Cat Tribunals Part 5 - Enforcers Return; Neighbors Gone Wilder

So now it's autumn of 2007. After the meeting where the neutral neighbor came along as witness and voice of reason, the woman next door just left us alone for probably a week or two with the exception of her public display of bare-handed tossing of cat poop. We always left her alone. So I accelerated what I'd been doing, which was to get cats fixed faster, and to try to get them adopted out faster. I took the whole thing seriously. I wanted to comply with getting the job done, and I wasn't challenging the law at that point.

About four or five weeks after their initial visit, Animal Control came back to inspect the inside of the house, the yard, the patio, the garage. They looked at the food and water, and took a couple of pictures, including a litter box, all of which were clean and full plus one photo of a poop left by a cat mere minutes before on the carpet in the area of the litter box. I asked them not to take that particular photo as it was not representative of the house where I picked up such things immediately upon discovering them. Apparently, documentation is documentation - they record what they find, whether good or bad.

I showed them how many cats had been fixed, and told them how many across the street had been fixed. They said it was good progress, and especially needed to continue now, because a new law was coming into effect that any dog or cat in Los Angeles over four months old would have to be spayed or neutered, except for purebreds with papers, which could get pregnant if the city got a hundred-dollar fee. Which definitely wasn't a factor with these cats.

The next time they came around to inspect, the visit was as cordial as the previous ones. They always filled out paperwork and wrote down the number of cats they assumed were on the premises, extrapolating from the number they could see. They did figure the population had been halved, at least. More of the cats had been fixed than remained to be fixed. Progress was documented, and there wasn't any kind of violation brought to my attention except for the number of cats. Knowing that the woman next door had reported me and that the friction was ongoing, one of these Animal Control officers warned me not to make any kind of official complaint against them for anything because it would be seen as vindictive harassment and end up putting me in a worse position. So, notwithstanding the fact that these people probably should be reported to Child Protective Services for some of the stuff that went on, I needed to be cool.

I was told that if anything major had been wrong with the health of the cats or the environment, they would have called in the truck right then and seized all the cats, and I had no reason to doubt it. I was told there was no problem with the animals' welfare, and made the natural assumption that whatever the officer was writing down reflected the same conclusion. She said something like, "Your animals are all healthy, and they have adequate clean food and water, so my only question is why you do this." I agreed with her that it was a lot of work, and I certainly don't get the food for free. She said, "Well, if you're doing this much work for this many animals, you must not have much of a life."

Then a few months ago, Animal Control came back again, with a new and devolved attitude. Laws had been signed, budgets had been cut, and they were like, "No More Mr. Nice Guy." Despite the ongoing cooperation so far, and the fact that they had talked in terms of months for the population reduction effort, they wrote me a ticket that said that I would have to appear in court in front of a judge.

Meanwhile, things were getting wild and wooly again next door. Serious missiles started coming over the wall. I heard something metallic land in the driveway, and found a piece of pipe there. No, I didn't see anyone throw it, but I knew where it came from. Later the same day, accompanied by wild screaming, a wad of catshit came flying into the back yard and hit my friend in her face. That was the end of my patience. But to get another perspective on it, I talked to another neighbor who agreed that calling the police was appropriate.

The police came over, and I started explaining the situation and the thrown pipe and so on, and the cop said, "Okay, I've heard enough to get the context of what's going on, I'm going to go see what they say." He goes over there, and the woman's there, and he's telling her what I allege, and she starts talking about whatever, and all of a sudden her young kid, the one that's very devilish, picks up a piece of pipe and throws it at the cop and it goes over his head. And the cop changes his posture from a doubting Thomas who was squinting his eyes at me, not believing everything I said, to a guy who was wagging his finger at the woman and assuring her that if one more missile went over the wall, he'd arrest her and put her kids in protective custody.

So, a month later Animal Control shows up again and gave me another ticket for the same thing as the first ticket which I hadn't even appeared on yet.. When I did go to the courthouse for both Promises to Appear they scheduled a date of August 29th to go before a judge and, I don't know, just have an arraignment or what. In the meantime, I got a notice in the mail, requesting that I attend an "informal hearing" at the City Attorney's office which appeared to be voluntary.

Again, there was more turmoil next door. They said that someone broke into their house, and within days, with that as the justification, the guy erected a tall pole with a 360-degree camera on top of it, in addition to eight other cameras on his property. This didn't go down well with the neighbors, many of whom are women. Across the street, blinds are suddenly all closed in the daytime. Not content with destroying what was nearly paradise for the cats outside, now they want to rip the neighborhood apart. It's a bigger situation than just not liking cats, and this guy is just going to run amok until the neighborhood puts him in check.

