The Vicious and Unprovoked Attack Upon Pudding Once Again Demonstrates That Birds Kill Cats as Do Ornithologists and Wildlife Biologists

Pudding Twice Defied Death in a Matter of Minutes

"She was limping badly and had a nasty cut on her shoulder. It was feared she had a broken leg."
-- Exeter City Council

On Monday, July 3rd of last year a beautiful calico named Pudding was minding her own business when she was savagely attacked and seriously injured by a flock of seagulls in Exeter, a city of one-hundred-thirty-one-thousand residents that is located three-hundred-thirty-one kilometers southwest of London in Devonshire. Although she was able to have survived the initial onslaught, she subsequently narrowly missed being run down and killed by a bus driver while fleeing her pursuers.

The unprovoked attack occurred at the Exton Road Recycling Centre where Pudding has lived for a "few years." She spends her nights in a winterized shelter provided by Cats Protection that is located between the trash dump and the recycling center, both of which are operated by Devon County.

She additionally has a second shelter nearby that is located outside Exeter City Council's Oakwood House. Press reports have not specified either where or when the attack took place, only that Pudding was found "a while later" by staffers from the recycling center cowering in one of her shelters.

The mere fact that staffers were immediately aware that she nearly had been run down and killed by a bus driver is one indication that the attack occurred during working hours but it does not adequately explain why that it took so long for them to have checked on her well-being. As it turned out, by the time that they reached her she had been bloodied and was in a good deal of pain.

The recycling staffers did what they could for her before telephoning Cats Protection's Exeter Axhayes Adoption Centre which came and collected her. At that juncture, Puddings' prognosis did not look promising.

"She was limping badly and had a nasty cut on her shoulder," Exeter City Council announced a day later on July 4th in a press release. (See "Exeter Bin Crews Pay for Stray Cat's Treatment after Seagull Attack.") "It was feared she had a broken leg."

Although Puddings' pain was real enough and she had indeed suffered a terrible fright, fortunately the cut on her shoulder inflicted by the predatory birds turned out not to have been too serious although it did require stitching up. Nothing further has been said about her injured leg.

Pudding Is Too Beautiful of a Cat to Be Without Protection

She apparently was held overnight at Cats Protection where she was administered antibiotics and, perhaps, painkillers. By Tuesday morning, she had been returned to her box at the Exton Road Recycling Centre.

"I was so worried when she got hurt, but I've just been to see her in the recycling centre, where she's recovering while on antibiotics, and she trotted over to me all happy," Zena, who works for the Exeter City Council, later told the BBC on July 7, 2023. (See "Exeter Recycling Staff Pay Stray Cat's Vet Bill after Gull Attack.") "She wanted to follow me back when I left and it was quite heartbreaking to leave her."

 

Zena was equally happy to have a valued "member of the team" back with her and on the mend. "We are pleased she made a good recovery from her injuries and is now happily settled back in the place she calls home," she continued to the BBC. "She loves a cuddle and she comes and sits on my lap when I eat my lunch outside."

The garbage collectors and the office staff of Exeter City Council along with, possibly, members of the recycling staff passed the hat and that measure soon raised £100 in order to satisfy the veterinary tab that Pudding had run up with Cats Protection. Seven months have passed since the attack and nothing further has appeared online concerning her.

Presumably she is still alive and residing at the Exton Road Recycling Centre. Her situation is hardly ideal, however, and she remains in grave peril.

First of all, predatory birds are to be found everywhere, including urban landscapes, but they are particularly attracted to landfills and trash dumps. Compounding an already dangerous situation to begin with, municipalities often here raptors to patrol their landfills.

For example, on August 8, 2011 a hawk hired by PK Bird Control Services to patrol a city dump in Cedar on Vancouver Island snatched and later dropped a young black kitten subsequently dubbed Hawk. Discovered by an employee of PK, he was rushed to Island Veterinary Hospital in Nanaimo where he was diagnosed to have suffered multiple puncture wounds to his stomach as well as an injured paw.

A Raptor Came Awfully Close to Killing Hawk

After treatment, he was transferred to the Nanaimo SPCA where he eventually recovered from his injuries and was adopted later that autumn. Two other kittens, likely Hawk's littermates, were not nearly so fortunate.

The hawk killed one of them by piercing its skull and the other one with bites to its neck. The kittens' mother also sustained unspecified injuries but lived. (See Cat Defender post of February 12, 2012 entitled "Hawk Suffers Puncture Wounds to His Stomach and One Paw When He Is Abducted by a Raptor Hired to Patrol a City Dump on Vancouver Island.")

