Seventeen Cats Are Found Dead in a Dumpster in Nashville in the Latest Sorry Chapter of Southerners' Longstanding Loathing for the Species

A Gray and White Cat That Was Found Alive

"Someone knows something. This is animal cruelty."

-- Angie Hess

Cat killers and dumpers are to be found just about everywhere these days but in the Hermitage section of Nashville someone dumped a grand total of nineteen of them in a Dumpster. As it so often is the case with the remains of both felines and humans, the grisly discovery was made by a ragpicker.

"I've found bags full of jewelry, gold, silver, and all that but no dead cats," Angie Hess told WTVF-TV of Nashville on November 3rd. (See "Nearly Two Dozen Deceased Cats Discovered Stuffed in Tote Container Found (sic) in Hermitage Dumpster, Two Found Alive.")

She made the horrifying discovery on the evening of November 2nd while Dumpster-diving near the T Mobil and Electronic Express at an unidentified shopping center near Old Hickory Boulevard and Old Lebanon Dirt Road. The former is most likely named in honor of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States and whose face adorns twenty-dollar bills. The eleven-hundred-acre plantation with its Greek Revival Mansion that he lived at between 1804 and 1845, except for when he was in Washington between 1829 and 1837, is located nearby and is known as The Hermitage.

After notifying Metro Animal Care and Control, Hess returned to the scene of the crime with an unidentified employee of a Home Depot outlet where they soon discovered two minor miracles amidst the carnage. "He (the employee of Home Depot) physically checked every animal to see if' they were dead or alive," she added to WTVF-TV. "When he lifted a couple of dead cats a kitten came crawling out."

A little bit later a cat that has been described as an adult also was found alive. From the photographs that were posted online by Animal Control it is all but impossible to tell which one is the adult and which one is the kitten; actually, they look to be about the same age. Also, since their sexes have not been specified it is impossible to even speculate if the pair could be a mother and one of her kittens.

Sadly, the duo were the only survivors. The remaining seventeen cats were long dead.

Hess took the survivors home with her and bathed them. "The water was bloody because they were covered in it," she continued to WTVF-TV. "I think they were someone's pet (sic) because they were calm and loving."

                                                

The mere fact that the cats were covered in blood is a pretty good indication that the deceased ones were either shot or bludgeoned to death. Oddly enough, press reports have not made any mention of the survivors as having been injured.

Perhaps by the time that the assailant had gotten around to them he had either run out of ammunition or his arm had become fatigued from wielding a bludgeon. Furthermore, if all of them were indeed pets that only serves to make this slaughter all the more reprehensible, but that is an example of the types of diabolical monsters who sometimes adopt cats.

Hess took the cats to an unidentified veterinarian the following morning and they afterwards were handed over to Animal Control. All that is known about them is that they were expected to have lived but it is not known what has become of them.

At this juncture it only seems fair to ask what, if anything, were the employees of Animal Control doing while Hess and the employee of Home Depot were busily performing their jobs for them? Also, did the city agency stick Hess with the cats' veterinary tab?

After all, it is almost unheard of for any veterinarian to treat a cat pro bono and that is doubly true for  the callous and stingy surgeons who practice veterinary medicine in the state of Tennessee. For instance, on July 8, 2010 a still at large cretin threw a beautiful five-week-old orange and white kitten out the window of an automobile on busy Interstate-24 in Chattanooga, two-hundred-fourteen kilometers southeast of Nashville. 

It was rescued in traffic by David Livesay who spent the following four hours unsuccessfully attempting to procure emergency veterinary care for it. During that time he was turned down by at least two practitioners who categorically refused to treat it.

"It's a life!" he pleaded in vain. "Anything alive is worth saving."

The veterinarians, however, refused to even look at the kitten. Au contraire, the only faces that any of them are ever happy to see are the dead ones that adorn those little green pieces of paper that are printed by the Treasury Department. (See Cat Defender post of July 16, 2010 entitled "Tossed Out the Window of a Car Like an Empty Beer Can, an Injured Chattanooga Kitten Is Left to Die after at Least Two Veterinarians Refused to Treat It.")