Part 6 - A Date with a City Attorney

I actually saw it as a good sign, this polite invitation to meet with a City Attorney. It sounded like, here was a person who would, hopefully, have an open mind and try to help resolve the problem to the satisfaction of all the parties.

So it's the 29th of April, and I show up for this hearing. I go into the hearing officer's office and he's got two of the Animal Control people there. Unfortunately, the guy had more testosterone in his veins than blood cells. He has a three-quarter-inch thick file of paper, and he's shaking his head and wagging his finger and telling me that he sees these terrible, terrible things in that file. He starts going down the list: there are more than three animals, and they're not healthy, and the conditions are not healthy for human beings, and he goes on and on with all these allegations. While he's ranting, I'm thinking he's got the wrong file. I mean, it seems like he's talking about one of those cases you see on TV, where there's 57 animals living in a small apartment, plus twenty dead ones, all paddling around in feces stacked three feet deep. He finally says, "What do you have to say about it?"

"Will you show me a photograph, or a paragraph in your report there, that alleges the animals are unhealthy, for example, or a danger to human beings?"

He slams the file closed and says, "This is not a joke, this is one of the worst cases I've ever seen." And he won't show me a specific word that anyone has alleged, and he doesn't show me any photograph. His position, and Animal Control's position, is that all the animals have become mine, based on feeding or watering them, or getting them fixed. There's a glaring circularity to the reasoning. First, they tell me I must have these animals spayed or neutered. So, okay, I do that. I take the recommended, humane course of trap-neuter-return. Now, their story is different, and they're saying since I got these cats fixed and have fed them and given them water, that is, by definition, what makes them mine. I put the money and the time into doing this public service of neutering what they consider an excessive number of cats in the neighborhood, and it not only makes the animals mine, but it makes me a criminal.

And, when Animal Control shows up next time, if four feral cats happen to walk into my yard that day, they're going to say I have four cats. They could say the same about the neighbors next door who reported me. The cats go in their yard too. Even though they put up all their steel mesh, wire and stuff, the cats can get in. This guy doesn't want to hear anything about the people next door. He's telling me, "Don't worry about them, worry about you, and we'll worry about the excess cats."

Part of the problem with this dude is, anything I say, he interrupts about three out of four sentences, and I'm very frustrated by that. His technique is basically just to repeat,
"How many animals have you got there today?"

"The Animal Control people told me they were reporting that everything was healthy and clean."

"How many animals have you got?"

"The Animal Control people have been giving me their assurance that we'll work this out with time, and as long as they see progress, they're happy."

"How many animals have you got?"

So, thanks to all the interrupting and repetition, I won't even try to reproduce the conversation, what there was of it. My basic message was, concerning the inside cats, if the law says not more than three, fine, there will not be more than three. That's been my understanding all along, and that's what the officers said they would work with me on.

Then there are the outdoor cats, the wild, feral ones, that just see this as part of their territory and ignore us, of which many of them have been fixed and had shots and so on. Here's where the logic these people operate from, veers off into nonsense. There's a thing called unintended consequences, and it affects almost every effort to do the right thing. They thought it was a great idea to build a road all the way across Africa, and when it was finished, it turned out to be a huge vector for the wildfire spread of AIDS. They thought it was a good idea to feed corn to cars, and now there's a world food shortage.

What kind of consequences will accrue from a mass deportation of cats from the immediate area of this neighborhood? Already, with a lot of the local males neutered, the males from other areas see it as an invitation, they're like, "Let Jimmy take over." As the old saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. Remove every stray or feral cat from an area, and it leaves space for the arrival of replacement cats, who haven't had shots or been spayed. Am I the only one to see the insanity here? Round up current cats and leave a territorial vacuum, so different cats will then filter in to fill the niche. They're going to do that, even if I never set another water dish or another handful of food outside, because that's what they do. The bottom line on that is, when you get rid of the semi-civilized cats, a bunch of strange, barbarous feral cats will take their place.

