Wal-Mart workers charged in cat shooting (Evansville, Indiana)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/12/30/cat.killed.ap/index.html

Two Wal-Mart employees who police say followed a manager's orders to shoot and kill a stray cat have been charged with federal animal cruelty.

The men, both assistant managers at the Supercenter, were arrested and released after a court appearance Wednesday.

Christopher Anderson, 29, and Jeffrey Hardin, 21, told police the store's manager ordered them to get rid of the animal that was living in a storage trailer behind their store.

All managers potentially involved in the incident have been suspended without pay pending an internal investigation and could be fired, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sharon Weber.

this was just posted over in the lounge as well...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2314571

I hope they throw the book at them.

And don't intend to ever shop there again. They suck!

it won't be Wallyworld that's charged, it'll be the employees. Wal- mart will stay isolated from this, donate $50 to the local Animal Shelter, then make a commercial showing how compassionate they are in the community. Dirty Bastards.

the local animal shelter? Our shelter (another county in Indiana) will come pick up the animals.

Sounds like a crazy redneck type who hates cats to me.

On edit: Maybe he's related to Bill Frist.

I've been told that cats are too hard to catch, so they don't bother chasing them anymore.

Also, I was under the impression that you could only be charged with cruelty if it was a "companion animal" or domesticated animal. So, I suppose you could torture the hell out of a raccoon, but couldn't kick a dog. Maybe that's just in Massachusetts, or maybe I'm just mistaken.

or ordinance (city) on the books in Bloomington (IN) to charge two college kids with anything more serious than a misdemeanor for setting to cats on fire. Laws have since been changed.

I read that somewhere.

My shelter won't come trap them either. But I've caught a dozen feral cats from an abandoned trailer and taken them to the shelter.

I doubt they survive, because they are just too wild for any sane person to take home for the kids. I just don't think I'd have the heart to shoot them.

put out some food and water for the animal....the cat was probably keeping down the varmint population. Reminds me of the Great Plague during the Middle Ages that destroyed over half the population of Europe. The religious leaders (see John Ashcroft) decided that cats were witches' familiars and would burn them alive. The rats, which carries the fleas which carried the Plague, got completely out of control and all these people died. I guess it would be too much to hope that all the Wallmart people get the Plague.

n/t

the cat was probably keeping down the varmint population.

I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance on this topic. Feral cats do not by choice keep down large dangerous "varmints" like brown rat or Norway rat that carried bubonic plague. This is a recent myth, based on 1930s science. Predators do not control the size of the population of prey; we now know that the size of the population of prey controls the size of the population of predators!

In any case, a feral cat's prey of choice is our fledgling birds. So we have a non-native domestic species that has no place in our environment killing native wildlife species that have no other place to go. Sorry, I vote on the side of the birds and our tiny rare rodents (which do not carry plague) here.

Feral cats are a huge problem that do need to be depopulated if we care about our native wildlife.
It is truly sad.

I don't agree with necessarily shooting the cat but feeding and encouraging it is a great way to attract even more ferals, including raccoons.

The cat should have been trapped and properly euthanized unless someone was willing to give it a home. A great many shelters are full.

The WalMart employees didn't handle this correctly but what they did was kinder in the end than putting out food and water and maybe getting someone exposed to distemper and having the little birds of the suburbs killed along the way.

Feral cats must be controlled whether a loud minority can face the realities of life or not. Arresting the employees for making a mistake on the job is manifestly unfair and suspending them seems to have been done simply as a publicity make-over. In the end, I hope these folks get their jobs back, because the ferals will be quietly controlled on private property whether the "cat collectors" like it or not.

Yes, this hits close to home since I know several cat collectors who are risking their health and their freedom by harboring literally dozens of feral cats, and I know their stories won't have happy endings. Why do we put cheap sentiment for feral cats above any other value, including our own freedom? (Several women in my parish have already been committed or jailed, at least temporarily, for collecting ferals.)

I wish we had a society based on sanity and science instead of hysteria and preference for the "fluffy." There is no shortage of cats. There is a shortage of many small bird, reptile, and rodent species. Feral cats, feral dogs, feral pigs...all need to be controlled for the greater good.

and other scientists disagree with your statements. Example: www.feralcat.com I have read with interest your beliefs and will certainly research this topic more fully.

