Intentionally Blinded, Crippled, and Abandoned to Freeze to Death in a Locked Cage at a Rest Stop on Interstate 95 in Connecticut, Highway Not Only Perseveres but Now Has Hope for a Brighter Tomorrow

A Battered and Bruised Highway after His Belated Deliverance

"I can't believe it. I can't believe anyone would be so cruel."
 -- Ellen Simmonds of the Pet Animal Welfare Society  

Most owners who wish to get rid of their no longer wanted cats follow the convenient expedient provided by the law and simply hand them over to shelters and veterinarians in order to do, for a price, their dirty work for them. Such blatant cruelty on the one side and patented criminality on the other is the bourgeois method of doing things.

Others who are either too busy or cheap to go through that rigamarole, simply leave them behind when they move away or dump them at distant locations. Such a modus operandi is not much of an improvement over the behavior of their bourgeois counterparts but at least they do not kill their cats and so long as they have life there exists some small measure of hope for them. The world also is thus spared the bourgeoisie's outrageous self-serving sophistry about not being able to see their perfectly healthy cats suffer.

A third group of dregs scraped from the bottom of the barrel of moral depravity hate their cats so much that merely getting rid of them is not sufficient; instead, they feel compelled to fix their little red wagons for good in the process. One convenient method of accomplishing that is to falsely brand their former companions as being vicious and aggressive.

The theory being that if neither a shelter nor a veterinarian is willing to immediately extinguish their lives, one of them will sooner or later have a change of heart because few adopters are willing to take a chance on a cat with a tarnished reputation. That was the diabolical plot hatched by an unidentified family in Köln last year in order to do in their resident tom, Mr. Krabs.

Fortunately for him, staffers at Tierheim Köln-Dellbrück were not so easily bamboozled. (See Cat Defender posts of August 31, 2021 and December 25, 2021 entitled, respectively, "Mr. Krabs' Young Life Has Been Placed in Grave Jeopardy Because of the Malicious Lies Spread about Him by His Vindictive Former Owners" and  "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.")

Sometimes vindictive owners fail to draw the line at slander and libel and instead go out of their way in order to permanently physically incapacitate their former companions for life and that is precisely what was done to a handsome two-year-old black male with white markings known as Highway by his former owner. Discovered locked in a cage on Monday, January 24th at a rest stop on the northbound side of Interstate 95 in Darien, sixty kilometers northeast of New York City, both of his front legs had been broken, one of his paws crushed, and his right eye had been put out with a sharp object.

Furthermore, it is believed that he had been languishing at the rest stop ever since Friday, January 21st. Consequently, he had been forced to go without not only treatment for his horrific injuries but also food, water, and companionship for the better part of four days. The unremitting pain and the utter hopelessness of his situation could not have been anything other than unbearable.

On top of all of that, he additionally was battling the elements. For example, according to AccuWeather the  thermometer plunged to 9° F on Friday night, January 21st, 8° F on Saturday night, January 22nd, and 19° F on Sunday night, January 23rd.

Luckily for him, Highway was able to have dodged several heavy snowstorms that blanketed the northeast during January. For instance, a foot of snow fell throughout most of the region on January 3rd. Another six inches landed on January 7th and between twelve and eighteen inches came down on January 29th.

If he had been dumped during any of those events, his tiny cage easily could have been snowed under and he in turn crushed to death by plowmen clearing the service area. Much like combine operators harvesting wheat, plowmen who remove snow could care less about the safety of cats and other animals; the only thing that they concern themselves with is making as much money as quickly as possible. (See Cat Defender posts of August 20, 2009 and November 24, 2009 entitled, respectively, "A Combine Operator Severs Howard's Front Paws and Leaves Him in a Ditch to Die but He Is Saved at the Last Minute by a Pair of Compassionate Lads" and "Howard the Combine Kitty Is Adopted by the Lads Who Saved Him from a Sure and Certain Death in a Ditch Alongside a Michigan Wheat Field.")

The mere fact that Highway, severely injured and without food, water, medical treatment, and heat, was left to suffer in the freezing cold for the better part of four days raises serious animal welfare issues. First of all, why did the dozens of employees who work for the Mobil petroleum company and in the rest stop's numerous restaurants ignore his desperate plight for so long? The same question needs to be asked of the hundreds of motorists who stopped there while he was shivering in his cage.

