The City of Memphis Is Refusing to Remove a Pair of Homeless Dogs from Its Streets No Matter How Many Cats That They Kill

The Cat-Killing Dogs of Memphis on the Prowl

"If they are killing this many cats and they are aggressive to humans, what else has to happen for Memphis Animal Services to act?"

-- Karen Derefinko

Aside from ailurophobes, dogs always have been the number one mortal enemy of cats. (See Rudyard Kipling, "The Cat That Walked by Himself.")

Of late, however, their crimes against the species have reached epidemic proportions. For example, for the past nine or so months two large and vicious homeless canines have killed at least two dozen of them living in the Sea Isle and Colonial Acres subdivisions of Memphis. No one has even bothered to speculate on the matter but the number of homeless cats to have fallen victim to the dogs surely must be even greater.

Worst of all, there does not appear to be any end in sight to these atrocities because neither the much maligned Memphis Police Department nor Memphis Animal Services (MAS) has shown the least bit of interest in getting the dogs off the street. "We've given them numerous addresses where the dogs have been," area resident Karen Derefinko told WREG-TV of Memphis on February 27th. (See "Neighbors Say Stray Dogs Have Been Killing East Memphis Cats for Months.") "They are skinny because they've been left for about six months and MAS still does not come."

What Derefinko and her fellow neighbors are being given is a classic runaround by a moribund Memphis bureaucracy. For its part, it was only recently that the MAS even so much as acknowledged receiving a solitary complaint from her and her neighbors.

Secondly, it has resorted to instructing her to contact the Memphis Police Department which in turn has passed the buck right back to MAS by telling Derefinko to contact it. Even more baffling, the MAS is advertised as being part of the Division of Public Services and Neighborhoods but yet no such department is to be found on the city's web site.

"So, it's a bit of a curiosity," Derefinko speculated to WREG-TV. "If they (the dogs) are killing this many cats and they are aggressive to humans, what else has to happen for MAS to act?"

The short answer to that question would be lawsuits coupled with recalling all elected officials at City Hall. It is even conceivable that all departments and agencies involved are deliberately allowing the dogs to run free in order to decimate the population of both owned and homeless cats.

A Few of the Many Singaporean Killer Dogs

After all, the MAS has had the nerve to tell Derefinko and her neighbors that if they do not like vicious dogs killing their cats they should purchase snares and trap them themselves. "These are two very aggressive dogs, and it's very difficult for us to trap them," she countered to WREG-TV. "We had ten neighbors trying to catch them yesterday (February 26th) with no success because the dogs are aggressive."

MAS, the police, and Mayor Jim Strickland are likely patting themselves on the back and chuckling underneath their malignant breaths all the while believing that they have found the perfect solution to both the homeless and roaming cat problems in Memphis. As an added bonus, their diabolical scheme is allowing them to give the middle finger to the residents of Sea Isle and Colonial Acres.

Whereas the laughing and giggling may be enjoyable while it lasts, sooner or later their crimes are going to backfire on them in a very big way. For instance, residents of the subdivisions already have been forced into carrying sticks and baseball bats for protection against the dogs.

It therefore is just a matter of time before the dogs maul to death either an individual or a child and then the city is going to be facing a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit, if not indeed criminal charges on an individual level. Respecting and safeguarding felines lives also saves human lives but the cutie pies who rule the roost in Elvis's old stamping ground are too infused with with their own sense of invincibility to comprehend that petit fait and it subsequently is time to add Memphis to the ever-growing list of America's failed cities.

The scenario is the same all over the country: unchecked violent crimes against animals, individuals, and property, school systems and degree mills that have failed, widespread homelessness, abject poverty, dirt, grime, graffiti, and pollution go hand in hand with totally worthless politicians and bureaucrats who are concerned only with lining their pockets and therefore are not about to fulfill their official responsibilities. 

