Beautiful King Hercules Is Condemned to an Early Grave by His Derelict Owner Who Did Not Care Enough about Him to Have Kept Him Out of the Street

While He Was Alive, King Hercules Liked to Survey His Realm

"I actually saw my world flash by when I saw him. He had a blue collar (and) it was lying next to him. I screamed his name: Hercules!"
-- Luisa Motta

Another beautiful cat has been run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist. He thus has joined the legions of moggies that are senselessly dying every day of the week all because their totally irresponsible owners stubbornly refuse to shield them from the machinations of motorists.

The latest victim to have made the news was an elderly Persian named King Hercules from the affluent Primrose Hill district on the northern edge of Regent's Park in the borough of Camden in London. The dastardly and unconscionable foul deed took place on Fitzroy Road at some undisclosed date during, presumably, the last week in March and involved two motorists.

"I went to do the recycling and I saw two cars there with safety lights on flashing. I thought 'what's going on?'," King Hercules' fifty-six-year-old owner, Luisa Motta of the Oldfield (Housing) Estate at 54 Fitzroy Road, told the Camden New Journal of London on March 30th. (See "Kit-and-Run: Devastated Owner Says Drivers Who Run Over Cats Should Face Penalties.") "I could see something on the floor (sic). It was orange and I thought it was a fox. But as I got closer I realized it was not a fox, it was my baby."

The mere fact that the motorists had their emergency lights on coupled with Motta's admission that she was taking out the trash when she happened upon King Hercules are two indications that his murder possibly could have occurred after dark and sometime during the early evening hours. Much more pertinently, Motta did not have any business of allowing him out of doors after dark, especially in an area as vehicularly congested as Fitzroy Road.

It has not been disclosed where on Fitzroy Road King Hercules was killed but most likely it was near his residence at Oldfield Estate, which is a six-story, brick building that contains two-hundred-fifty-one studios and one-bedroom apartments for senior citizens. That accordingly makes it one of the few affordable places for the poor to live in Primrose Hill where victorians start at around £1.5 million.

                                         

Unless she should happen to reside on the ground floor, Motta in all likelihood would have needed to have carried King Hercules downstairs in an elevator before turning him loose. She then at some later time would have needed to have gone outside, located and collected him, and returned him to her flat.

That in turn raises the specter that she may have been in the habit of allowing him to have roamed the perilous streets of Primrose Hill both day and night. If there should be any credence to that assumption, it is difficult to think of a more deliberate way for her to have killed her cat.

For whaever it is worth, however, her grief seems to have been genuine enough. "I actually saw my world flash by when I saw him," she told the Camden New Journal. "He had a blue collar (and) it was lying next to him. I screamed his name: Hercules!"

What happened next is not exactly clear. According to the muddled and elliptical account of events contained in the Camden New Journal, Motta called out for the motorists to wait while she hurried off in order to fetch an unidentified neighbor who is a nurse.

That in itself is odd to say the least. Under such traumatic circumstances, her first instinct should have been to immediately checked on the condition of King Hercules and, in particular, how seriously that he was injured and, most importantly of all, if he were still alive.

Her second action should have been to have removed him from the road and out of harm's way. Her third move unquestionably should have been to either have driven him to the closest, twenty-four-hour surgery or to have transported him there in a taxi. It also would have been a good idea for her to have telephoned en route in order to have alerted the veterinary technicians on duty as to what had happened and to have let them known that she was on her way with King Hercules. Most full-fledged veterinarians are far too bone-lazy, uncaring, and unprofessional to even work nine to five, Mondays through Fridays, let alone evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays.       

It therefore is largely a case of potluck for owners who must secure emergency treatment for their injured and sick cats during after-hours. This glaring hole in veterinary care also highlights the urgent need for the establishment of some type of ambulance service for cats but the only way that such a direly needed public service is ever going to become a reality will be through the efforts and funding of cat owners; neither the veterinary medical profession nor the politicians would ever be willing to kick in so much as a lousy nickel for such an invaluable service that undoubtedly would save countless lives.