Trapped, altered and placed in a responsibly managed colony. Hell, it's WalMart. They could easily afford a bag of cat food each month to the caretaker.

Also, it seems your obvious hatred of feral cats (or any non-native species that mucks with birds and lizards) is clouding the issue. These idiots killed an animal, and didn't likely do it as humanely as possible. By your take, it'd be just hunky dory for everyone to pick up their respective assault rifles and go cat hunting.

Lastly, if you're really into eradicating non-native species that malign native animals and habitat, gather all the ammo you can and climb the bell tower. If it walks upright, blast it.

undeveloped lots. About fifteen years ago, my husband decided that he wanted to have a bird feeder and attached it to the California lattice over our deck. We did get some birds eating out of it during the day, but at night is when the real fun began.

Rats, hundreds of rats would pour out of those empty lots, climb the lattice work and drop down on to the bird feeder. Quickly they gnawed a hole in the top and they would eat. They would fight over the bird feeder, quite noisily. And down below on the deck, the hundreds of little field mice would gather to eat what the rats dropped.

And these were not little rats, they were marsh rats. Nothing scared them. Not lights, not noise, not banging on the wood. And let's just say that there were so many of them that we didn't attempt to go out to try to scare them away.

Down came the bird feeder, but evidence of the rats continued, despite all efforts to get rid of them. (Some of the support 2 x 4s (doubled up) on our house were chewed all the way through.)

We got two cats, our neighbors got cats and steadily, the rat population went down and down and down. We still have plenty of squirrels, possums, and birds (including blue jays, mourning doves, cardinals, hawks, and mocking birds), but I haven't seen a rat or a mouse in years... and I like it that way.

on edit: snakes too! Lawks a mussy! Do we ever have snakes! I tripped over two (a red pine snake and a little brown snake of some kind) in less than a hour when I was preparing for the hurricanes last August. Every time I go digging in my garden, I manage to disturb a snake. I could do with a few less of those!

That domestic cats kill native species, only you expanded on the concept to include mammalian species as well as avian ones. You do realize that California has several native species of marsh rats, right? Those rats your cats killed, if they were indeed marsh rats, were native to the area. These rats would normally feed raptor, owl, and small mammalian predator populations like ferrets. Instead, a non-native species removed their food supply. Congratulations. Now that the rat population has been cut down, what do you think those cats are going to be hunting next? You think they'll simply leave the bird species alone now that the rats are gone, after indulging in their instincts to hunt?

I love it when people complain about wildlife problems in their backyards, when PEOPLE are the ones moving into the animal's habitats, not vice versa.

fifty years ago. My husband bought this house twenty-five years ago. As for the native rat population, it exploded in those years I referred to. We had no problem with rats in the area for ten years, then all rat hell broke loose. The darned "native" population was eating our house from under us.

Had the rats stuck to the many empty lots around, I wouldn't have had a problem with them.

As for my cats, they are very well fed, and while fast, they are not as fast as the animals. The only thing I've ever seen them catch are lizards that managed to get into the house and the occasional moth that gets caught in a lampshade divebombing the lampshade.

Half of my cats are indoor cats and the other half spend most of their time in the house. And they are in as much danger from the hawk families as they are a danger.

Almost all of my cats are rescue cats by the way. My family took them in as feral kittens. What of your "native" (or did you mean indigenous?) population of fauna had we not taken them in and fed them regularly?

It is not just stories about cats and the plague in the middle ages. Much more recently, on Crete, they destroyed all of their cats, only to face an infestation of rats and their attendant diseases. They had to import cats from the mainland to deal with the problem. Fluffy indeed!

First of all: Yes, yes, it's not nice that those guys whacked the kitty, but to make (literally) a federal crime out of it? How about some perspective, people?

Amazona said: "Feral cats are a huge problem that do need to be depopulated if we care about our native wildlife."

You're absolutely right And it's not just the feral cats. The domestic ones are just as bad, if not worse.