The obvious deduction to be made is that both employees and motorists alike knew of his desperate situation but deliberately chose to ignore his suffering. They accordingly were most likely hoping and praying to  their gods that he would either die on his own or that someone else would come and take him away.

That line of reasoning is buttressed by press reports that maintain Highway had been marooned at that wretched and polluted truck stop ever since January 21st. Quite obviously, someone employed there knew of his plight from the outset but did absolutely nothing in order to alleviate it.

The rest stop's callous disregard for Highway also raises pressing security concerns. For example, either a terrorist or some other miscreant could have deposited a bomb or a toxic substance there and if no one had bothered to inspect and remove it the damage to property and the death toll could have been substantial.

Even at this late date, it has not been disclosed who it was that belatedly discovered Highway's presence and tardily procured assistance for him. After all, it is axiomatic that the service area surely must employ groundskeepers in order to collect all the trash that motorists discard.

Since no one so far has been willing to spill the beans, the responsibility for making a clean chin of matters falls upon Colin Bryan who is the chief financial officer of Project Service of New Haven which operates the service area under a thirty-five-year contract with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. Oddly enough, although the company operates both the northbound and southbound rest stops in Fairfield, Milford, Branford, and Madison as well as Darien on Interstate 95, it according to Dun & Bradstreet only has a  mere ten employees.

Even more astounding, those ten employees are expected to oversee the operations at five additional rest stops on Route 15 plus the northbound and southbound rest stops in Plainfield on Interstate 395 as well as the southbound plaza in Montville, New Jersey. It thus seems likely that unless Project Service has designated one of its tenants to be in charge of the day-to-day operations of its rest stop in Darien, it is outsourcing that responsibility.

Project Service's business model is nevertheless an exceedingly profitable one in that, according to Dun & Bradstreet, it has annual sales of US$979,328. Its callous disregard for the well-being of Highway is an altogether different matter and no serious cat lover has any business of adding any additional coins to its already bulging coffers.

Eventually, either a member of the public or someone connected to the rest stop contacted Allyson Halm, an Animal Control officer based in New Canaan, nine kilometers northwest of Darien. "The poor guy," she moaned to the Hartford Courant on February 1st. (See "Highway, a Cat Found Abused and Abandoned on Interstate 95, Needs Help after Rescue.") "When I got there, he was very still and very subdued."

Along about the same time as she arrived, so too did her colleague in the New Canaan Police Department, Lieutenant Jason Ferraro. "Despite the suspected abuse, Highway remains a sweet and trusting animal," he added to the Courant.

Highway's Right Eye Was Put Out with a Sharp Object

Together they decided to contact the Pet Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in Norwalk, eight kilometers north of Darien, and that gambit paid off in spades. "PAWS did not hesitate to help," Ferraro informed the Courant.

Sometime after his arrival at PAWS, Highway's ruptured right eye was surgically removed by veterinarian Afrein Zap. Afterwards Ellen Simmonds of PAWS told Newsweek on February 3rd that he had "tolerated it (the surgery) well" and that he was "feeling infinitely better." (See "Cat Found Abandoned on Highway Recovering after Having Eye Removed.")

It has not been divulged if his broken legs and injured paw also have been repaired. All that is known is that the damage is so extensive that both legs may require the insertion of metal plates.

It is almost superfluous to point out that he is going to require several additional surgeries and months of rehabilitation before he is going to be able to get on with the remainder of his life. He has "a long road in front of him," Halm told the Courant.

Provided that his upcoming surgeries and rehabilitation go well he does have something that he never has had before in his young life and that is hope for a far better future. "He is a very sweet cat, who will definitely find a forever home," Simmonds pledged to People Magazine on February 2nd. (See "Connecticut Rescuers Save Injured Cat Abandoned in Carrier at Rest Stop and Name Pet Highway.") "Highway has a very different and rewarding life ahead of him, thanks to the quick thinking and action of the State Police (sic) and New Canaan Animal Control."

There cannot be any denying, however, that he was forced into paying a terribly high price for his freedom and on top of that he nearly lost his life in the process, but hopefully his nightmarish past is now in the rearview mirror. "Highway is one of the lucky ones," PAWS told Newsweek via Facebook. "He is away from his abuser(s) and is now surrounded by love and care from the staff and volunteers at PAWS."

The New Canaan Police Department is supposedly looking for the individual who so hideously mutilated him but it is extremely doubtful that anything will come of its efforts. Its only tangible lead would seem to be surveillance footage recorded at the rest stop but even then the force would in all likelihood need a license plate number in order to make an arrest.