The fact that just about all veterinarians keep bankers' hours coupled with their only interest being in cleaning out the pockets of distraught owners demonstrates once again that the practice of veterinary medicine is a complete sham. After all, cats get sick, injured, and even die twenty-four-hours a day, seven days a week, and even on holidays just as humans do but practitioners treat them as if they were no more than the play pretties of the affluent and that their lives are therefore of no account.

With that being the harsh, unbending reality, owners who care must do the very best that they can for their injured and sick companions and in that regard it is, admittedly, extremely difficult for most people to even think halfway clearly in emergencies and for that reason it is imperative that owners not only already have an emergency plan but know it by rote as the result of having rehearsed it many times in their minds. Above all, they need to know where to go and how to get there in the fastest way possible. Minutes, indecision, and missteps cost lives.

The slipshod Camden New Journal has not disclosed what was the point of Motta's running off in search of the nurse or even if she was able to have located her. Rather, all that it has been willing to divulge to the public is that at some point she returned to the scene of the crime, collected King Hercules, and somehow was able to have gotten him to an unidentified surgery.

 Luisa Motta's Love for King Hercules Was Not the Right Kind

Sadly, even in that belated effort Motta was way too late because King Hercules was declared dead upon arrival. No mention has been made of what killed him or even if he was struck by one or both motorists.

Could he have been saved if Motta had promptly gotten him to a surgery instead of foolishly wasting valuable time chasing down the nurse? Perhaps. At least that is the complaint that she has lodged against King Hercules' killers.

"Maybe, he could have been saved?" she argued to the Camden New Journal. "I would have stopped. They must have heard the bang. He wasn't a small cat."

Actually, both drivers did stop, if ever so briefly, but they did not do a solitary thing in order to have helped King Hercules. The mere fact that his collar had been removed and was lying on the pavement is one indication, however, that they might have at the very least checked on him.

It has not been disclosed what type of collar he was wearing but it would have been unusual for it to have been knocked off by the impact with a motorist. On the other hand, if that was indeed what occurred King Hercules likely had been struck, once or twice, in the head and died either instantaneously or soon thereafter.

It likewise has not been disclosed if his collar also had a tag listing Motta's name and telephone number. It is almost superfluous to point out but there is not any point of equipping a cat with a collar that does not contain a name tag.

Predictably, both motorists had vamoosed by the time that Motta had returned to Hercules' side. She likely was able to have ascertained some description of them as well as the makes of their instruments of death. The Camden New Journal fails to mention, however, if she even filed a complaint with Scotland Yard.

What precious little public debate that there has been in the aftermath of the violent killing of King Hercules has followed a predictable script. Most notably, Motta has called for the enactment of legal penalties against drivers who run down cats and then flee the scene.

This issue has been debated in public, Fleet Street, 10 Downing Street, and in the House of Commons for years without so much as a glimmer of success. The most recent legislative initiative occurred in 2022 when an online petition garnered one-hundred-two-thousand, four-hundred-thirty-seven signatures within the legally-mandated six-month-period. That in turn allowed the measure to have been debated in the House of Commons on January 9, 2023.

By that time, however, it was long dead because the government of then Prime Minister "Porous" Boris Johnson had already rejected it outright. "The government has no plans to make it an offense to drive off after hitting a cat," it declared with relish. "A focus of this government is to make roads safer for all users, which will in turn reduce the risk to all animals." (See "Make It a Legal Requirement for Drivers to Stop and Report Collisions with Cats" at http:// petitions.parliament.uk/petitions/607317.) 

That in itself is an outrageous load of hypocritical balderdash considering that under the Road Traffic Act of 1988 motorists in England, Scotland, and Wales are required to notify the police whenever they run down dogs, cows, horses, sheep, donkeys, mules, pigs, and goats. Besides, neither the Tories nor the Laborites have ever been known to have done anything beneficial in order to have made the roads safer for animals and pedestrians.

Such blatant discrimination against cats under the law is, however, merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to how shamefully the English have relegated them to being second-class citizens in their own country. For starters, foxhunters routinely get away scot-free with negligently allowing their hounds to kill and eat cats. (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.")