Why is it that if your dog goes into a neighbor's yard and digs up their garden or kills small animals, you get in big, fat trouble, but if a goddamn cat comes into you yard, digs your gardens up, and kills the songbirds you feed, you're expected to just put up with it?

Complain to the cat owner, and all you get for an answer is "well, it's just the way cats are, and we can't control them."

I wish I could shoot the damn things and get away with it, but I can't. There is no excuse for domestic cats being allowed to kill hundreds of millions (not an exaggeration) of songbirds in this country, and their owners don't even have to put a bell on them if they don't feel like it! (When you ask them to bell their cats, they act like you're suggesting that they cut kitty's teeth out or some horrible thing.)

And (I sure hope I'm not offending any DUers here, but I have to continue the rant), some "cat people" are utterly irrational. For example, three years ago there was a fire in the kitchen of the house across the street from us. When I heard the woman shrieking and saw the smoke, I grabbed a fire extinguisher from my house and ran inside. On my way in, the woman told me the fire was in the kitchen upstairs, so I headed up, but not before telling her that she needed to get the hell out.

(Yes, I know, I wasn't being real smart running into a burning house, but what the hell, standing around and watching is boring. And I've been in more dangerous places anyway.)

Anyway, I ran up into the kitchen, knocked the fire down with my extinguisher, and was outside on the back deck when the fire department got there. Turns out the woman had gone back into the house to look for one of their cats, and ended up having to go to the hospital because of smoke inhalation.

A few hours later, I had a little chat with her husband, advising him that he might want to have a little talk with his wife--the fire marshal had told me that the house had been about 30 seconds from flashover when I snuffed the fire, and she would definitely have been trapped inside if the flashover had happened. I said to him, "you really might want to tell her that if it's a matter of her or a cat, she ought to think of saving herself first.

Guess what he told me? He said, I swear to God, that "that particular cat was very special to them, and he wasn't sure if he wouldn't have risked his own life to save it."

I was flabbergasted. Here's a woman who would take the chance of leaving her husband a widower, and a husband who would take the chance of leaving his wife a widow, for a cat.

Sorry. I'll risk my life to save another person any day, but an animal? Uh-uh.


Redstone

There are plenty of pet owners who would risk their lives. I often think of the number of horse owners who go back into a burning barn in order to save horses. You may think it's stupid but obviously they do not.

Predators do not control the size of the population of prey; we now know that the size of the population of prey controls the size of the population of predators!


Predators actually "moderate" competition among prey species in that they can increase or reduce diversity in a prey population. Further, "keystone predators" (predators that have a disporportionate impact on a ecosystem) limit the densities of the most competitive species in a community which allow more species to exist.

Studies indicate that population cycles are caused by both predation and available food source for the prey species. This also ignores other factors such as disease, natural disasters, humans, etc.

Matter-of-factly stating prey species "controls" the population of the predator is crude and careless.

While I think your scientific interpretation is wrong, I do agree that non-native species, feral cats, etc...should be removed from the ecosystem (and i love cats)...but for the sake of our natural world all feral and/or domestic animals should be removed from the ecosystem.

bloody little rotter, let me sleep!

but they said it was the communists in China that had banned all the cats, thus creating a rodent problem. Funny how these urban legends get rewritten from one context to the other.

"The religious leaders (see John Ashcroft) decided that cats were witches' familiars and would burn them alive."

This is the first time I've heard Christians blamed for the Black Plague, but hey, this is DU. :eyes:

what happens when one doesn't know their scientific facts.

Got any proof? A link? Thanks in advance!

"A History of Britain" by Simon Schama... In the first installment of the 3 book set, the chapter on "King Death".

This book claims that the Christians depopulated Europe from cats, thus allowing rodents to breed freely and spread the Plague? There's nothing online about this?