Although individuals, retailers, and governmental entities spend a ton of money on surveillance cameras, it appears that they are largely wasting their wealth. To be even remotely effective, such cameras need to be capable of, inter alia, taking high-definition photographs from all areas and angles and, especially, after dark. Faces, license plate numbers, and other distinguishing features need to be crystal clear.

By contrast, what most subscribers to such technology receive in return are grainy, long-distance, black and white images that are virtually worthless for identification purposes. Besides, most lawbreakers are astute enough to wear hats and hoods and to keep their backs turned toward the cameras. Consequently, it would be a real stroke of luck if the police are able to learn anything beneficial from the surveillance footage taken at the Darien rest stop. 

Even more sobering, it is difficult to off-hand remember more than a handful of instances where surveillance cameras have led to the arrests of cat killers, abusers, poisoners, and kidnappers. On the contrary, the images captured the vast majority of the time are either inconclusive or the police have stubbornly refused to even bother to look for the assailants. (See Cat Defender posts of February 8, 2017 and August 24, 2017 entitled, respectively, "The Long and Hopelessly Frustrating Search for the Kidnapped Mr. Cheeky Ends Tragically Underneath the Wheels of a Hit-and-Run Motorist" and "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provide an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Open the Champagne.")

A perhaps more promising lead would have been for the New Canaan Police to have dusted Highway's cage for fingerprints. While they were at it, they also could have combed his fur and looked underneath his claws for microscopic trace evidence.

If his cage were lined, the names and publication dates of he newspapers used could have furnished a clue as to where Highway's owner lived. Since he was dumped on the northbound side of Interstate 95, the  presumption would be that his perpetrator had come from either New York City or points farther south.

As far as it has been revealed, Highway was neither microchipped nor tattooed and if he once had been outfitted with a collar and a tag his abuser was most assuredly astute enough to have removed them. By way of elimination, that leaves only the very slim chance that some motorist pausing at the rest stop along about January 21st may have seen the perpetrator abandoning him.

The only positive thing that can be said about this deplorable situation is that the New Canaan Police Department has so far had the bon sens to have restrained from issuing a plea for the public to do its job for it. Although its members seldom rise to the occasion, it nevertheless is the job of the law enforcement community to investigate crimes perpetrated against cats and the only way that they can do so effectively is by being in earnest and therefore applying the same proven methods and procedures that they use whenever investigating offenses committed against property and citizens.

As far as it is known, no police force in the world ever has employed an officer whose sole responsibility is that of investigating cruelty toward animals and that glaring omission demonstrates writ large how little regard that societies have for their well-being and lives. Even worse, cops quite often categorically refuse to  look into crimes committed against cats even on those occasions when private dicks, aggrieved owners, and concerned citizens have done their jobs for them by tracking down the abusers and killers themselves. (See Cat Defender posts of April 2, 2015 and December 18, 2018 entitled, respectively, "A Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and RSPCA" and "The Brutal Attackers of Mr. Solly Walk in a Lark All Because the Rotters at Scotland Yard Were Too Bone-Lazy, Derelict, and Ailurophobic to Even Examine the Evidence Supplied Them by His Distraught Owner," plus The Mirror of London, September 20, 2018, "Croydon Cat Killer Does Not Exist Say Police as They Close Investigation after Five-Hundred Deaths.")

Animal Control officers, such as Halm, likewise seldom if ever turn a hand at investigating cruelty toward cats. Au contraire, just about all of their efforts are devoted to rounding up and liquidating them.

Shelters, such as PAWS, do not investigate crimes perpetrated against cats. To make matters worse, Simmonds talks as if she is unaware that even a problem exists.

"Highway is such a sweet and courageous cat," she cooed to WVIT-TV of New Britain on February 2nd. (See "Cat with Injuries from Suspected Abuse Found at Darien Rest Stop.") "I can't believe it. I can't believe anyone would be so cruel."

That in itself is an astonishing statement for anyone even remotely involved in rescuing animals to make. Hopefully, she is not quite that naïve but rather was only blowing it out both ends in order to save money on Ex-Lax.

"The thing about Highway that really touches you is his sweetness," she continued to WVIT-TV. "I don't know why, but animals that have terrible issues and injuries sometimes happen to be the sweetest and most courageous animals."