Secondly, although the Dangerous Dogs Act has been on the books since 1991, canines still routinely kill cats with impunity because the authorities stubbornly refuse to enforce the strictures of the law. For example on August 22, 2019, an unleashed dog, possibly a lurcher, killed an eleven-year-old gray, brown, and white female named Sparkle while she was sitting on the stoop of her house in the Sudden section of Rochdale in Greater Manchester.

Her heartbroken owner, fifteen-year-old Jacob Hazley, started a petition that would have allowed owners to have taken direct action against the owners of dogs that kill cats but his well-intended and long overdue initiative did not go anywhere. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2019 entitled "Sparkle Is Killed on the Front Stoop of Her House by an Unleashed Dog in the Latest of Centuries-Old Attacks That Bear the Unmistakable Imprimatur of the House of Commons.")   

Another initiative that would have required councils (local governments) to scan the corpses of cats that are found dead in the street and elsewhere for implanted microchips has likewise yet to see the light of day. As a consequence, garbagemen continue to collect these cats and to dispose of them by either burning or recycling them while their aggrieved owners are left in the dark as to what has become of their beloved companions.

Oldfield Estate Is Too Congested an Area for Footloose Cats

The little regard that the English authorities have for the lives of cats is further exemplified by the refusal of Scotland Yard and other police departments to even investigate cases of cruelty. (See Cat Defender posts of November 7, 2022 and December 18, 2018 entitled, respectively, "In a Sad and Violent Dénouement to a Long and Happy Life, Cleo Is Brutally Slain and Mutilated in a South London Park, Reigniting Fears That the Croydon Cat Killer May Have Struck Again" 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.")                                                                                                      

It therefore is pretty much a foregone conclusion that Scotland Yard has never so much as even looked into the killing of King Hercules. His killers therefore have gotten away scot-free with their heinous crime and sans doute will go on to kill many more cats before they are done. Running down and killing felines with an automobile has become the perfect crime.

Fleet Street likewise continues to cash in on cats from all sides. On the one hand, it continues to champion the exploits of cats that are allowed to play in the street by their irresponsible owners while simultaneously offering up nothing more than crocodile tears whenever they invariably come to tragic ends. On the other hand, once it has milked that side of the issue for all that it is worth, scurrilous old rags such as The Guardian and the Daily Mail waste little time in hopping on the bandwagon started decades ago by the utterly despicable and patently dishonest New York Times by wholeheartedly endorsing the clarion call of ornithologists and wildlife biologists that the entire species should be promptly exterminated.

Even cat food manufacturers, such as an English branch of Purina, do not have any qualms about urging  owners to endanger the lives of their cats by entering them in roaming contests. (See Cat Defender post of December 5, 2006 entitled "Milo, Who Visits the Vet by Her Lonesome, Is Named Old Blighty's 'Most Adventurous' Cat.")

People always get this wrong but when searching for the absolute worst rotters in any society's many woodpiles, it is a waste of time to look to the bottoms of the piles; on the contrary, that search should begin with the scumbags who straddle the tops of them. For although the politicians on Downing Street are able to cash in like bank robbers by pretending to like cats, their aberrant behavior toward them exposes them as nothing more than exploitative phonies.

Most prominently, while he was serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne not only callously allowed Freya to roam the congested streets of the City of Westminster, just as hop, skip, and jump removed from Primrose Hill, unescorted but he also allowed her to be run down and injured by a hit-and-run driver.

He finally woke up and took her off the street but it is not known what has become or her or even if she is still alive. (See Cat Defender posts of November 10, 2014 and November 13, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Freya, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Resident Feline, Cheats Death Once Again When She Survives Being Run Down and Injured by a Motorist but Her Good Luck Cannot Last for Much Longer" and "Gutless Georgie 'Porgie' Osborne Gets Rid of Freya but in Doing So Lies About the True Reason Behind His Second Cruel Abandonment of Her.")

