has been disclosed what it was about him that made it too dangerous for his owners to have placed him in a pet carrier and taken him to the shelter themselves.

Despite the petit fait that the outrageous charges leveled against him had not been independently verified, Mr. Krabs found himself in short order incarcerated in a tiny cage at the Kölner Tierheim and charged with being an aggressive cat. That normally would have been the end of him because most shelters do not hesitate to rub out cats like him based solely upon the uncorroborated lies of their vindictive owners.

The only thing that Mr. Krabs had going for himself at that perilous juncture in his young life was that he had the Glück im Unglück to have been dumped at the Kölner Tierheim. First of all, the staffers at the shelter actually like cats and that made all the difference in the world. 

By contrast, just about all shelters in the United States hate them with a passion and therefore do not hesitate to slaughter them in droves. By doing so they are thus able to free up more cages for dogs which they in turn are able to sell back to the public for twice what they normally get for cats. In America, most all heads and knees bow before the altar of the almighty dollar bill.

Secondly, the animosity displayed toward him by his former owners not only backfired on them but immediately raised red flags at the shelter. "Wer weiß, vielleicht lag ja genau da der Hase im Pfeffer?" it speculated to RTL.

Thirdly, the staffers refused to accept the couple's unsubstantiated allegations at face value and thus to allow the duo to use them as their instrument of revenge against Mr. Krabs. Im Gegenteil, they treated him pretty much as they do all cats and based their conclusions upon their experience and what their eyes and interactions with him told them.

Not surprisingly, they almost immediately arrived at an altogether different conclusion from the one foisted upon them by his former owners. "Sieht so ein Schlägertyp aus. Wir können es uns kaum vorstellen," the shelter told Tag24 of Dresden on April 23rd. (See "Besitzer lassen 'Böse' Kater von der Feuerwehr abholen: Was hat das Tier auf dem Kerbholz?") "(Er) zeigt sich hier aber bisher hier nur äußerst liebenswürdige."

The shelter even went so far as to label him as a cuddler. "Bei uns verhält er sich bisher vorbildlich, genießt seine Kuscheleinheiten und lässt sich auch mehrmals täglich seine Äuglein säubern," it told RTL.

That in itself is quite remarkable given that shelters are not known for bringing out the best in cats. On the contrary, all the strange animals, people, smells, noises, and diseases serve only to augment the palpable fears and anxieties that they are already experiencing.

Mr. Krabs with an Employee of the Kölner Tierheim

Instead of being willing to recognize just how traumatic and upsetting it is for a cat to be uprooted from home and confined in one of these hellholes, most shelters turn those totally legitimate fears against cats and use them as an excuse in order to kill them. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock. Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Proposed Remedy? Keep Them Out.")

As if all of that were not sufficient evidence that Mr. Krabs had been victimized by a bum rap and a malicious smear campaign, the derogatory moniker that his previous owners had saddled him with should have eliminated the last vestiges of any lingering doubts. For example, the original Mr. Krabs is a rather unsavory character in the Nickelodeon's long-running animated series, SpongeBob SquarePants.

Considering that the first order of business for all new owners is usually to provide their cats with a name, Mr. Krabs' guardians quite obviously never thought much of him from the beginning and therefore should never have been allowed to adopt him in the first place. They therefore most likely conspired from day one to make his life as miserable as possible by physically as well as verbally abusing him. That is mere speculation of course but cats are never violent unless they first have been abused.

Finally, there was the often overlooked petit fait that Mr. Krabs was unable to defend himself against his previous owners' slanders. "Mr. Krabs selbst äußert sich zu den Beschuldigungen nicht," the shelter conceded to Tag24.

Although having the Kölner Tierheim on his side doubtlessly saved his life, it did not make the seven months that he was forced to spend in one of its tiny cages any easier on him. His only reprieve during that extended period proved to have been a brief one when he was adopted out but promptly returned for, once again, his alleged aggression. 

Instead of throwing in the towel on him the shelter not only remained steadfast in his corner but also redoubled its efforts in order to find him a suitable home. In the process, it additionally became more astute. 