You can read his papal bulletin, Vox in Rama, written in 1232. He said in it that cats were the devil's animals. He also started the Inquisition, had thousands of people tortured and killed, especially Jews. A favorite torture of his was to cut open a woman and sew a live cat into her. Many single women with cats and Jews were blamed for the Black Plague, and burned alive, the women and their cats thrown into the same fire. Several on-line encyclopedias (Wikipedia, World Book) connect the massacre of cats due to religious superstition and sadism directly leading to the over-population of rats...and so it goes.

poor stray.

was an incident where a teenaged employee of a Back Yard Burgers spit on a cop's sammich. His peers ratted him out, and the young man inherited a raft of legal difficulties (sometime in 2002, I think).

KKKII was Evansville. David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon, moved there in 1920. Evansville, as of 2003, is said to have the largest KKK membership in the country.

where NEVER to set foot...

keep up with things like that. By the way, on the East side of Interstate 65 across from Pulaski is Lynchburg, the home of Jack Daniels Whiskey.

was locked up by the local police...

EVV Airport Stripper Won't Face Jail Time

Jill Seiler, web producer

No jail time for the woman who took her clothes off at Evansville Regional Airport.

Eliane Aguillaume of Paris pleaded guilty Friday to resisting arrest and public indecency. This after authorities say she exposed her breasts during the passenger screening process.

Prosecutors dropped a third offense of disorderly conduct, which would have been a federal offense.

Aguillaume will not serve any jail time. She paid $2 in fines and is now headed back to Paris.

http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=989555&nav=3w6nC3Fo

never spent much time in Evansville... though they want to build the nafta highway to better connect the city to the rest of the state (and to michigan to speed the nafta sucking of jobs)... always been rather apathetic to the idea.

It'll pass within 20 miles of where I live when it reaches southern Indiana & Kentucky. The 4-lane state toll road I take to work every day will be converted to an interstate spur to I-69. I dread the day when Mexican trucks - which are not held to stringent safety requirements like US trucks - will be prowling our roadways.

Growing sentiments about how much higher the costs are and in the face of increasing federal and state deficits... more anti voices are taking hold in Indy. This has been debated for more than 12 years (or so it seems) - and looked a year or so ago to finally be unstoppable. But funny how the repub strategy of building deficits in DC might just be the final deathknell for the route they have pushed (and sold to the dems in the state) for so long.

NAFTA proponents are determined to carve out a free-trade corridor. I saw an article yesterday - here on DU - about plans in Texas to construct multi-lane superhighways to facilitate NAFTA traffic.

During some controversy before the final I-69 route was finalized, I overheard discussion over whether the federal government would run I-69 into Illinois & then south if Indiana failed to come up with a concrete plan (no pun intended).

I read Perry's announcement and viewed it simply akin to Bush's brief TO THE MOON talk - too expensive, and no real constituency.

Unless all businesses have stopped doing economic cost benefit projections I doubt there would be the huge influx of funds that Perry suggests. The tolls would be too high, and with the existence of other roads, in an era of declining wage power (eg wages are not climbing commiserate to the cost of living escalation)... I doubt there would be enough drivers with enough cash to pay excessively high tolls. Without high enough tolls to pay off in the investment.... doubt that many will pony up. Some talk seems just to be playing to the macho crowd without any real intent to act.

but I still expect NAFTA proponents to push for relaxation of rules for Mexican trucks on our highways - even if it means using already-overtaxed interstate highways to accommodate the increase in traffic. I'm not holding my breath waiting for completion of I-69 either.

it doesn't appear to cost us (most folks don't look at the big picture in terms of costs in safety nor in terms of degredation of infrastructure that would require more infusion of cash later to repair)... but benefits big business cronies tremendously - always a formula that the bushco has been successful at utilizing.

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A simple call to the local animal pound would have done the trick.

Poor cat.

I don't blame Walmart for this. This is just the ultimate in stupidity.

at my wallyworld about 5 years ago. A bird flew into the store and he took a pellet gun off the shelf, loaded and, and promptly tried to shoot the bird down. What a dumbass, I swear, by the next day he was gone, sent back to Bentonville for "retraining", maybe he's the manager of this store now?

ain't nothing personal. they're just doing what they've always done with feral cats around the barnyard.

my sister (in s. indiana) just lets them go about their business. they kill the mice, the coyotes kill them. hakuna matata.

Just cuz something is "traditional" doesn't make it right.

