An example of why people don't stop their car when they hit a cat on the road

Recently I wrote an article about the reasons why people don't stop their car when they hit a cat on the road. And nearly everybody doesn't stop in my opinion. There's no statistics on this so I can't make that statement with absolute confidence but common sense and my gut feel tell me that I am correct.

The reason is that people just don't value cats enough to warrant stopping and disrupting their day. And it will be a disruption because you've got to check the cat which is going to be very upsetting indeed to a lot of people if there are severe injuries. 

You don't know what you're going to see and what you are going to need to do which will probably mean finding out where a veterinarian is and taking the cat to the vet for a check up and possibly to identify the owner through a microchip.

All this takes time and in the story from the Isle of Man, a woman was going to work in her car when she hit a cat at 8:30 in the morning. She didn't stop because she was going to work she said although she added that she was very upset.

Fortunately a good Samaritan saw the accident or saw the cat in the middle-of-the-road and checked the cat which was brave of him or her and found that the cat was concussed but otherwise healthy (damn lucky). They took the cat to a vet the following day.

The cat was placed at an SPCA and then on adoption page on Facebook where the owner spotted their cat and, greatly relieved, was able to be reunited. The cat was semi-feral and therefore this was a very loose relationship between owner and cat. But the ending was happy and this little article is about the reason why we don't normally stop.

There's been a lot of discussion in the UK about making it a legal obligation to stop when you hit a cat on the road which is the case for dogs (click for the UK reasons for the difference). Yes, there's a difference between dogs and cats in the UK when you hit them with a car. And this law is out of date and is based upon the fact that the dog is a working animal much like a goat or horse. This is not entirely true these days because dogs are companions just like cats.

The government doesn't want to introduce a law which would require primary legislation and therefore debates because it would take too long and it would clog up the legislature. They've got more important things to do (the cat devalued again). 

And they argue that there are enough protections currently in place for people to find out who owns the cat that they hit. I'm afraid it doesn't work.

The declared reason online why the government won't introduce laws to make it obligatory is because the proposed law would be to difficult to enforce. I get that but then if it would be difficult to enforce the same applies to dogs so that argument doesn't wash for me.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.