Most importantly, it came to realize that Mr. Krabs not only needed a home with a garden but one with an owner who would not crowd him. "Die mir an der Nasenspitze ansehen, wann sie besser einen Bogen um mich machen sollten," it told Tag24 on July 25th. (See "Böser Kater! Diese Samtpfote sieht aus wie ein Engel, doch hat es Faustdick hinter den Ohren.")

It also endeavored to place him in a home without children although the presence of other cats would have been acceptable to him. (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2021 entitled "Mr. Krabs' Young Life Has Been Placed in Grave Jeopardy Because of the Malicious Lies Spread about Him by His Vindictive Former Owners.")

Month dragged on after month, spring gave way to summer and the latter to autumn but Mr. Krabs remained stuck at the Kölner Tierheim without any prospects on the horizon. Then out of the blue came the heart-warming announcement in early November that he had finally prevailed against the slings of outrageous misfortune and been adopted. 

He was taken home by an unidentified woman who, presumably, lives in either Köln or nearby. Nothing else is known about her and the only thing that she so far has revealed to the public are her stockinged feet. Hopefully, that does not mean that she is ashamed to be seen with him in public.

Mr. Krabs' Bashful New Owner Has Chosen to Reveal Only Her Tootsies

It is difficult to speculate on matters of this nature, but at least outwardly she appears to be the right kind of owner for Mr. Krabs. For instance, she does have a garden and he is said to divide his days between playing in it and cuddling with her on the sofa.

She describes him as a dear tom with good manners who is very friendly and never aggressive. He can, however, be a little stubborn now and then.

"Mr. Krabs ist eine ganz normaler Kater," she told Tag24 on November 4th. (See "Besitzer ließen 'Aggressive' Katze von dem Feuerwehr abholen: Nun ist die Wahrheit ans Licht gekommen.") "Er hat keine Macken (idiosyncrasies), er braucht keine besondere Behandlung oder gar einen Psychologen."

For its part, the Kölner Tierheim summed up the happy dénouement by stating that all Mr. Krabs ever needed was plenty of love and space. Quite obviously, he never received much of either of them from his previous owners; rather, the only thing that he ever received from them was abuse, slanders, and spite.

Speaking more broadly, cats never have been known to attack humans except in self-defense. They may occasionally inadvertently scratch their owners but, as Miguel de Cervantes once admonished, "those who play with cats must expect to be scratched."

Yet, countless numbers of them are slandered and libeled as being aggressive every day. As a result, some of them have been unjustly deprived of their freedom by both the courts and bureaucrats and, even worse, killed off by shelters and veterinarians on totally bogus charges. (See Cat Defender posts of April 3, 2006, June 26, 2006, March 8, 2007, October 17, 2008, October 18, 2009, October 23, 2009, May 27, 2011, and  August 24, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Free Lewis Now! A Connecticut Tomcat, Victimized by a Bum Rap, Is Placed Under House Arrest," "Lewis Cheats the Hangman but Is Placed Under House Arrest for the Remainder of His Life," "Blackie Has Postmen, Bobbies, and Deliverymen Looking over Their Shoulders in Ramsgate, Kent," "Bingo Is Placed Under House Arrest for Defending Himself Against a Neighbor Who Foolishly Intervened in a Cat Fight," "Minneapolis Is Working Overtime Trying to Kill an Octogenarian's Cat Named Hoppy for Defending His Turf Against Canine Intruders," "An Essex Welfare Bum Who Sicced His Dog on Cats and Then Beat Them with His Cane Is Now Pretending to Be the Victim of an Assault," "Odin Is Placed Under House Arrest by the Authorities in Weißenstein for Straying into the Garden of a Virulent Cat Hater," and "Self-Defense Is Against the Law in Australia after a Woman Who Attacked a Cat Gets Away with Her Crime Whereas Her Victim Is Trapped and Executed," plus The Telegraph of London, July 3, 2014, "RSPCA Refuses to Remove Feral Cat Destroying Couple's Home" and the Yorkshire Post of Leeds in West Yorkshire, July 25, 2014, "Safety Claws as Council Slaps Anti-Social Behavior Order on a Cat.")