"there's always some killing to do around the farm" - tom waits

killing animals is what omnivores do. you can't force everyone to be a vegetarian.

yet.

?

I seriously doubt any of these posters EAT CATS!!

What is your point anyway?

I happen to be a vegetarian, yes, but I fail to see how this bears on this case at all.

Even if I did eat cows, cats or whatever I don't want the method of slaughter to be gun happy Walmart employees taking pot-shots at it!

I think it's silly that animals we find cute and cuddly are given more rights than animals we don't. Cat and dog are good eating for lots of people in the world.

Plus, which is worse - shooting a stray cat, or supporting the meat factories where serious animal cruelty happens? If I had the choice I'd rather be shot dead than enslaved for my whole life then slowly killed.

There are much better ways of controlling so-called "vermin" than a hail of bullets.

I agree that ALL animals deserve to be protected, not just "cute and cuddly" ones as you say. But just because some animals are more protected than others doesn't mean the ones that have protection should have that taken away from them, which is what I suspect your position is.

Yes, cat and dog are "good eating" for other parts of the world. It does not follow that therefore they are "fair game" for mistreatment here or anywhere else, which is what you seem to be insinuating.

Shooting cats and factory farming are both serious cases of animal cruelty, you won't get any argument on that from me. But just because factory farming is sadly legal, it doesn't mean that cruelty laws on the books should not be enforced.

a cat. Hell, compare how we kill a stray cat to how cats kill their prey. Nature is cruel - cats are cruel - and we are part of nature. If humans tortured their prey the way cats do we would lock them up for animal cruelty.

Ending the shooting of stray cats is not a priority in my opinion, and it's UTTERLY hypocritical to bitch about someone shooting a stray cat while stuffing your face with factory meat.

If you think shooting is quick and painless, why do you think that firing squads for execution have become obsolete?

Your defense of cruelty is that "we are part of nature"? I don't even know how to address that, except to say that I am very disturbed that a fellow DUer seems to think that cruelty is ok because it's "natural".

It's fine to not think that stopping animal cruelty is a priority. We all have different priorities, that's how the world keeps moving. But to discount it, and say it's fine is...um...just plain evil.

If you want to lessen animal cruelty, the factory farms is where you want to focus your time, not people shooting stray cats. But cows aren't cute and cuddly, they aren't pets for Americans, and people love their hamburgers. Again, it's hypocritical in the extreme to complain about stray cats being shot while stuffing your face with hamburgers, or even drinking milk or eating cheese.

100,000 dead human beings in Iraq and I'm supposed to care that a stray cat gets shot? I guess this makes me a freeper :eyes: but I think humans are more important than cats.

As a vegetarian I do oppose them and have been active in trying to abolish their horrid practices.

That does NOT mean that I condone OTHER acts of cruelty. ANY such act should be punished and not ignored because so-and-so is doing something worse somewhere else.

And where did I say cats were more important than humans?

No working class Walmart employee should EVER be punished for shooting a stray cat until the CEOs of the factory farms are arrested for animal cruelty. Arresting rural people for shooting pests - yes, pests - while allowing CEOs to get rich off cruelty to animals is gross hypocrisy.

and I hope the day when it happens is soon, although that is not likely.
But that does NOT excuse the cruelty of the Walmart employees.
Why is that so difficult for you to understand?

Apparently in YOUR world, if something or someone is an annoying "pest" it is OK to shoot it.

I have no problem with shooting animals. I also don't have a problem with eating them.

Glad to see we are making progress.

If you want to call it "pro-cruelty" feel free. What do you suggest doing to all the cruel cats that torture their prey?

You worry about saving feral cats, I'll worry about ending the war. I know where my priorities are.

And a true test of what kind of person you are is how you treat those you have power over.

Don't you see that how that cat was treated is reflected in how we as a nation have treated the people of Iraq?

maybe their bad karma is catching up with them?

It must suck to think that way.

All the middle class White females who love animals, become vegetarians, and then lecture working class people about eating animals are very, very easy to ignore. I don't know if that describes you or not.