Even more revolting, the main reason that cats and kittens so often wind up in landfills and trash dumps in the first place is that they have been thrown out in the trash by their utterly despicable owners. (See Cat Defender posts of August 23, 2007, March 23, 2009, October 3, 2009, February 24, 2010, February 25, 2010, May 4, 2010, October 14, 2011, May 12, 2017, December 17, 2023, and January 1, 2024 entitled, respectively, "An Alert Scrap Metal Worker Discovers a Pretty 'Penny' Hidden in a Mound of Rubble," "Mistakenly Tossed Out with the Trash, Autumn Survives a Harrowing Trip to the City Dump in Order to Live Another Day," "Deliberately Entombed Inside a Canvas Bag for Six Days, Duff Is Saved by a Pair of Alert Maintenance Workers at an Apartment Complex in Spokane," "Sealed Up in a Backpack Inside a Plastic Bag and Then Tossed in the Trash, Titch Is Rescued by a Passerby in Essex," "Bess Twice Survives Attempts Made on Her Life Before Landing on All Four Paws at a Pub in Lincolnshire," "Picked Up by a Garbage Truck Driver and Dumped with the Remainder of the Trash, Alfie Narrowly Misses Being Recycled," "Chucked Out in the Trash, Tabitha Winds Up in an Oxygen Chamber with Four Broken Ribs, an Injured Leg, and Pneumonia," "Miracle Maisy Is Bound and Tied, Soaked in Petrol, Sealed Up in a Plastic Bag, and Then Run Through a Trash Compactor but, Amazingly, Is Still Alive Thanks to a Pair of Compassionate Garbagemen," "Thrown Out in the Trash by His Owners and Then Condemned to Die by the Veterinarians, Asher Is Saved in His Darkest Hour by the RSPCA in Its Finest Hour," and "Seventeen Cats Are Found Dead in a Dumpster in Nashville in the Latest Sorry Chapter of Southerners' Longstanding Loathing for the Species.") 

In one way or the other, it always has been their owners who have been their number one enemy. "Another of the most inveterate and selfish enemies of the cat is the supposed friend who goes to Palm Beach in the winter or Lake Placid in the summer and leaves puss alone in the city to shift for himself or the tender-hearted lady who says, 'I just can't bear to drown these sweet kittens'," Carl Van Vechten observed in his 1920 seminal work, The Tiger in the House. "So she takes the unweaned babies away from their mother and leaves them in some public garden where they will meet a cruel death in the hands of boys or the jaws of dogs, and the mother cat suffers not only from the loss of her offspring but from a milk disease as well."

It has not been divulged how that Pudding ended up at the city dump in Exeter. She could have been either intentionally dumped there or abandoned in the vicinity and afterwards wandered in own her own.

It also is possible that she arrived inside a garbage truck and somehow miraculously eluded being both crushed to death and recycled herself. That which is clear, however, is that something drastic needs to be done in order to stop owners from using the trash in order to get rid of their unwanted cats.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown this problem has become so prolific in both England and the United States that even so much as taking out the trash has evolved into a dreaded affair. Individuals toss their refuse into either trash cans or Dumpsters and before they even know what is afoot four or five traumatized and frightened cats and kittens come tearing out of boxes and bags and flee into the night never to be either seen or heard from again. No one knows what ultimately becomes of these ill-fated cats and kittens but it is highly improbable that The Fates are kind to them.

Blackie Was Rescued by John Bellshaw

Almost as depressing, an individual would need to have a catch pole with him  and to be especially fleet of foot in order to have so much as a prayer of catching any of them. It is a sickening and crushing experience that causes a person to question his own self-worth.

The cops are quite obviously never going to so much as lift a lousy finger in order to apprehend the individuals who commit these types of horrific crimes. Likewise, the only thing that shelters and feline rescue groups have to offer is meaningless palaver.

Garbage collectors in both countries are doing what they can but they urgently need to be doing considerably more and that most definitely includes searching and radiographing the refuse that they collect. Above all, the merciless killing of tens of thousands of cats and kittens in the trash each year is a damning indictment of the turpitude of owners and public officials alike in both England and the United States. 

The former need to be identified, jailed, and never permitted to come near another cat for so long as they live. If shelters are either too inept or irresponsible in order to secure morally responsible individuals to care for their homeless cats they need to shift their resources away from adoptions and instead invest them in establishing sanctuaries.