The one known exception to that rule are cats that have been used as bait by dogfighters but even then they do not bear any ill will toward their human abusers, only canines. (See Cat Defender post of October 22, 2021 entitled "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.")

Knowledge, common sense, honesty, and compassion are needed in order to properly deal with cats such as Mr. Krabs who have been previously abused and maligned but, regrettably, it is precisely those attributes that are so sorely lacking in those individuals and groups who have anointed themselves as the adjudicators of whether so-called aggressive cats are going to be allowed to go on living or to be summarily killed off. Mr. Krabs is alive and flourishing today only because he had the good fortune to have wound up at the Kölner Tierheim.

Back during the early and middle months of this year it certainly did not look like that he ever would live to see another birthday but, against all odds, he turned four years old on November 29th. The past year has been extremely traumatic for him but hopefully things will work out for him in his new home and 2022 will be a much better year for him.

Finally, press reports have not broached the subject of whether or not his new owner is planning on providing him with a new name. Regardless of what she ultimately elects to do, it is indisputable that a handsome and loving tom like him requires a much more dignified name.

Photos: Tag24 (Mr. Krabs by himself and with his new owner's feet) and the Kölner Tierheim (Mr. Krabs with an employee of the shelter).

Socks, Coors Field's Most Famous Resident, Is Saved from the Gallows by a Pathology Report after She Is Trapped, Misdiagnosed, and Then Unjustly Consigned to Death Row

Socks Has Received a Last Minute Reprieve

"The cat has fans. I was not prepared to tell everyone that she was going to be killed, so I hope it all works out."

-- Jenni Leigh

Trapped, anesthetized, robbed of her ovaries, her left ear mutilated, condemned to spend her last days on death row, and finally miraculously granted an eleventh-hour reprieve, it has been a harrowing two weeks for a beautiful tuxedo named Socks who since at least June of 2019 has resided at Coors Field in Denver.  Almost nothing else is known about her, including her age, where she came from, and how that she wound up being homeless.

Roughing it never has been easy on her but on Saturday, November 20th her fortunes took a disastrous turn for the decidedly worst when she, likely half-starved to death, unwittingly walked into a trap that had been cleverly baited with tuna and fried chicken by Jenni Leigh. Absolutely nothing is known about her other than that she apparently is a freelance trapper as opposed to being affiliated with any known rescue group.

After her imprisonment, the no doubt frightened to death Socks was immediately transported to the Pet Care Incorporated Veterinary Clinic in Aurora, fifteen kilometers east of Denver, where she was spayed by veterinarians Genevieve Forster and Crystal A. Hoffsetz-Sinner. While they were at it, they also discovered a grape-sized, three-centimeter tumor on one of her mammary glands.

Instead of respecting her inalienable right to live and promptly endeavoring to do everything in their power in order to get her well again and thus to extend her precious life, the first and only thought to have coursed through theirs and Leigh's desiccated gourds was to get rid of her as soon as possible by whacking her. Only Socks' notoriety on Twitter, where she has nearly fifteen-hundred fans, temporarily stilled the killing hands of the mesdames.

"The cat has fans," Leigh acknowledged to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Times of Walt Disney on November 23rd. (See "Coors Field Cat in Recovery after an Emergency Operation.") "I was not prepared to tell everyone that she was going to be killed, so I hope it all works out."

While she was in the process of making a clean chin of things, Leigh went on to candidly admit that she normally does not waste any time in killing off all the homeless cats that she suspects to be suffering from cancer. Her justifications for doing so are every bit as abhorrent as her stubborn refusal to see Socks as a sentient being with a right to live.

First of all, she argues  that she is unable to provide veterinary care for orphans but that is a totally bogus argument because females suffering from cancer can be spayed just like all others. Also, considering their declining health and greatly diminished life expectancies, fertile females are less likely to go into estrus and, if they do, not very often.

Secondly, Leigh trotted out the old familiar, albeit dishonest, bromide that she could not possibly bear to see a homeless cat suffer alone. If so, there is a rather simple solution to that dilemma and that would be to provide Socks and all other homeless cats with warm and secure places to live and the palliative care that they so desperately need and richly deserve.