A Tuxedo Also Survived

As far as it could be confirmed, Animal Control's only contribution to this investigation has been to collect the corpses of the seventeen deceased cats. What it did with them has not been disclosed but more than likely it imitated the criminal behavior of their killer by casually tossing them in another Dumpster when they at the very least deserved proper burials.

If it had been even halfway serious about apprehending their killer it would have ordered necropsies on some of their corpses. It additionally would have combed their fur and looked underneath their claws for evidence.

Press reports claim that the cats were found in some kind of a tote and if that is accurate it surely must have been an awfully large bag in order to have held nineteen cats and their killer would have required a significant amount of upper body strength in order to have hoisted it into the Dumpster. It would have been a real long shot but it might have been possible for Animal Control to have traced the bag.

There initially was some palaver about the agency obtaining and reviewing surveillance footage from the shopping center as well it having forwarded unspecified forensic evidence to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department but nothing further has been heard concerning either matter. Given that two months have passed since the cats were brutally slain, it does not appear that Animal Control has lifted so much as a lousy finger in order to bring their killer to justice. 

Yet, appearances must be maintained. "Our team continues to investigate," Matthew Peters of Animal Control blowed to WSMV-TV of Nashville on November 3rd. (See "Seventeen Cats Found Dead in Hermitage Dumpster.") "We are asking for the community's assistance. Anyone with information is asked to contact our team at (615) 862-7928 and leave a message for our team."

Whereas begging the public to do its job for it is bad enough in its own right, Animal Control's unwillingness to even answer its own telephone makes an even bigger mockery of its indifference and absurd public posturing. Even more reprehensibly, it is harboring an even older, darker, and far more abominable secret in its malignant bosom.

For example, up until 2015 its kill rate for all animals that it was able to have gotten its blood-drenched hands on was a whopping eighty per cent and when it is taken into consideration that far more cats are impounded than dogs that surely means that it killed just about every cat that it either picked up on the street or that was surrendered to it by morally bankrupt Nashvillians. To this very day its kill rate for all animals that it impounds is still around fifty per cent.

Plus, those statistics do not even begin to include all the cats that Animal Control kills in the field and then surreptitiously disposes of their corpses. It accordingly is perfectly clear that what Music City in general and Animal Control in particular are operating is a feline extermination factory. (See WPLN, 90.3 FM of Nashville, May 27, 2015, "Nashville Animal Control Drops Its Kill Rate by Shipping Pets Out of the South.")

 

The state of affairs for cats in Nashville is so bleak that Animal Control does not even endeavor to find homes for any of those that it impounds. That dire assessment of the situation can be easily verified by visiting its Facebook page where not only have the killings of November 2nd never been mentioned but cats in general are only referred to every once in a blue moon.

What visitors are treated to instead are endless appeals for the public to adopt dogs. Cats on the other hand are killed in cold blood and without so much as a twinge of either conscience or remorse. 

Such morally retarded thinking and behavior holds sway throughout all of Tennessee and across just about all of the south with the possible exception of Texas. For instance, in Memphis Animal Control deliberately allows large, vicious dogs to freely roam the streets and in doing so to chase down and savagely kill both homeless and domesticated cats. (See Cat Defender post of April 30, 2023 entitled "The City of Memphis Is Refusing to Remove a Pair of Homeless Dogs from the Street No Matter How Many Cats That They Kill.") 

  

The Nashville Humane Association is every bit as hostile to cats as is Animal Control and on its Facebook page only one reference to cats could be found. Every other entry concerned dogs and its efforts to place them in new homes.

As best it could be determined from an online search, only Nashville Cat Rescue and Music City Animal Rescue even so much as bother with rescuing and placing cats in new homes. Both group are, however, forced to rely solely upon private donations and primarily volunteers and fosterers and their efforts are therefore woefully inadequate in order to combat the unspeakable atrocities that Animal Control is committing every day of the week against cats.

With that being the case, they possess neither the resources nor the expertise in order to investigate cases of cruelty to cats. Not surprisingly, both groups have not had anything to say on their Facebook pages about the murders of the seventeen cats.