Three years earlier in July of 2008 another kitten, this time a five-week-old one named Blackie, was snatched from her mother's side by a black-beaked gull at Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde in Faslane, sixty-five kilometers north of Glasgow. The gull afterwards dropped her on top of a barbed-wire fence where she became impaled.

Luckily for her, John Bellshaw, a pest control officer with the Ministry of Defense, and PC David Duffton were able with considerable effort to have successfully freed her from the barbed wire and that ultimately saved her life. Even then Blackie's paws were badly cut up and she had lost a considerable amount of blood and fur.

She later was adopted by Duffton but a trio of her siblings vanished and their disappearance has been blamed the same gull. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2008 entitled "Birds Killing Cats: Blackie Is Abducted by a Sea Gull and Then Dropped but Her Fall Is Broken by a Barbed-Wire Fence.") 

The Way They Were: Bamboo and Colleen Hamilton in June of 2006    

The carnage that birds inflict upon cats is by no means confined to trash dumps and military installations but rather it extends to the heart of urban centers as well. In keeping with their customary modus operandi of driving coyotes and other large predators out of rural areas at the behest of capitalists, wildlife biologists are now championing the presence of predatory birds in cities where they are free to prey upon cats and kittens to their hearts' content.

For example, in June of 2006 a great horned owl abducted a fifteen-year-old cat named Bamboo from the back porch of her home with Colleen Hamilton on Oliver Street in Oak Bay, four kilometers east of Victoria in British Columbia. The owl attempted to carry the six and one-half-pound cat back to its nest but dropped her somewhere en route.

Bamboo hobbled home twenty-two hours later with a trio of broken legs, several puncture wounds, and a large piece of missing flesh and fur from her right paw which it was feared at the time that she might ultimately lose. She was alive, however, and that amazed her owner.

"She (has) always been really feisty and she has already survived a lot," Hamilton said. "I swear she is going to outlive me."

That doubtlessly was an exaggeration but since nothing further was ever heard of either her or Bamboo, it is not known how things ultimately turned out for them. (See Cat Defender post of July 31, 2006 entitled "A Fifteen-Year-Old Cat Named Bamboo Miraculously Survives Being Abducted and Mauled by a Hoot Owl in British Columbia.")  

Later in July of 2011, a retailed hawk abducted a white tom with light-green eyes while he was relaxing on a bench on the terrace of his fifth floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. On this occasion, however, the predatory bird bit off more than it could chew and shortly thereafter it dropped the fifteen-pound cat in a garden about fifteen feet from home.

A fall from that height likely would have killed him if his descent had not been broken by an outdoor umbrella. Consequently, he was able to have come away from his life and death struggle with the voracious raptor with only minor cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

Eddie on the Terrace Where He Was Attacked

His distraught owner did not recover quite so quickly from her shock in that it took her a considerable while in order to determine what had become of her beloved cat. She scoured Riverside Drive for him, fly-posted the neighborhood, and even visited several known hawk rookeries in the city. Finally, a tenant in a building a few doors down the street saw one of her Lost Cat posters and telephoned her to say, "I have your cat!"

The mere fact that the four-pound bird was able to have even lifted the cat is one indication of just how formidable these avian predators are and that does not even begin to take into consideration their lethal talons and sharp beaks. Individuals who therefore carelessly leave out either cooked or uncooked meats are unwittingly inviting them into their gardens and patios. (See Cat Defender post of August 1, 2011 entitled "Eddie Is Saved by an Outdoor Umbrella after He Is Abducted from a Balcony of His Manhattan Apartment and Then Dropped by a Redtailed Hawk.")

It is not only birds of prey that attack cats but magpies and crows as well. For example, during the early days of June in 2009 a flock of crows attacked a seven-month-old black kitten named Holly in Aylesburg, Buckinghamshire.

With Holly trapped seventy-feet up a tree in the summer heat and without food and water, the opportunistic birds made the best of the opportunity presented to them by attacking her with their beaks, flapping their wings at her, and shaking the branches in an effort to send her tumbling to her death on the ground. The crows relentlessly taunted and attacked her for the better part of two days before she eventually was brought down to safety by the local fire department. (See the Daily Mail, June 3, 2009, "Get Miaow Out of Here! Terrified Kitten Stuck Seventy Feet Up a Tree Saved from Angry Crows.")