Long-Suffering, hideously neglected, and slandered and libeled to the hilt by Fleet Street, Larry has survived as the resident feline at 10 Downing Street ever since 2011 but it has never been an easy row for him to have hoed. Yet, during that time he has been fortunate enough to have seen David Cameron, Theresa May, "Porous" Boris, and Liz Truss all come and go and he now lives with incumbent Rishi Sunak. Most recently in October of 2022, he was however irresponsibly allowed to tangle with a fox outside his home. (See the Daily Mail, October 11, 2022, "Larry the Cat Lands a Promotion! Downing Street's Chief Mouser Takes On a Fox Outside Prime Minister's Home -- and the Feisty Fifteen-Year-Old Tabby Successfully Chases Away the Intruder," plus Cat Defender posts of July 21, 2011 and August 1, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Larry Faces Many Challenges and Dangers in His New Role as 10 Downing Street's Resident Feline" and "Unmercifully Maligned and Treated Like Dirt for So Many Years, Larry Nevertheless Manages to Stick Around Long Enough in Order to See the Last of David Cameron and His Uncaring Family.")

Other recent feline residents of Downing Street have been subjected to disparagement, neglect, and banishment. (See Cat Defender posts of April 6, 2006, September 19, 2007, August 13, 2009, and August 8, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Humphrey, the Cat from 10 Downing Street Who Once 'Read' His Own Obituary, Passes Away at Age Eighteen," "After a Dreary Ten-Year Absence, Number 10 Downing Street Has a New Resident Feline and Her Name Is Sybil," "Sybil, 10 Downing Street's Former First Feline, Dies Unexpectedly from an Undisclosed Illness," and "Palmerston Is Recruited for a Prestigious Post in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service but Then Disgracefully Relegated to Makeshift Living Quarters Out in the Cold," plus the Daily Mail, August 7, 2020, "'Thanks for the Memories': Foreign Office's Chief Mouser Palmerston 'Retires' after Enjoying Working from Home During Lockdown.") 

Considering the god-awful examples set by the politicians, it is not the least bit surprising that most English cat owners behave as if they could care less if their supposedly beloved companions live or die. For example, in recent years such famous felines as Casper and PCAT have been run down and killed by motorists. (See Cat Defender posts of August 27, 2009, January 30, 2010, and November 21, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Casper Treats Himself to an Unescorted Tour Around Plymouth Each Morning Courtesy of the Number Three Bus," "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," and "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.") 

Most reprehensibly of all, Clare Smith and Iain Simpson of Quarrington, a suburb of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, the East Midlands, knowingly allowed their cat, Archie, to sleep in the middle of a busy road. Nothing further has been heard about him over the course of the past decade but he is surely long dead by now. (See Cat Defender post of March 29, 2017 entitled "Archie Is Knowingly Allowed to Sleep Smack-Dab in the Middle of a Busy Thoroughfare by His Derelict Owners Who Are Content with Merely Tracking His Movements by Satellite.")
 

Nevertheless, anyone who would take his cues on how to treat a cat from the politicians, the blowhards on Fleet Street, Silicon Valley, organized religion, and other elites is not only an unfit owner but a goddamned fool to boot. With each passing day it is becoming increasingly clear that the politicians are not the answer to anything. That in turn makes individuals, such as Motta, who expect them to compensate for their glaring inadequacies as owners the most dishonest players in these totally preventable tragedies.

Furthermore, if rescue groups in London cared anything about cats, which they most assuredly do not, they would ban Motta from adopting another moggy. Her killing of King Hercules is more than sufficient justification for such action.

In addition to motorists, foxes, and serial killers, owners who turn their cats loose to roam without supervision are additionally exposing them to predation by dogs, thieves, yobs armed with air guns, and poisoners. Three and one-half kilometers north of Primrose Hill in Gospel Oak, crows are attacking humans and, presumably, cats as well. (See the Camden New Journal, June 8, 2024, "Watch Out!! It's the Return of Gospel Oak's Dive-Bombing Crows.")