Additionally, such warped reasoning fails to take into consideration not only the injustice inherent in such rash behavior but also the inhumaneness of it as well.  (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.")  

None of that is meant in any way to imply that saving Socks was going to be either easy or cheap. Au contraire, most anything worthwhile in this world requires a good deal of both toil and money.

 

"She (one of the vets) called me and said that when she sees tumors like this, they are already metastatic. I asked her what happen if it's metastatic, and she said it means they will be dead within three months," Leigh related to the MCU Times. "But this was (the) Coors Field Cat. The vet agreed to operate on her."

The mere fact that the issue had to be even debated reveals the cavalier manner in which that all cats are treated. Luckily for Socks, she ultimately did receive the emergency surgery that she needed and the abnormal growth was promptly removed and then either it or part of it was sent to a pathology laboratory for analysis.

Although Leigh had told the MCU Times that she and the vets expected to have the report back by Monday, December 6th, that quite obviously was a lie given that such tests normally take only about half that amount of time in order to complete. It thus was painfully clear that the trio was allotting themselves extra time in order to kill off Socks before presenting her supporters with a fait accompli. Once high and mighty individuals are granted the right to decide matters of life and death they do not broker any outside interference from concerned members of the public.

Socks Was Forced to Spend a Fortnight on Death Row

In that same light, it is verboten to even mention it but veterinary care, like that of health care and dentistry, is not only prohibitively expensive but dictatorial in nature as well in that its practitioners are seldom, if ever, candid with their patients' owners about treatment options and potential costs. Rather, they lead them blindfolded down a long and winding sawdust trail that is littered with a labyrinth of admission fees, worthless diagnostic tests, unexplained treatments, mysterious drugs, and lengthy, unexplained  hospitalizations.

The only thing that is remotely straightforward about the entire process are the holes that the veterinarians and their flunkies wear in the rugging as they strut back and forth between their examining rooms and their computers in order to dutifully do their invoicing. A million cats could die while awaiting treatment and their owners end up in the poorhouse for all that they care; all that matters to them is making doubly sure that not any greenbacks are allowed to slip through their sticky fingers.

The entire business is a cruel, albeit expensive, racket. Caveat emptor. (See Cat Defender posts of August 11, 2021 and November 22, 2011 entitled, respectively, "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 Snakepit World of Veterinary Medicine" and "A Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals.")

In Socks' case, the night was never darker nor the dangers more palpable than at this moment in her young life and it sure looked like she had reached the end of her journey. First of all, only a minuscule ten to fourteen per cent of feline breast tumors are benign. The remainder are not only malignant but they usually spread like wildfire to the lymph nodes, adrenal glands, lungs, liver, and kidneys. 

As is the case with their human counterparts, breast cancer in cats is a nasty, unforgiving affair. Left untreated, females have a life expectancy of only two to three months. 

Those that are fortunate enough to receive surgery and post-operative care can expect to live three or more years provided that the tumors are two centimeters or less in size. For those females with tumors of three centimeters or larger, their life expectancies are only four to six months.

Following either a lumpectomy (the removal of only the growth itself) or a radical mastectomy (the removal of all four glands on the affected side as well as the armpit and groin lymph nodes), the malignancy is normally treated with either chemotherapy or radiation. Supplemental care includes immune therapy, a special diet, and close veterinary monitoring.

Since chemotherapy and radiation often mean the difference between life and death, veterinarians deplorably jack up their prices to the moon and thereby consign most feline sufferers of cancer to premature graves and that is always the case with cats such as Socks who do not have anyone to foot the bill for the life-saving treatment that they require. For example, an initial consultation with an oncologist usually costs between US$125 and US$250 while the chemotherapy itself, whether administered in pills or injections, can cost anywhere between US$150 and US$500 per dose.

Even then some cancers do not respond well to chemotherapy, especially if a cat has been previously exposed to the Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV). Radiation therapy is even more expensive. (See Arnold Plotnick, formerly of Manhattan Cats, July 5, 2019, "Mammary Tumors in Cats.") 