Later on May 17, 2020 another cat suffered the same identical fate when  it was attacked by crows after it too became trapped atop a forty-nine-foot tree in Preston, Lancashire. The crows were so determined and aggressive that it took the Preston division of the Lancashire Fire Department more than an hour in order to successfully rescue the cat. (See the Lancashire Evening Post, May 18, 2020, "Cat Stuck in Nearly Fifty-Foot Tree Attacked by Crows as It Is Rescued by Preston Firefighters.")

"Nature, as Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Anatole France, James Branch Cabell, and some others have discovered, seldom rejects an opportunity to be ironic. It therefore should surprise no one to learn that a bird is one of the most dangerous enemies of the cat," Van Vechten continued. "The eagle swoops from the skies, seizes the cat along his spine with its terrible claws, mangles his head with its beak the while it flips its gaunt and terrifying wings and bears the little beast aloft."

He also included the following revealing anecdote. "A keeper in the eagle house at a London zoological garden informed Dr. Louis Robinson that when the eagles were off their food he offered them cats. 'If they won't eat cats they are about to die,' he said."

Holly Being Attacked by a Flock of Crows in Aylesburg

That is further evidence that ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and zookeepers always have killed and  exploited cats as not only a free and inexhaustible source of protein for birds and wildlife but also as nursemaids for orphaned and injured animals as well as sperm and egg donors for use in their diabolical cloning experiments. (See Cat Defender posts of June 30, 2008,  December 4, 2010, July 24, 2008, April 12, 2013, and September 6, 2005 entitled, respectively, "The Berlin Zoo Reunites Old Friends Muschi and Mäuschen after a Brief Enforced Separation," "Muschi Is Left on Her Own in a Perilous Environment after the Berliner Zoo Kills Off Her Best Friend and Protector, Mäuschen," "A Red Panda That Was Rejected by Her Mother but Later Adopted by a Cat Dies Unexpectedly at an Amsterdam Zoo," "Arnie of the Linton Zoo Is Remembered as a Wonderfully Loving and Charismatic Cat Who Gave Back Far More Than He Received During His All-Too-Brief Sojourn Upon This Earth," and "Clones of Endangered African Wildcats Give Birth to Eight Naturally-Bred Healthy Kittens in New Orleans," plus Global News of Toronto, January 28, 2024, "Kunming Zoo Removes Cats from Monkey Pen after Controversial Videos.")  

No statistics are compiled as to the number of cats and kittens that are killed each year by birds but it is strongly suspected that they kill far more felines than the latter kill of them. That is unquestionably the case when the number of cats that are killed by criminal ornithologists, such as James Munn Stevenson of Galveston, Ernst Bernhard K. of München, Nico Dauphiné Arcilla of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Ted Williams of the National Audubon Society, and the despotic governments of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States are factored into the equation. (See Cat Defender posts of August 7, 2008, August 17, 2011, January 6, 2012, May 18, 2013, November 18, 2016, and December 16, 2022 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 Was Fixed from the Very Beginning," "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It," "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages," and "The Bloodthirsty National Park Service Is All Set to Trap, Remove, and Kill the Famous Cobblestone Cats of Old San Juan as the Tyrannical Feds Ratchet Up Their Worldwide Campaign of Felicide.") 

Yet that petit fait is never mentioned by the cat-killers' defenders at the scurrilous New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian of London, Salon magazine of San Francisco, the New Yorker, and countless other media claptraps. Of course, the genesis of all the ailurophobia that is sweeping the globe rests with those pointy-headed, supercilious charlatans who strut, preen, and pollute the halls of academia with their lies, hatreds, and prejudices. (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2011 entitled "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Abused, and Systematically Exterminated.")

"Language was our (man's) secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a really dangerous species," Mark Pagel, a biologist at the University of Reading, told The New York Times on April 15, 2011 in reference to man's extermination of the neanderthals and large mammals. (See "Ancient Clicks Hint Language Is Africa Born.")

The fairly recent development of various forms of mass communication sealed the deal and insured that only the lies, interests, and prejudices of powerful individuals and groups would prevail. This phenomenon can be seen almost everywhere but it is most prominently on display in that which is passed off as honest journalism by the newspapers, television channels, and radio stations that hold sway in the capitalistic dystopia and thoroughly evil imperialistic empire known as the United States.

Ornithologists and wildlife biologists are attempting to lay a claim to ownership of the moral high road but such an assertion is only credible so long as one is stupid enough to believe that lies, duplicity, and the commission of despicable crimes against innocent animals is the fountainhead of all morality. Furthermore, for anyone to believe for one minute that liars and criminals are entitled to decide which animals are to be allowed to live and which ones are to be exterminated is nothing short of insane.