It thus seems preeminently fair to conclude that the limeys are living a lie. Actually, most of them do not even like cats; rather, what they like is neglecting, exploiting, and abusing them.

Motta most assuredly was well aware of the dangers that she was exposing King Hercules to by turning him loose to roam the roads and byways of Primrose Hill. Even more inexcusably, she has even run down cats herself.

Summer Has Finally Arrived in Primrose Hill but King Hercules Is Long Dead

"I hit a cat many years ago and I remember the bump. I remember thinking I had to make sure the cat was okay otherwise I couldn't live with myself," she freely confessed to the Camden New Journal on March 30th. "But this person (King Hercules' killer or killers) just ran off. It's awful. It has killed me."

Although a confession is rumored to be good for the soul, her mea culpa in no way exonerates her from the commission of her foul deed. For instance, was she in her cups, on drugs, speeding, texting, or gassing on her mobile phone? There is not any valid excuse for any motorist who is alert behind the wheel and following the rules of the road to be running down any animal.

 

King Hercules had lived with Motta for a decade so he was slightly older than that. She additionally claims to have acquired him from a rescue group and that is odd because Persians fetch between US$1,000 and US$5,000 apiece on the open market and it is rare for any of them to turn up at shelters.

He is said to have loved the great outdoors and in particular sunbathing and climbing trees. That too is odd in that an outdoor Persian is every bit as rare as finding one at a shelter.

It does occasionally occur, but owners usually do not turn them loose to play in the street. There is not any way of knowing what transpired but it would appear that Motta unwisely transformed King Hercules from an indoor to an outdoor cat and that decision spelled his doom.

"Everyone in the estate where I live knew him," she continued to the Camden New Journal. "He became like a mascot for the Oldfield Estate."

That admission proves conclusively that she is not right in the head. Cats are not to be shared with the vulgar, ailurophobic public. Au contraire, their safety, well-being, health, and happiness are to be guarded even more jealously than gold itself. Disbelievers need only to acquaint themselves with how that the ancient Egyptians felt about them.

Motta goes on to disclose that King Hercules "followed me like he was a dog" and that presumably implies outdoors as well as inside her flat. It has been said before but it nonetheless bears repeating: a cat is not a dog and individuals who are partial to the latter species should get a representative of it and stay away from cats.

"He was my family, my baby. He was called King Hercules," Motta declared to the Camden New Journal. "He was big and mighty, very suited to his name."

That is simply more of her self-serving sottise. No cat, big or small, has any conceivable means of comprehending the malevolence, malice aforethought, and pure, unadulterated evil that lurks in the hearts of men for it. Their owners, who most definitely are not ignorant of what man is capable of doing, therefore must be their eyes, ears, protectors, and defenders.

Summer has finally arrived in Primrose Hill. It is warm again outside, the grass is green, and the trees are in full foliage. There is only one thing missing from that idyllic tableau and that is King Hercules who, sadly, has seen his last summer.

"Now I cannot bear to stay home, because I live alone," Motta concluded to the Camden New Journal. "When I open the door he used to greet me. I can't stay home. I miss him terribly."

There cannot be any denying that losing a cat is hell but King Hercules has lost a good deal more than Motta. She should now and again think of that instead of all the time crying in her beer and feeling sorry for herself. 

No mention has been made as to what she did with King Hercules' remains but more than likely she left them on the examining table at the surgery for staffers to have either burned or tossed out in the trash. If there should be any truth in that assumption, it speaks volumes more than all of her declarations of undying love to the contrary.

There are not any words of consolation that can make the senseless loss of such a beautiful cat as King Hercules any easier to accept. With a different owner and a measure of good fortune, he easily could have lived for another ten years, if not indeed even longer.

His regal appearance alone made this often dreary old world a more beautiful place and, now that he is gone, it has lost some of its luster. Even more depressingly, he likely already has been all but forgotten in both Oldfield Estate and on Primrose Hill. Generally speaking, cats are seldom remembered for very long anywhere.

Photos: Camden New Journal (King Hercules) and Housing Care.org (Oldfield Estate).