The only glimmer of hope for Socks rested upon an inconclusive radiograph that tended to indicate that the lump, whether benign or malignant, had not spread. That was not much for Socks' many fans to pin their dwindling hopes on but it was about all that they and, much more importantly, she had going for themselves.

"There's a chance this (the surgical removal of the growth) could have been a life-saving procedure for her, but we do not really know until we get the pathology back in two weeks," Leigh summed up to the MCU Times. "We don't know yet if the tumor is malignant or just a lump of benign tissue."

Even if the tumor had turned out to have been malignant that still would not have constituted a valid reason for killing her. For instance, she could have been provided with a safe and warm indoor home, a proper diet, and chemotherapy and under those circumstances she could have lived for, perhaps, many more years.

Moreover, those could have been good, happy, and rewarding years for her. That is especially the case given all the deprivations that she has been subjected to while toughing it out at that wretched ballpark in the cold and snow.

Socks Wrapped Up in a Colorado Rockies' Purple Blanket

A loving family, good food, a safe and secure indoor home, and access to competent veterinary care (should any exist?) can sometimes work wonders for an ailing cat. Much more importantly, no one ever knows for certain how situations like this are going to turn out unless they are first willing to take the high road by respecting life and then doing the right thing.

Given that cats even under the best of circumstances live such terribly short lives, no one should deprive them of so much as one second of the time allotted them. Socks could always die another day but for the time being it was her turn to live.

That was not in the cards as far as the mesdames were concerned. "It hit the vet and I (sic) pretty hard," Leigh confided to the MCU Times. "We actually sat down on the floor and were together because being sterilized reduces the chances of breast cancer and we wish she could have been sterilized sooner."

Breast cancer in cats is not all that well understood but it nonetheless is theorized that it is caused by spikes in the female hormone estrogen during estrus. Once again therein lies another rather poignant example of how that nature takes away one life while giving birth to another.

The consensus among most veterinarians accordingly is that spaying a female at either six months of age or before she goes into estrus for the first time reduces the chances of her coming down with breast cancer by a whopping ninety-one per cent. The one known dissenting voice belongs to the practitioners at PennVet.

"It is unclear whether spaying a cat early in life diminishes the risk for (the) development of mammary cancer later on," they wrote November 1, 2001 on OncoLink. (See "Feline Mammary Tumors.")

In addition to that aberrant advice, the school's surgeries in both Philadelphia and Kennett Square are to be avoided like the plague not only because of their stubborn refusal to treat impecunious cats but the myriad of diabolical crimes that their vivisectors commit against animals, both small and large. (See Cat Defender post of March 19, 2014 entitled "The Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital.")

  

In addition its health benefits, spaying also relieves females of the heavy toll that giving birth to multiple litters year after year takes on them. Even nursing a litter can be hazardous to their health because hungry kittens sometime tear rents in their mammary glands.  

The situation is even far worse for the kittens themselves in that a lion's share of them are either stillborn or die shortly after birth. Even the majority of those that are lucky enough in order to survive end up unwanted, unvaccinated, uncared for, and unsterilized themselves. Worst of all, shelters, Animal Control officers, and veterinarians do not even think so much as twice about exterminating them en masse.

That notwithstanding sterilization is definitely not for every cat and every owner. Au contraire, individuals who love cats and are willing to take proper care of them and their kittens are to be commended because without them the species would soon go extinct and their enemies would have been presented with their long sought after victory on a silver platter.

In fact, the Australians, New Zealanders, ornithologists, and wildlife biologists would like nothing better than to see such a dénouement. (See Newsweek, November 23, 2021, "Australia Might Genetically Modify Feral Cats Out of Existence" and The Dominion Post of Wellington, December 7, 2021, "Cat Corpses Piling Up on Farm Beset by Hordes of Unwanted Pets.") 

Whether intended or not, Leigh's comments make it appear that she was eager to kill off Socks so as not to be constantly reminded of her failure not to have trapped her in a timely manner. If so, she should be intelligent enough to realize that two wrongs never have made a right.

While the mesdames were awaiting the pathology report, Socks was incarcerated in a large wire dog kennel at her trapper's home. She was provided with food, water, a purple blanket, and a litter tray but that apparently was the extent of the amenities afforded her.