Clearly, Memphis is a sinking ship and it thus seems highly unlikely that conditions are going to improve anytime soon. That in turn leaves Derefinko and her aggrieved neighbors with only three alternatives: trap the dogs themselves, enclose their properties behind tall, impregnable fences, or to relocate elsewhere.  

The situation is even more pronounced in the Asian city-state of Singapore where large vicious homeless dogs have been granted the authority by the politicians to rip cats to shreds with impunity. For example, in recent months such dogs have brutally killed at least thirty cats belonging to TNR colonies in the city's Ang Mo Kio, Serangoon North, and Jalan Kayu sections.

Diane Alexis Whipple Was Bitten Seventy-Seven Times

Compounding the already dire problems of neglect, abuse, and abandonment, Singaporean authorities additionally have sanctioned a version of TNR for homeless dogs. Since 2018, more than thirty-five-hundred of them have been trapped and sterilized.

Of that total, the authorities admit to having only either rehomed or placed in foster care around sixty per cent of them and that in turn has left perhaps up to as many as two-thousand or more of them on the streets of Singapore to freely dine on cats day and night. (See Channel News Asia of Singapore, February 11, 2023, "'We're Exhausted': Cat Feeders Hope More Can Be Done to Stop Stray Dog Attacks.")

Whereas there cannot be any disputing that it is the responsibility of the municipal authorities in Memphis, Singapore, and elsewhere to protect members of the public and their cats from attacks by homeless dogs, this deplorable situation has gotten so far out of hand that their counterparts in other cities are even unwilling to protect their citizens' cats from being deliberately eaten by their neighbors' dogs. In particular, the Panama Park section of east Jacksonville has become far too dangerous for cat owners to even allow their beloved companions out into their very own gardens.

For instance, resident Ronald Taylor has been cited by Animal Care and Protective Services (ACPS) an astounding twenty-six times since 2018 for allowing his vicious dogs to kill his neighbors' cats. Every bit as outrageously, his neighbors have repeatedly telephoned ACPS, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, and the city to no avail.

"You can sit there and talk about the cats getting killed, and the dogs getting out," aggrieved resident Jeff Moines complained to WJAX-TV of Jacksonville on February 14th. (See "Neighbors Accuse Man's Dogs of Attacks, Killing Cats, Jacksonville Animal Control Records Show.") "The bottom line is the city of Jacksonville has been notified about this problem for three years."

It thus seems clear that Jacksonville has become another of America's failed cities where lawlessness is allowed to reign supreme thanks to the deliberate policies of elected officials. Furthermore, many of the owners of those cats and kittens that have been victimized are elderly and, being anything but rich, do not have the means to relocate elsewhere. They and their cats thus have been abandoned by a society that has fallen apart at the seams.

Even though a good portion of dogs that attack and kill cats have been deliberately put up to their devilry by their owners, it is only rarely that any of them are ever publicly identified let alone arrested and prosecuted. (See Cat Defender posts of March 24, 2010, July 18, 2015, and April 15, 2022 entitled, respectively, "Seven-Month-Old Bailey Is Fed to a Lurcher by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland," "A Blackpudlian Thrill Seeker Who Sicced Her Pit Bull on Regi and Then Laughed Off Her Fat Ass as He Torn Him Apart Receives a Customary Clean Bill of Health from the Courts," and "Buddy Is Mauled Nearly to Death on His Own Porch by Vicious Dogs Deliberately Sicced on Him by a Pair of Vile Black Kids in Philadelphia.")