There certainly is not anything perplexing about that. Man is the mega-predator and his specialty is preying upon and exploiting vulnerable animals and individuals. (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.")

After a while, cats that are repeatedly abused develop a psychological condition akin to the Stockholm Syndrome whereby they come to believe that suffering quietly and compliantly is the only way that they are going to be able to survive. Such thinking never works, however, because abusers interpret any and all weaknesses as a green light to inflict even worse abuse.

Highway Shaven and Sutured Following the Removal of His Right Eye

Consequently, the only language that those who abuse cats, other animals, children, and women comprehend is brute force. Yet, instead of locking up these monsters, societies become complicit in the commission of their crimes by allowing them to continue to operate with impunity.

Even on those extremely rare occasions when a cat abuser is apprehended, usually when he is caught flagrante delicto, prosecutors rarely go after him with anything other than a wet noodle. Juries will not convict and even those jurists who do convict in bench trials are seldom willing to punish. (See Cat Defender posts of January 17, 2006, June 22, 2006, November 24, 2008, May 14, 2009, August 17, 2009, October 31, 2009, December 18, 2009, June 30, 2011, and January 10, 2014 entitled, respectively, "A Loony Virginia Judge Lets a Career Criminal Go Free after He Stomps to Death Fourteen-Year-Old and Arthritic Luke," "A Used Car Dealer in Virginia Murders Sweet Three-Year-Old Carmen with a Rifle Shot to the Neck," "Kilo's Killer Walks in a Lark but the Joke Is on the Disgraceful English Judicial System," "Virginia Is for Cat Killers, Not Lovers, Now That Its Legal Establishment Has Sanctioned Donald Curtis Hunt's Drowning of Five Kittens," "America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as a Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets Off with Time on the Water Wagon," "Stefan W., Who Publicly Boasted of Scalding Kitty to Death in a Washing Machine, Is Let Off by a Berlin Court with a Measly Fine," "A Teenage Wino Who Gunned Down Her Neighbor's Cat, Trouble, with a Crossbow from Her Bedroom Window Cheats Justice," "No Cat Is Safe Any Longer in a New Hampshire Resort Town after a Local Court Sets Free Molly's Shotgun Murderer with a Trivial $200 Fine," and "A Texas Judge Idiotically Allows Pastor Rick Bartlett to Get Away with Stealing and Killing Moody but a Civil Court May Yet Hold Him Accountable.")

Most egregiously of all, ornithologists all around the world have been granted the equivalent of lettres de marque by the courts in order to steal, torture, poison, and kill cats to the content of their black hearts. (See Cat Defender posts of August 7, 2008, August 17, 2011, January 6, 2012, March 9, 2012, and November 28, 2021 entitled, respectively, "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank," "Ernst K. Walks Away Smelling Like a Rose as Both the Prosecutor and Judge Turn His Trial for Killing Rocco into a Lovefest for a Sadistic Cat Killer," "Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That as Fixed from the Very Beginning," "An Amateur Ornithologist Guns Down Hartley with an Air Rifle, Feigns Remorse, and Then Cheats Justice by Begging and Lying," and "Bird Lover and Music Industry Icon Philip Gregory Tripp, Who Stole and Drowned Mango and Then Went of Facebook in Order to Sarcastically Brag about His Cleverness, Is Treated Like a Hero by a Court in Coffs Harbour.")

Cat abusers and killers are so rarely punished that in the past twenty or so years the only one of them known to ever have received anything other than a slap on the wrists was forty-seven-year-old Robert Eugene Brunner of Vista who on September 17, 2007 was sentenced to three years in jail by Judge K. Michael Kirkman of the Superior Court of San Diego County for killing his next-door neighbor Janien Bubien's cat, Bill, with arrows to the neck and back. In an earlier civil proceeding, he also was ordered to pay her US$2,500 in damages plus another US$5,000 in order to help her relocate elsewhere. (See Cat Defender posts of August 14, 2007 and September 24, 2007 entitled, respectively, "A Grieving Widow Seeks Justice for an Orange Tabby Named Bill That Was Hunted Down and Savagely Killed with a Bow and Arrow" and "A California Man Who Slew His Neighbor's Cat with a Bow and Arrow Is Sentenced to Three Years in Jail.")