By failing to have spent as much time as possible with her, Leigh passed up a golden opportunity to have socialized her for adoption. She even could have put her in a harness and on a leash and walked her around her house. After a while, it might even have been feasible to have put away the harness and leash and to have given her free rein of the premises.  

 Caretakers Natalie and Sharon with Midnight

All cats are different and some are considerably easier to make friends with than others but it is superfluous to point out that once an individual has made up her mind to kill a cat she is not about to bother with socializing her. The initial mistake of stubbornly refusing to respect feline life thus always leads to a myriad of other unsound conclusions and missed opportunities.

Predictably, the pathology report came back earlier than expected on Thursday, December 2nd. Unpredictably, the news was resoundingly good.

"Pathology is back...the tumor is not cancer!" Leigh, speaking for Socks, announced on Twitter. "I'll return to my pawsome fur family at Twentieth and Blake soon...healthy, spayed and vaccinated! Look for me next season at the ballpark!"

One of the attending veterinarians was somewhat more forthcoming. "The most amazing news -- the mass is not cancerous. It is inflammatory, possibly from an infection," she told The Denver Post a day later on Friday, December 3rd. (See "Coors Field Cat Is Cancer-Free, Will Be Returned to Ballpark.") "Bottom line it is not cancer. I'm not sure how she got this lucky!!!"

Well, it certainly was not thanks to anything that the vets and Leigh did; rather, Socks survived in spite of their glaring lack of both morality and veterinary competence. First of all, any halfway competent practitioner should have been capable of telling the difference between cancer and a routine infection.

Secondly, no veterinarian has any business whatsoever of reaching for a syringe and a bottle of sodium pentobarbital under any circumstances, let alone before she has all the facts. This is just one more example of how that when it comes to cats most veterinarians think only of killing them and nothing else. 

It only takes a few seconds in order to kill a cat and since practitioners rake in around US$100 per jab that is real easy money. They therefore are capable of making a thousand dollars within ten minutes by rubbing out ten cats.

On the other hand, treating a sick cat and making it well again requires compassion, commitment, brains, hard work, and time and, with rare exceptions, most veterinarians do not have any of those qualities to spare. Rather, they want their work to always be quick, easy, and lucrative.

"Every pet deserves a high quality, compassionate, veterinary team," mesdames Forster and Huffsetz-Sinner declare with much ado on their web site. "Regardless of financial limitations and regardless of circumstances."

That most assuredly is not the way that they treated Socks in that as soon as they spied the lump on her stomach the only thing that they thought of was malice aforethought. Or perhaps like the dishonest operators of shelters, their highfalutin rhetoric only applies to cats who have owners with deep pockets; in other words, those that are homeless need not apply.

A video posted Saturday, December 4th on Socks' Twitter account shows a woman, most likely Leigh, releasing her from a pet carrier on the sidewalk of a tree-lined street. She then runs like a gazelle to a chain-link fence where she pauses just long enough in order to squeeze underneath it. 

She then takes off again at breakneck speed through a parking lot and does not let up until she has put another three-hundred yards between herself and her gaoler. She finally comes to an abrupt stop where she turns around for the first time and looks back in order to see if anyone is pursuing her. The video ends there and that very well could have been the last that the world ever sees of her.

Even though it was nothing short of exhilarating to witness how enthusiastically she embraced her freedom, she is undoubtedly going to soon regret being stripped of her warm and safe home. Nighttime lows in Denver fall well below the freezing point from November until April and the city receives on the average more than fifty inches of snow each winter.

Socks and the other cats at Coors Field are fed and watered and two of their caretakers, Natalie and Sharon, have not missed a day of doing so in fourteen years. It is not known, however, if they are provided with straw-lined winterized shelters that are shielded from both the wind and precipitation.

Midnight Has Lived at Coors Field for at Least Fourteen Years

Even so, without anyone closely looking after her nobody is going to know the next time that she becomes either seriously ill or injured, let alone to be around in order to summon veterinary assistance for her. Worst of all, she does not have anyone to protect her from dogs and those individuals who make it a habit of preying upon cats that live underneath buildings. 