Perhaps most revealing of all, these hate-filled phonies do not even do a halfway decent job of protecting the birds that they claim to love so dearly. For example, they only care about those rare species that they have a financial interest in; city and ubiquitous birds are cavalierly dismissed as "trash." (See the Revelator, June 7, 2023, "What City Birds Around the World Have in Common.")

Casper Was Killed by a Hit-and-Run Taxi Driver Fourteen Years Ago

Ornithologists also have killed countless birds and other wildlife not only by rolling in the hay with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service but also by drilling for oil in the Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, and at other locations owned by the phony-baloney National Audubon Society. (See Cat Defender post of March 10, 2009 entitled "The Audubons Dirty Dealings with the Mercenary United States Fish and Wildlife Service Redound to the Detriment of Acorn Woodpeckers" and the Property and Environmental Research Center of Bozeman, September 7, 1995, "PC Oil Drilling in a Wildlife Refuge.")

Once the entire story is known and put in its proper context, the worldwide war that is currently being waged against cats by ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and certain tyrannical governments is revealed to be nothing more than a malicious, unjust, nonsensical, and barbaric crime. That is precisely, however, what the capitalistic media and the degree mills do not want the public to know.

Every bit as ludicrous as their pretensions of moral and intellectual superiority is their notion that birds are somehow the totally innocent angels of the animal kingdom and therefore cannot do any wrong. On the contrary, in addition to their predation of cats and kittens some of them live off of fish, other marine life, such as horseshoe crabs, and beneficial insects. (See Cat Defender post of May 6, 2008 entitled "The National Audubon Society Wins the Right for Invasive Species of Shorebirds to Prey Upon Horseshoe Crabs.")

Furthermore, some of them spread deadly diseases, such as the avian influenza, and scarecrows most definitely never have been erected by farmers in order to protect their crops from cats.

The second threat to Pudding's life comes, as it did on July 3rd, from motorists. Exeter is simply too large and congested a city for her to be running loose on her own day and night.

The city is located only seventy-three kilometers northeast of Plymouth where two famous cats have been mowed down and killed by hit-and-run motorists in recent years. The first one was a dashing twelve-year-old longhaired tuxedo named Casper from the Barne Barton section of St. Budeaux whose owner, Susan Finden, foolishly allowed him not only out into traffic but also to ride the buses all by his lonesome.

The Forever Beautiful PCAT

 He died tragically underneath the wheels of a hit-and-run taxi driver on January 14, 2010. (See Cat Defender posts of August 27, 2009 and January 30, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Casper Treats Himself to an Unescorted Tour Around Plymouth Each Morning Courtesy of the Number Three Bus" and "Casper Is Run Down and Killed by a Hit-and-Run Taxi Driver While Crossing the Street in Order to Get to the Bus Stop.")

A little later in October of 2012, the students, professors, and administrators at Plymouth College of Art (now known as the Arts University of Plymouth) callously allowed a truly beautiful longhaired brown and white female named PCAT to be run down and killed by another hit-and-run motorist one block south of campus on Ebrington Street. Although she had lived on campus for more than a decade, the only known amenities that the stingy eggheads ever extended to her was to have provided her with a "little kennel" in which to sleep and, from time to time, scraps of food. (See Cat Defender post of November 21, 2012 entitled "Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT.")

It is the very epitome of irresponsibility for anyone, including both the County of Devon and the city of Exeter, to allow any cat out into traffic. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2019 entitled "No Respect for Life: Early Graves and Crippling Injuries Are All That Cats Who Dare to Set Foot in the Street Can Expect from the Bloodthirsty Motoring Public.")

Like all of England, Exeter is infested with yobs who make a habit of maiming and killing cats with air guns. That is precisely what happened to a fourteen-month-old black female named Farah on September 27, 2014 when she was shot in the stomach by an assailant armed with one of those heinous weapons.

Every bit as unnerving, her killing took place in her own garden where she had every expectation of feeling  safe and secure. If something like that could happen to her, Pudding is a sitting duck for such an assault. (See Cat Defender post of April 2, 2015 entitled "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 the RSPCA.") 

Unleashed dogs and in particular rampaging and out-of-control foxhounds pose a fourth threat to Pudding's continued existence. (See Cat Defender post of July 1, 2021 entitled "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.")

Pudding Needs a Real Home with a Responsible Guardian...