Tant pis, all of those despicable crimes and grotesque miscarriages of justice pale in comparison with the never ending slew of perfectly legal offenses that are perpetrated against the species every day of the week, year in and year out, by their owners, Animal Control officers, cops, shelters, veterinarians, vivisectors, cloners, breeders, fur traffickers, feline flesh eaters, zoos, and the yankee imperialistic war machine. Clearly, any measure of justice, no matter how small, for abused and killed cats is about as rare as hens' teeth.

Instead, the only thing that cats such as Highway ever receive from the likes of Simmonds and PAWS are remonstrances of outrage and moral indignation. PETA, on the other hand, delights every time that a cat is either abused or killed because such events present it with golden opportunities in order to both denigrate the species as well as to agitate for its and the American Bird Conservancy's cats indoors agenda.

Another one of the organization's many scams is to offer trivial rewards for the apprehension of abusers that it knows it never will be forced to honor in a million years. Just to make doubly sure, however, it steadfastly refuses, with good reason, to allocate so much as one penny toward investigating cases of animal cruelty.

If it, or anyone else, were ever to do so, Ingrid Newkirk and her not-so-merry band of cat and dog thieves and killers would soon find themselves disgraced and exposed as charlatans. Since the organization has the corrupt and thoroughly dishonest capitalistic media in its hip pocket, however, it is allowed to propagate its blatant lies and to commit its multitude of crimes with impunity.

Almost as bad, shelters such as PAWS are all the time begging for donations in order to help injured cats but they never render a public accounting as to how that money is spent or bother to return any excess funds. As a result, it and other shelters have transformed cruelty to cats into a fundraising racket. 

Shelters all across America thus fail to realize that it is not only a sacred trust for them to successfully care for sick and injured cats but also to maintain transparency in their fundraising. (See Cat Defender post of January 6, 2010 entitled "A Large Reward Fails to Lead to the Capture of the Archer Who Shot an Arrow Through Brownie's Head.")  

PAWS also is conspicuously silent on its web site as to its performance statistics. For instance, all that it is willing to reveal is that it rehomes seven-hundred cats and two-hundred dogs each year.

Such a declaration is utterly worthless, however, without it also disclosing its intake statistics, its kill rate, and the number of animals that it fobs off on other shelters and what subsequently becomes of them. To be totally transparent, it additionally should voluntarily disclose the number of cats that it successfully treats, the surgeries that it botches, and those that it refuses to medicate.

Above all, considering that shelters are guilty of shooting the public a line of bull long enough in order to stretch all the way to Jupiter, they should be required by law to hire outside ombudsmen in order to not only safeguard the lives of their inmates but also to ensure that the statistics that they release to the public are accurate and complete. In that regard, not only all the animals that are impounded and killed but also those that are summarily executed in the field by Animal Control officers and cops must be reflected in their kill rates.

Not to be naïve about the matter, absolutely none of those direly needed reforms are in the cards because very few individuals either inside or outside the feline protection movement give so much as a whit one way or the other. As a result, the god-awful abuse, mutilations, and searing pain that was inflicted upon Highway are destined to be visited upon countless other cats.

Nevertheless, for any society to be so morally numb as to sit back year after year and to be so totally unwilling to either commit one thin dime or to lift so much as a lousy finger in order to bring cat abusers and killers to the altar of justice is not and never will be right. It therefore can only be labeled as rank callousness that borders upon barbarism.

As far as Highway is concerned, he should be able to adjust to having only one eye, provided that his left one has not been damaged in some yet undisclosed fashion. Of course, it would have been preferable if his ruptured right eye could have been saved.

That perhaps might have been possible if the employees of the rest stop had acted responsibly on January 21st and promptly delivered him over to the care of a competent veterinarian. Since PAWS has chosen to play its cards close to its vest, the general public likely never will know if the eye could have been saved.

Repairing Highway's broken legs and severely injured paw is going to be not only dicey but a time-consuming and painful undertaking. From all indications, however, he has not suffered any lasting trauma and therefore is still very much capable of getting along with and trusting people and that bodes well for his prospects of securing a new home.

There cannot be any denying that he has been put through Hell and that he is indeed extremely fortunate to still be alive. It accordingly is imperative that PAWS exercise due diligence in placing him in a new home.

In that regard, the shelter needs to conduct follow-up home visits in order to monitor his progress as well as to provide him with, free if necessary, periodic veterinary check-ups. Above all, it must not spare any expense and labor in order to ensure that he is never again either abused or neglected under any circumstances.

Surely it is not going to kill PAWS to do at least that much for him. He already has been subjected to enough abuse.

Photos: PAWS Norwalk.