For example, either someone or a group of individuals crawled underneath the Boardwalk in Atlantic City a few years back and horribly killed three of the cats who live there. (See Cat Defender post of August 24, 2017 entitled "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provides an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Open the Champagne.") 

Except for the eighty-one games that the Colorado Rockies play at the ballpark between early April and the first week in October, cavernous Coors Field is pretty much a ghost town for the remainder of the year. In 2016, the National Hockey League did stage a few games there but none have been played there since.

On the average the stadium hosts one rock concert per year but the next one, featuring Def Leppard, Poison, and Motley Crüe, will not take place until July 21st. On the one hand, that is a good thing in that from now until then Socks and her mates will be spared not only the racket churned out by the bands but the presence of their drunken and doped-up fans as well. On the other hand, an empty stadium is an invitation for cat-haters to prey upon them.

As far as it is known, homeless cats have been living in the Lower Downtown (LoDo) section of Denver ever since at least the 1980's and that was long before Coors Field opened on 1995. Since that time, apparently neither Charlie Monfort, owner of the Rockies, nor the Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium District, the part-private, part-state-owned corporation that operates the stadium, have lifted so much as a finger in order to alleviate their plight.

Abject neglect is accordingly the very best that the cats and their supporters can expect from the high-muck-a-mucks. On the other hand, if they ever were to so much as take even a passing notice of their presence it likely would be only to get rid of them.

Although not much is ever heard about them, it is strongly suspected that homeless cats reside at all of the remaining twenty-nine major league ballparks as well as at many of those where their minor league affiliates play. (See Cat Defender posts of September 6, 2006 and October 5, 2007 entitled, respectively, "A Pair of Homeless Kittens Rescued from Condemned Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia Win Back-to-Back 'Best Household Pet' Awards" and "Rescuing Cats and Dogs Makes the St. Louis Cardinals' Tony La Russa a Winner Both On and Off the Baseball Diamond," plus, ESPN, August 6, 2021, "Rescuing Rally Cat: Inside the Secret File of a St. Louis Cardinals' Legend.") 

Cats no doubt also eke out an existence of sorts at any number of National Football League stadiums. For instance, on September 11th a black and white cat fell from the upper deck at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens where the Miami Dolphins play their home games. On  that particular occasion, however, the venue was hosting a match between the University of Miami Hurricanes and the Appalachian State University Mountaineers. 

Amazingly, a group of kindhearted and quick-thinking fans caught it in an outstretched American flag and thus saved its life by breaking its fall. (See National Public Radio, September 12, 2021, "A Cat -- in a Miami Football Stadium for Some Reason -- Dangles, Falls and Survives" and The Washington Post, September 13, 2021, "What a Catch: Fans Use American Flag to Save Cat Who Fell from Football Stadium' s Upper Deck.")

To put the entire situation in a nutshell, so long as cats like Socks and their supporters do not make either a nuisance of themselves or wake up one day and find themselves in the crosshairs of a virulent ailurophobe, venues such as Coors Field may continue to grudgingly tolerate their presence but that is all. None of them will ever champion their just cause.

Every now and then one of them will make the news by unwittingly moseying out onto the pitch during a game. The fans will cheer, the radio and television game announcers will laugh off their rotten asses, and finally the grounds crew will chase away the cat. Another monotonous, four-hour-long baseball game will then resume and, eventually, drone to its soporific conclusion.

That is precisely what happened on April 2nd when a good-looking, longhaired light-brown cat ran out onto Coors Field in the bottom of the eighth inning of a game between the Rockies and the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers. Regrettably, nothing further was ever heard about it after it was ushered off the field. It is not even known if it is still alive today. (See the New York Post, April 3, 2021, "Wayward Cat Steals Show at Coors Field.")

Whether it stems from expediency, niggardliness, laziness, runaway egotism, or a complete lack of empathy, an awful lot of people have come to believe that TNR constitutes the ne plus ultra in cat care and that is a grave mistake; on the contrary, it is only the first step. Once groups of homeless cats have been identified and their basic everyday needs satisfied the next step is to socialize them and get them into proper homes.