When I meet an animal rights activist who is a primitivist, uses no oil, no leather, no electricity, no computers, no medicines, nothing that causes any pollution or damage to the earth, and lives in harmony with animals in nature, perhaps I'll listen.

Shooting stray cats is the least of our problems.

The point is CRUELTY not vegetarianism.

You are acting as an apologist for CRUELTY.

I have yet to hear you complain about the murder and torture that sweet little kittens do to their prey. I don't see threads on DU about the cruelty of shooting rats, mousetraps, etc.

If you think everyone who eats meat is cruel, fine. The vast majority of Democrats disagree with you. If you can't distinguish between killing animals and killing humans, again, you are in a tiny, tiny minority.

Perhaps you are right - perhaps not. It's not a priority for me.

I have not complained about the killing that cats do because it is part of their nature as cats to hunt prey. They are carnivores. It is part of their survival mechanism. To complain about it is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I don't think that everyone who eats meat is cruel. I have never said that. We both agreed that factory farming is cruel earlier in the thread, so what's the problem? It is possible to raise and slaughter animals for food without being cruel. I still would choose to not eat meat, but that is a personal choice for me, and not something I judge others for.

When did I say I couldn't distinguish between killing animals and killing humans? I didn't. I never said anything of the kind. My point is about CRUELTY. People who are cruel to animals are usually also cruel to people as well. This has been well-documented. So even if you don't care about animals, you should still be concerned about people being cruel to them, because you might be next.

"I have not complained about the killing that cats do because it is part of their nature as cats to hunt prey."

You are defending the cruelty of cats because it is "in their nature". It's also in the nature of human beings to hunt prey. What's the problem? How is shooting a cat any different than slaughtering a cow, for meat or leather?

I think it would be great if humans became vegan. Factory farming is not only cruel to animals, it's very very bad for the environment. It's very difficult for me to get upset because someone shot a cat - a murderous little beast that tortures their prey - I grew up around cats, I even owned one, I saw them torture other animals on a regular basis - sometimes for fun, not food.

Just because I don't pretend that cats are little people doesn't mean I'm cruel.

Otherwise, don't try to tell me they were "hunting prey".

It seems to me that it is you, not I, that is confusing animals and humans.

let's hope no one scopes you with a gun.

maybe that justification will serve them as well.

I think I want to have sex with it!!!

:hug:

You have faith in your anthropomorphic projections onto animals, I don't. Cats don't have the capacity for empathy like humans do - they are cruel, nasty, coldblooded killers - and they would kill you in a second if they could get away with it.

And how exactly you're equating the Tsunami to this thread is beyond me. If you're so disinterested or offended simply ignore it. Or are you just looking for flaming?

I was talking about the war against Iraq. Stick around and you'll hear me and anyone else who has unpopular opinions - even if they are far far left opinions - get called a freeper.

my mistake.....with the many MANY crappy things that are happening it's hard to keep them all straight. But again, noone on this thread called you a freeper. a. it's against the rules and b. it's bullshit name calling when you're using it instead of simply arguing the point at hand.
Jeff

Cruelty is part and parcel of intent. I don't think animals have any intentions of being "cruel"; although maybe they do and I'm simply missing something...

:crazy:

how relevant....:eyes:

I really need eighty of them, and im sure glad that cats died so i could have them.

discount stores if at all possible and sometimes have to pay more.

The way they treat this country, their own employees, I will not support their store.

They run private individuals out of business and discriminate against their female employees.

No support from me.

Low level management gets fired - Walmart CEO continues to rake in the big bucks, selling us crap make by slave labor. What a crock of shit, what utterly screwed up priorities.

I looked at that comment and went "huh?"

My store used to maintain a cat. She lived in Outside Garden, where she feasted on the mice that ate the birdseed. (She probably ate birds too.) One of our customers caught the cat and took her home, and now we lose a lot of birdseed to mice.

We're pretty sure birds can read: the birdseed bay is between the diatomaceous-earth bay and the hydrated-lime bay. The birds open the bags of birdseed and eat from them, but the diatomaceous earth and hydrated lime bags stay intact.

I think he might be interested...

We have not shopped at the beast in years. We don't even see what others see in it.