Not to mention the amount of time and money some of the people on the street have devoted to carrying out this trap-neuter-return program. What an incredible waste of resources, and that's not even taking into consideration the trauma to the animals of being taken away and operated on. Necessary as it may be, it still freaks them out, just like it would freak you out if somebody grabbed you off the street and did surgery on your gonads. Now, all these animals that have gone through that terrifying experience and been fixed, Animal Control wants to round them up and take them away to be, in all likelihood, euthanized. The ones they'll be able to catch are the gentler ones. A lot of the others can't be caught. So, after the roundup, what's left is the hard-core, antisocial members of the old population, while another batch of un-fixed cats moves into the territory. If somehow they did manage to accomplish the impossible and clear every feral cat out of the area, and keep new ones from drifting in to fill the ecological niche, mice and rats will resurge. But in all probability, nature being what it is, the neighborhood is not going to be an island without cats.

That the government doesn't get it, well, that's only to be expected. For the government to have its head stashed in some unavailable location, there's nothing unusual about that. The real pity is that the people next door don't get it. They have no clue about the dynamic of the situation, and if someone from the Feral Cat Caretakers' Coalition came around to explain it, they'd probably throw a length of pipe at them. I'm trying to take the pressure off by doing the trap-neuter-return thing, so the population won't increase any more. I'm giving the cats a place to hang out, that keeps them out of the next-door yard, and instead of saying "thank you," they're going berserk

Anyway, the City Attorney ended up giving me two weeks to have the population down to three cats, period, inside and outside. Outside is a very big place. When I tell him they come in over the wall, he says, "Don't start giving me nonsense about walls." He says, "Do you have more than three on the premises?"

"Yeah, definitely."

He essentially says, "Well, I think we should just come out and round up the excess."

I said that it would take at least two or three weeks to move just the inside cats to a safe place in another county which I have in mind. He said I get two weeks until May 13th and that's it. They will come and inspect on the afternoon of that date certain. The City Attorney's hearing officer issued an oral order at an "informal", voluntary hearing that was to be considered as legally binding as if he was a Judge. Whoa…. this was so far from what I had anticipated to be the procedures and outcome of a non-binding informal hearing.

I didn't like the tone of voice this so-called gentleman used in talking about what they'll do if they find more than three cats. I think he really wants to assert his authority. It's an ugly picture. So I have a monumental task, both physically and logistically, to try to move all these cats, inside and outside within two weeks, and do all the other things I have to do in life. I've got some legal challenges ahead of me with this whole thing. The main thing I have to do is try to get the cats to somewhere that they're safe and welcome.

Cat Tribunals Part 7 -Politics and Philosophy of the Animal Gestapo

Animal Control or Los Angeles Animal Services building used to be called the Animal Shelter, and their new name has a different ring to it, and the organization has a different attitude. It's not just about protecting animals and people any more, it's about enforcing laws. The mayor of the city and the chief of Animal Control pledged as part of their platform that they will run a no-kill animal shelter. They will not kill animals just because they didn't get adopted in ten or fifteen days. They will only kill animals that are either sick, and don't have a chance to survive or are dangerous to people around them or something, but they won't just kill them just because they have too many animals. They pledged, under pressure, to run a no-kill shelter. The reality was, when the Daily News ran the article by Dana Bartholomew based on graphs posted on Ed Musika's blog, it was clear that they were killing a lot of animals.

They had about a two-hundred million dollar bond that they used to build new shelters to replace the old ones. They did build magnificent offices for the bureaucrats and impressive lobbies for the people who visit, but the animals didn't even all have cover from the sun or rain. The State Penal Code and County Code say, "No animal may be deprived of proper food, water or shelter." But it doesn't apply to Animal Control and their shelters. It's like all the laws Washington makes for the states, but they don't apply in the District of Columbia, like minimum wage and worker safety laws. Further, there are a lot of aspects here that remind me of the way the federal government conducts itself, for instance rounding up those FLDS people like a bunch of pesky cats, and the way America comports itself in the world, what we'll tolerate and won't tolerate. No matter what it is, we want to do it our way. And you can barely draw a breath any more without violating some statute. All over the "civilized" world, good citizens are increasingly put into a position of being wrong no matter what they do.

