Blaine, Minnesota, USA: It has been a long time since I wrote about cats being poisoned. I don't like doing it. It's unpleasant but it has happened many thousands of times over many years and not just in America. And the most often used poison to kill stray cats is antifreeze which causes chronic kidney damage and the cats die quite quickly. Remarkably the cats like the taste of it which makes it very effective as a cat killer. The manufacturers of antifreeze can fix this problem by adding a bittering agent but they don't bother which is a great shame.
In this instance the landlord of some flats decided he didn't want cats around his property. His name is Kevin Michael Halverson and he has allegedly been poisoning these cats with antifreeze. He's been charged with cruelty to animals and animal torture by the local police.
At his properties which he lets out, there is a tenant who was looking after the stray cats living around the property. He had been feeding the cats and taken some of them to a shelter and others were being spayed and neutered. In essence he was conducting his own personal TNR program to look after the cats and gradually diminish their numbers but the landlord intervened.
The tenant telephoned the police and notified them that he had noticed a decline in the cats' health and believed that there had been poisoned. The tenant had spoken to his landlord about the cats and the landlord had told him that he wasn't happy that he was feeding them.
Apparently the tenant told police that he had witnessed Halverson putting down antifreeze in a trailer that the cats would crawl into. He confronted Halverson about this who told him that he "did not want the cats on the property."
Comment: the report comes from Yahoo News. It's so typical. It's so unwelcome. It is the usual competition between polarised attitudes about how to deal with stray cats. On the one hand, this kind tenant, wanted to help them and reduce the numbers humanely. On the other hand, we have a landlord in this instance who wanted an instant fix and he didn't mind how it happened. He didn't mind if he caused pain and distress in a sentient being. He just looked up on the Internet about how to poison stray cats and immediately, I would argue, found the answer: antifreeze. Antifreeze has been used as a cat poison for very many years. It's ideal and it is about time the manufacturers did something about it. At a stroke they could save thousands of cats from this type of poisoning by altering the formulation of their product.
To add insult to injury, it is highly likely that this individual will receive a slap on the wrist for his animal cruelty exploits. Stray cats are seen as low value animals and by many people as pests or vermin. The police are not often sympathetic towards them. This landlord will probably receive a fine if the matter goes to trial and if he's convicted.
---------------
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are always welcome.