True to form, the Nashville Police Department has not had anything to say about the events of November 2nd and nothing is expected from it. Cops never investigate crimes committed against members of the species no matter how horrific and widespread.

Long Gone but Not Forgotten, the Chattanooga Kitten

Even in the unlikely event that the cats' killer could be identified and arrested, it is a foregone conclusion that district attorney Glenn R. Funk would not prosecute. He has been on the job for a decade and it would be shocking if he has tried so much as a solitary case of feline cruelty.

The media in Nashville are another group of rotters in that they barely even reported on Hess's horrific discovery in that Dumpster and since then they have been every bit as silent as church mice. Quite obviously, they could care less how many cats and kittens that are liquidated in Nashville. Nashvillians likewise surely must love to shed innocent feline blood because they inexcusably refuse to raise their voices in opposition to the atrocities that are being committed by Animal Control.

C'est-à-dire, there have not been any cries of moral outrage and demands that the ends of justice be served by arresting and punishing the cats' killer. The silence of the denizens of Music City has been deafening.

It thus seems perfectly fair to conclude that besides dogs the only things that Nashvillians care about are country music, football, getting drunk every Saturday night, and Donald Trump. (See Cat Defender post of April 28, 2017 entitled "Trump Not Only Exposes Himself for What He Is but Also Disgraces the Office of President by Fetting Cat Killers Theodore Anthony Nugent and Kid Rock at the White House.")

Cats and kittens who therefore suffer the misfortune of winding up homeless in a hellhole like Nashville have only two very slim chances of staying alive. First of all, Animal Control operates a TNR program in conjunction with the Pet Community Center but it is not known either how large or effective it is in saving lives.

Therefore, the only real hope for such cats is that they will be rescued and spirited out of Nashville by shelters located in the northeast and midwest. The only data that are available on this subject comes from WPLN 90.3 FM which in the article cited supra claims that twelve-hundred cats and dogs were transferred out of state in 2014.

Although such efforts are very much appreciated, they are a mere drop in the proverbial bucket when compared to the tens of thousands of cats that Animal Control is systematically annihilating each year. This is a huge problem not only in Nashville but throughout the backward and ailurophobic south.

For example, on December 18th a plane landed in Waukesha, thirty-one kilometers west of Milwaukee, that was carrying sixty cats and dogs that had been rescued off of death row in New Orleans. (See WDJT-TV of Milwaukee, December 18, 2023, "Fifty-Plus Dogs and Cats Flown from the South into Waukesha; Nearly Ready for Adoption into 'Fur-ever' Home (sic).")

Conscientious shelters in the north have convincingly demonstrated that sterilization and adoption is the humane and just way in order to deal with homeless cats and dogs. Meanwhile, shelters and Animal Control agencies in the south continue to showcase their total lack of morality and intelligence by stubbornly clinging to trap and kill.

It is a shame that northerners are forced to rescue the cats and dogs that southerners only want to ruthlessly slaughter. That is especially the case considering that the latter are by no means impoverished as it has been attested to by Hess's highly profitable treasure hunts through the Dumpsters of Nashville..

They accordingly are every bit as financially capable of taking care of their homeless cats and kittens as are northerners. They simply do not have any use for them and that is their oldest, darkest, and dirtiest secret.

                                                                                

Moreover, that is something that visitors to the Grand Olde Opry in Nashville and other tourist magnets throughout the south should bear in mind. An acknowledgement of that harsh reality is even more important for individuals who are contemplating relocating south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Ailurophobia is so rampant in Nashville that the only person to have contributed anything positive toward the apprehension of the cats' killer was the ragpicker and she demonstrated her commitment to serving the ends of justice by photographing each of the victims. According to her, they were of all ages, sizes, and colors.

Hess also is apparently the only resident of Nashville who has any sense of responsibility. "Someone knows something. This is animal cruelty," she correctly deduced to WSMV-TV in Nashville. "These animals can't protect themselves. We are their voice. We have to protect them. No one else will."

A good case also could be made that she is the only Nashvillian with any morals. "How can you kill a defenseless animal that has no voice and can't fight you back?" she rhetorically asked WTVF-TV. "I think they (the culprit or culprits) should be charged with nineteen counts of something."