Marjorie Knoller's Negligence also Cost Bane His Life

Since they already detest cats and their owners, many dog owners deliberately allow their charges to roam freely and off-leash just hoping that they will be able to ferret out and kill felines. (See Cat Defender posts of October 28, 2013, October 18,2014, September 22, 2019, July 1, 2021, April 30, 2022, and March 8, 2023 entitled, respectively, "Slow to Recuperate from Life-Threatening Injuries Sustained in a Savage Mauling by an Unleashed Dog, Stubbs Announces His Intention to Step Down as Mayor of Talkeetna," "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect only to Have Him Killed Off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold," "Sparkle Is Killed on the Front Stoop of Her House by an Unleashed Dog in the Latest of Centuries-Old Deadly Attacks That Bear the Unmistakable Imprimatur of the House of Commons," "Fourteen-Year-Old Mini Is Ripped to Shreds by a Pack of Vicious Hounds but Those Responsible Never Will Be Punished Because the Limeys Value the 'Unspeakable in Full Support of the Uneatable' Far More Than They Do Her Right to Live," "Relegated to the Dustbin of History and All But Forgotten by the Grossly Negligent Annapolis Maritime Museum, Miss Pearl's Beautiful Soul Continues to Cry Out from the Grave for Justice," and "Mauled to Within an Inch of His Life by Either a Dog or a Coyote and Afterwards Cruelly Left to Suffer in the Bitter Cold and Deep Snow for More Than a Month by the Lewis County Humane Society, Warden Not Only Perseveres but Now Has Hope for a Better Life.")

Guardians who truly care about the safety and happiness of their cats can seek out whatever islands of civility and law-abidingness that remain on this planet, but it is going to be very difficult for them to protect their cats from canine predation. Bad people are everywhere and they are increasingly turning to killer canines in order to do their dirty work for them. (See the Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2023, "A $150,000 'Executive Protection Dog?' Rich Los Angeles Homeowners Are Snapping Them Up.")

Before dog owners get too far along in their cups celebrating the large number of cats that they and their charges have devoured they might want to pause for a moment in order to ponder what occurred on January 26, 2001 in an apartment building at 2398 Pacific Avenue in San Francisco. On that god-awful day, a Presa Canario named Bane weighing one-hundred-thirty pounds got free of his handler and bit thirty-four-year-old, one-hundred-ten pound lacrosse teacher Diane Alexis Whipple of Saint Mary's College in Moraga, thirty-five kilometers east of the city by the bay in Contra Costa County, no fewer than seventy-seven times. The only parts of her torso to have escaped his punishing fangs were the soles of her feet and the top of her skull.

The dog's handler, attorney Marjorie Knoller, is still in jail for Whipple's brutal murder and will not be eligible for parole again until 2026. (See the San Francisco Chronicle, February 27, 2023, "'Dog of Death': The Horrific Killing of Diane Whipple in San Francisco.") Although she has gotten off rather lightly for what Bane did to Whipple, the prospect of spending the remainder of their lives behind bars should give the owners of vicious dogs something to think about but that so far has not proven to be the case.

Bane and another dog named Hera that also was being cared for by Knoller both had past histories of attacking and, likely, killing cats. Ultimately, Knoller's refusal to have socialized the dogs ended up costing both of them their lives when they were ordered killed by a court.

The breeding, sale, and ownership of vicious dogs not only endangers the lives of cats, other animals, and humans but the lives of the dogs themselves. Furthermore, it is one of the most heinous forms of animal cruelty, abuse, and naked exploitation imaginable. Contemplating the abuses that these animals are forced to endure is every bit as distressing as attempting to read any of Jack London's dog stories.

The mere fact that street gangs, cops, dogfighters, foxhunters, and the American military exploit these types of dogs for their own evil designs only compounds the enormity of these offenses. (See Cat Defender posts of October 22, 2021 and October 31, 2021 entitled, respectively, "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" and "The Arrest of a Dogfighter in Ayr Provides a Rare Glimpse into the Utterly Despicable Abuse that Bait Cats Are Subjected to but the Scottish SPCA Still Stubbornly Persists in Treating Them as Expendable Nonentities.")

No society needs killer canines. Rather, all dogs are richly deserving of socialization, good homes, and happy, non-violent lives.

Photos: WREG-TV (Memphis dogs), Channel News Asia (Singaporean killer dogs), the San Francisco Chronicle (Whipple), and the Daily Mail (Bane).