Fifthly, the elements are aligned against her. Although residents of southern England are accustomed to a temperate climate, the region was hammered by an unusually snowy and cold spate of weather during late December and into early January that saw temperatures plunge to well below the freezing mark. (See the BBC, January 8, 2024, "United Kingdom Weather: Snow Hits South-East England as Cold Spell Takes Hold.")

In that regard, there is considerable doubt if Pudding even has access to heat during the winter months. "Pudding is regularly vet checked, microchipped, well-cared for and has a warm and safe indoor shelter at the centre," Phil Punnett of Cats Protection testified to the BBC in the July 7th article cited supra.

In its press release of July 4th, however, Exeter City Council fudges on that vitally important issue. "She sleeps in the Devon County Council site (where the trash dump and recycling center are located) at night in a shelter issued by the Cats Protection society to keep warm," it stated. "She also has a shelter outside Exeter City Council's Oakwood House office next door..."

If she is indoors at night in a "warm and safe indoor shelter" as Punnett claims, why does she still need a winterized shelter issued by Cats Protection? Maybe the confusion is attributable to the English's clumsy way of masticating their own mother tongue but even so considerable doubt lingers as to whether she has access to heat and a place in order to escape the elements.

Trumping all those concerns is the question of her personal safety and in that regard she should not be allowed outside on her own under any circumstances at night and when the recycling center is closed and that includes, presumably, weekends and holidays as well as overnight. Even when the recycling center is open for business someone should be watching out for her and that most definitely was not being done on July 3rd when she narrowly missed being killed, not once, but twice.

If anyone connected to either Exeter City or Devon County really cared about her they would either lock her indoors at night and whenever the recycling center is closed or take her home on those occasions. Best of all someone, such as Zena, should adopt her.

Unfortunately, in this wretched old world it is usually immorality, naked exploitation, and a slew of outrageous lies that always hold sway. Cats like Puddings "prefer an active and outdoor life where they can be independent yet still enjoy the care and attention which comes from living around people," Punnett ladled on the sottise to the BBC.

...but She Has Been Left on the Outside Looking In

Zena's testimony tells an entirely different story. In particular, it conclusively demonstrates that Pudding is a high socialized cat that craves human attention and love and is anything but a "stray cat" as Exeter City Council derogatorily refers to her in its press release.

As Pagel so astutely pointed out, the use and abuse of language always has been man's most lethal weapon and slandering and libeling cats as "strays," "ferals," and "pests" serves only to justify their neglect, abuse, and ultimate destruction. It additionally is more than probable that Cats Protection has abandoned Pudding to the city dump in order to rot along with the remainder of the trash because it is too cheap and lazy in order to find  her a real home.

Whereas the keeping of mascots and working cats is far preferable to exterminating them en masse, those governmental entities, institutions, and businesses that do so need to do a far better job of safeguarding their lives than the city of Naples did with City Kitty and the Annapolis Maritime Museum did with Miss Pearl. (See Cat Defender posts of March 25, 2010 and April 30, 2022 entitled, respectively, "The Mayor of Naples Fears the Worst Now That City Kitty Has Not Been Seen in Several Weeks" and "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.")

There is a world of difference between exploiting a cat for one's own selfish desires on the one hand and valuing it as a sentient being whose life has meaning and is well worth safeguarding but neither the garbagemen nor the recycling staff in Devon County nor Exeter City Council seem to appreciate that distinction. Caring, if it still counts for anything in this world, means at the very least doing the right thing by protecting the lives of cats such as Pudding.

In the wake of the twin assaults upon her fragile life on July 3rd, all of her caretakers have been given a  second chance in order to do right by her but so far they have callously demurred. With that being the case, her future looks anything but promising.

One day she likely will wind up either as Miss Pearl did in Annapolis or she will simply disappear as City Kitty did in Naples and then it will be far too later for anyone in Exeter to have saved her. Then Zena will really have something to feel heartbroken about...at least for a whole minute or two.

Photos: the London Metro (Pudding sleeping on her side), Exeter City Council (Pudding showing her stomach and looking in at the door),  Danielle Bell of the Nanaimo Daily News (Hawk), the Glasgow Evening News (Blackie with John Bellshaw), Erin Kelly-Gedisckt of the Oak Bay News (Bamboo and Colleen Hamilton), Joanna Molloy of the New York Daily News (Eddie), the Daily Mail (Holly being attacked by crows), The Sun of London (Casper), Facebook (PCAT), and Ellie Wilson of the Exton Road Recycling Centre (Pudding in the grass).