The Two Survivors: Where Are They Now?

That is not about to happen in a million years in a city as backward and rednecky as Nashville. In fact, the city had already forgotten all about the murdered cats long before Animal Control incinerated their remains.

Despite the difficulties involved in such an endeavor, pressure nevertheless should be brought to bear upon Animal Control in order to compel it into disclosing what it has done with the two cats that survived. The mounting fear, however, is that unless they have been saved by a rescue group in the north Animal Control has killed them.

Just as fish are said to rot from the head, so too do cities. In Nashville's case, its leadership is comprised of  notorious cat killers and all the Jack Daniel's and Hank Williamses in this world cannot drown out that horrible truth.

It would be reprehensible enough if the mass killing and dumping of cats were confined to backwaters like Nashville but, regrettably, that is hardly the case. For example, a little over two weeks later on November 17th thirteen dead cats were found in a blue oil barrel on Muller Road just east of Bakersfield in Kern County, one-hundred-eighty kilometers north of Los Angeles in California's Central Valley.

"I saw a barrel, and it seemed somewhat out of place to me, and I did see something furry sticking out so I went to go see," Yesenia Giles, who cares for homeless cats in the area, later told KERO-TV of Bakersfield on November 28th. (See "Barrel of Thirteen Dead Cats Found in East Bakersfield.") "I was in shock. There's a lot of shocking things out here..."

She immediately contacted Kern County Animal Control but that turned out to have been a total waste of her time because all that she received from it in return was the usual fare of excuses and utter baloney for doing nothing. "I've never seen thirteen cats that were in a barrel dumped on the side of the road like that," the agency's head honcho Nick Cullen hyperventilated to KERO-TV. "I've never seen it."

Since the cats had been dumped in an isolated area that serves as an unofficial landfill, he had a ready-made excuse for curtly dismissing the cats' deaths as not being of any consequence. "It's always tough to try to be able (to) track down who might have done that, especially when they're in a remote area," he continued to KERO-TV.

It is truly stunning that a society that is capable of putting men on the moon, militarily conquering nearly the entire world and outer space, and through outright thievery and the printing of money is able to have racked up a national debt in excess of thirty-four trillion dollars is at the same time thoroughly incapable of tracking down and incarcerating a solitary cat killer. The Chinese maintain that a long journey is made short by the taking of the first step and that is the problem with most Americans in that they are all blow and no go.

In this particular instance, Animal Control did not even bother to stir its worthless, rotten bones until two days later on November 19th when it finally arrived on the scene and collected the corpses of the dead cats. Presumably, it had been waiting for the vultures to have done its job for it.

For what it is worth, Cullen later told KERO-TV that an examination of the cats' remains failed to detect any signs of trauma but that does not foreclose the possibility that they could have been poisoned by either their owners or vivisectors at a local research laboratory. Necropsies would have been able to have pinpointed how that they had been killed but there is not anything in the public record to even suggest that they were performed.

  

"Cats on the side of the road, it's absolutely disgusting," Cullen continued his hyperventilating to KBAK-TV of Bakersfield on November 30th. (See "Uncovering Kern County's Animal Cruelty Crisis: A Silent Epidemic.") "It' disgusting and anybody who would do it whether they killed them or whether they were already deceased when they dumped them on the side of the road is reportable."

The entire world is cognizant of that. What it wants and expects from those in charge of enforcing the anti-cruelty statutes is action, not histrionics.

Alas, the latter was all that the public was destined to have received from Cullen and his agency. Nothing further has been heard from him and, quite obviously, no arrest has been made in this case and none is expected. In fact, no mention of the killings could even be found on Animal Control's Facebook page.

Like the Facebook page of Animal Control in Nashville, the one maintained by Kern County Animal Services barely mentions cats at all; practically every posting, photograph, and video is devoted to securing homes for dogs.