For example, at Coors Field there currently resides an eighteen-year-old, longhaird black tom named Midnight whom Natalie and Sharon have been feeding for fourteen years. He is super-friendly and should have been taken home by either one of them or put up for adoption a very long time ago.

It is heartbreaking to see an elderly tom like him being forced to tough it out in the cold and snow year after year and to defend himself against both animal and human predators. Moreover, much the same can be said for every homeless cat that resides at Coors Field and elsewhere.

The goal therefore never should be to merely demonstrate to the world that TNR works but rather to get cats out of colonies and into homes as quickly as possible. In addition to the mundane perils that their caretakers are subjecting them to by consigning them to live outdoor in colonies forever, they do not know when either Coors Field, the cops, or the politicians are going to lower the boom on them and their cats. After all, this is America and the only things that matter to most citizens are money and guns.

Socks Has Her Life Back but She Still Needs a Home

It also never should be forgotten that TNR is anything but a walk in the park for any cat; rather, it is a harrowing experience that can, as Socks found out first hand, easily turn deadly in the twinkling of an eye. First of all, the regimen begins with their caretakers cruelly starving them half to death so as to make them more conducive to being trapped.

Given that cats are anything but stupid, they instinctively know that they are in big trouble as soon as the doors slam shut on their tiny cages. Already robbed of their precious freedom, they are next subjected to an array of strange voices and discordant sounds followed by long car trips to surgeries.

At the end of their journeys, they are then forced to endure the presence of more strangers, unfamiliar sounds and smells, as well as an alien environment. Before they have had time in order to come to grips with all of that, they are knocked out, poked and probed, their reproductive organs removed, and their ears mutilated.

If they are lucky, they wake up again and are returned, hopefully a little bit wiser, to their colonies. The unlucky ones never again awaken in order to see another sunrise or to frolic in the green grass.

In that light, the time is long overdue for all practitioners of TNR to release to the public truthful accounts of their kill-rates. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that some of them kill up to fifty per cent of the cats that they are supposed to be saving.

Veterinarians likewise should be compelled by law to post on the front doors of their surgeries the total number of cats that were brought in for care, the number that they refused to treat owing to their owners' impecunity, the number that they successfully treated, the treatments that they botched and, above all, the number that they killed and how money that they pocketed by doing so. These charlatans not only urgently need to be brought to the altar of public accountability but many of them need to have their licenses to practice veterinary medicine revoked.

There is another fundamental problem with both TNR and the practice of veterinary medicine and that concerns the appalling lack of trust that exists in both endeavors. Whereas the care of all cats should be a sacred trust, it hardly ever is that considering the level of arrogance demonstrated time and again by both groups and the cruelties that they inflict.

Their worst crime of all is to betray the trust that they have built up with cats by turning around and ruthlessly killing them. (See Cat Defender posts of September 28, 2011 and October 23, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor" 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.")

Countless cat owners commit the same atrocities every day of the week and in doing so they expose themselves to be merely takers and exploiters of the species. C'est-à-dire, they like having a cat around so long as it is young, healthy, and does not cost them too much money, but once it becomes old, needs treatment, or its presence is simply no longer wanted, they quickly, one way or another, get rid of it like a hot potato.

"A cat has complete emotional honesty, an attribute not often found in humans," Ernest Hemingway once pointed out. To put the matter another way, man is little more than an amalgam of ever changing interests, lies, and perfidies.

In Socks' case, if the pathology report had turned out differently she would have been killed immediately and her bones would now lie in a garbage dump. Instead, she now has her life and freedom once again. Best of all, the surgical removal of benign growths is usually curative.

She additionally will no longer be troubled by either the attentions of every street corner Romeo who happens to pass by Coors Field or any additional stressful pregnancies. She now has hope but the next time that the mesdames get their bloodthirsty hands on her she may not be nearly so fortunate.

She does however desperately need a permanent home and surely there must be someone in either Denver or close by who would be willing to provide her with one, especially before it gets to be too much colder and snowier outside. Finally, all those who maintain that living outdoors with criminals in the cold and snow is such great fun should relinquish their warm and secure beds and give it a try.

Photos: Twitter.