Zack Scrivner, who serves as supervisor for District Two where the cats were found, demonstrated his utter contempt for the sanctity of feline lives by refusing to return multiple telephone calls from Dominique LaVigne of KERO-TV. Since he quite obviously does not have the slightest bit of interest in either protecting the lives of the cats that reside in his district or of putting an end to illegal trash dumping, the voters should send him packing in the upcoming election.

 The Oil Barrel with Thirteen Dead Cats Spilling Out of It 

That is even more of an imperative considering that considerably more animals than cats are being abused and killed in Kern County. "We are in trouble here and I have found animals, lamb, sheep, wrapped up with barbwire (sic) on the side of the road," Carmen Carpio, an unaffiliated animal rescuer, told KBAK-TV. "It's a huge epidemic here in Kern County and it's actually growing, and getting worse."

As it is the case everywhere else in this world, animal rights count for almost nothing when it comes to making and saving money in Kern County. Whereas oil and gas drilling along with farming traditionally have been the big money-makers, the current craze is building warehouses and the huge increases in both vehicular traffic and auto emissions that go along with that endeavor cannot possibly be beneficial for the county's four-legged inhabitants. (See the Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2023, "As Kern County Officials Embrace a Warehouse Boom, Some in the Community Brace for Even Worse Air")

In such a money-mad environment few individuals, both inside and outside of government, have any interest in enforcing the anti-cruelty statutes. For her part, however, Giles is not quite ready to throw in the towel.

"I would like more people to say something," she told KERO-TV. "If they see something, to report it right away."

Even if that were to happen it is doubtful that Animal Control would even act. It certainly is never going to be taken seriously if it continues to wait for two days after it has been notified before it even so much as stirs its lazy bones.

Although Animal Control appears to be doing practically nothing in order to enforce compliance with the anti-cruelty statutes, it claims to have made substantial progress in lowering its kill rate. For example, over the course of the past decade it claims to have gone from killing two-thousand animals a month to only killing one-hundred-forty-five.

In 2019, it killed one-thousand-three-hundred-nine cats and one-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-four dogs for a kill rate of sixteen per cent. In 2020, it reportedly improved to the point that it actually achieved no-kill status by only killing three-hundred-ninety-eight cats and five-hundred-sixty-four dogs for a kill rate of nine per cent.

While those statistics were no doubt helped out by the COVID-19 lockdown, Animal Control's kill rate rose again in 2021 when it dispatched to the devil four-hundred-thirty-three cats and seven-hundred-thirty-nine dogs for a kill rate of fourteen and one-half per cent. (See the Bakersfield Californian, January 7, 2022, "Kern County Animal Services No Longer a No-Kill Shelter after Increase in Euthanasia" and www.kernanimalservices.org, "Kern County Animal Services: Reports and Statistics.")

Although Kern County is making progress in saving lives, all statistics released to the public by shelters and Animal Control agencies are highly suspect. For instance, Bakersfield has an Animal Control agency that is staffed by the Bakersfield Police but it has not proven possible to locate any data concerning its kill rate.

Even more troubling, cops and Animal Control officers are known to shoot cats and other animals in the field and to dispose of their bodies. Consequently, their deaths are never included in the statistics that either they or shelters release to the public.

Additionally, shelters quite often fob off cats onto other shelters to be killed. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "The Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While as Masquerading as a No Kill Shelter.")

Another telling difference between Bakersfield and Nashville is in the attitude of the local media. Whereas the latter has taken it upon itself to ignore and to cover up the despicable crimes that the city is committing against cats, the former has taken the exact opposite approach.

To put the matter succinctly, Bakersfield is on the road toward treating cats with compassion and respecting their right to live whereas Nashville still continues to look down upon them as nonentities to be liquidated en masse. That is not meant to imply, however, that Bakersfield and Kern County have in any way earned a right to rest upon their laurels.

On the contrary, what Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam said in song about the cruel and unforgiving streets of Bakersfield all those years ago remains all-too-true as far as cats and kittens are concerned:

"Hey, you don't know me, but you don't like me

Say you care less how I feel

But how many of you have sit and judged me

Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?"

Photos: Matthew Peters of Metro Animal Care and Control in Nashville (the two cats that survived), WTVC-TV of Chattanooga (kitten), and Yesenia Giles (oil barrel).