At the shelter, the more animals they take in beyond what they can adopt out, or feed, it skews the numbers even worse against them. If they come and seize a whole bunch of animals from someone like us, and they don't have enough cages to put them in, and can't adopt them out fast enough and they run out of money for food or whatever, and they decide the animals have to be killed, then that will skew their statistics and it will look like they're not doing their jobs properly. I think there was a political reason why at first they didn't want to just raid our place and grab all the animals, because they didn't want to have to euthanize them and ruin their statistics, if it wasn't necessary, and in our case it wasn't, since the animals were all healthy. Animal Control didn't see any exigent circumstances that involved the animals' lives and well-being. What they saw was just a neighborhood where you had a neighbor that didn't want all these cats around. These cats have committed no crime, I don't know why they need to be moved off of this land. I think they should have the right to walk around and do what they want, where they want, unless they're killing somebody's children or something. If one house doesn't like it, put up noisemakers, get a dog, whatever.

Another thing that happened was, the government ran out of money and stopped providing the coupons to help with the expense of spaying and neutering. If there ever was a decision more counterproductive to the stated mission of a program, I haven't heard of it. There's money for fancy offices and all kinds of other stuff, but not enough money for the single most effective humane way of reducing the feral cat population.

I think that the wild animals themselves have some sort of rights, as wild animals. Hawks are wild animals, but I can't say "I don't like hawks flying around up there in the sky, because occasionally hawk shit falls out of the sky." They're not going to let me do anything to get rid of the hawk. They'd say, "He's a wild animal, he can live here." If I take what they call a wild animal, like a crow, and keep it in the house, whether I have it a day or a year, they would say, "You're not allowed to have that wild animal. You have to release it." Or they would seize it and release it, if it could be released. That seems to imply that a wild animal can't become yours.

And yet, for this purpose, with the outside cats, because they want to try and control the number of something, they're just defining them as mine, arbitrarily, because that's how they want to do it. The Animal Control officers say, if you feed it, it's yours. If you get it spayed or neutered, it's yours. What exactly is their payoff for defining the outdoor cats as domestic? Is there a difference in their mandate about which animals they can or can't put down? Are they not allowed to kill wild animals, but are allowed to kill former domestic animals that are not adopted within a certain time frame?

There's some kind of basic paradox here, that Animal Control has so much concern for the animals' health, that if you have one and don't give it proper care, they can take it away and gas it. Which is considerably worse for the animals' health than almost any amount of neglect.

Another thing is, something is either a vegetable or a mineral. It's not a vegetable by day and a mineral by night or something like that, it's one or the other. Forgetting what their definition of a feral cat or a domestic cat is, the point is, every cat should be considered either a feral cat or a domestic cat, and the rules for feral cats should apply to feral cats and for domestic cats, to domestic cats.

So on the one hand, there apparently is some kind of rigid definition. The animals are categorized, and one category must be fed, watered, kept healthy, sheltered properly, neutered, and so on. And I'm subject to penalties if I neglect to do any of those things. Then there's this other class of animals that must not be fed, watered, healed, sheltered, etc. And I'm subject to penalties if I do any of those things. Although, apparently, I'm still responsible for getting them neutered, if that makes any sense.

If cats are domestic, nobody should be able to tell me not to feed and water them. In fact, it should be incumbent on me. If they say, "You fed and watered them, therefore they are your domestic cats," then I should be able to give them food and water. Not only that, I should be required to give them food and water, because when you have an animal, you have to take care of it by law. If they're domestic cats, leave me alone about feeding them and stuff.

If the outside cats are feral cats, I shouldn't be responsible for clearing out the neighborhood. That should be Game and Wildlife. Basically, whatever the rights are of feral cats to wander, it shouldn't be that I get singled out to have to do certain things, to redistribute those feral cats. I should have basically no responsibility for them. If the officers want to tell me I can't feed or water feral cats because of some law, they can tell me that, but as far as me being responsible to remove them, that's ridiculous.

Cat Tribunals Part 8 - Smile, You're on Candid Camera

I decided to get a high-definition videographer to come over here so we could attempt to document what was happening. We started with me sitting down and telling the whole story of how this whole nightmare began. It was shot under the tree in my back yard by the pool.

We took some establishing shots from the other side of the street, of all the houses, like where the old guy used to live whose moving out got the whole cat thing started; the house where the troublemakers are; my house; the house next to it. In addition to the guy with the video camera, I had a digital still camera that I used to take still images. We weren't out there more than a couple of minutes when the couple next door comes storming out, fingerwagging and crowding my space. "What are you doing taking our picture?"

I said, "The same thing you're doing, taking everybody else's picture."

"Our camera is legal."

"So is mine, and I'm standing in a place where I can legally take your picture, and if you don't like it go back in your compound and don't come out."

So she starts screaming about cats. They claim they were robbed, so that's why they had to put all their Big Brother cameras up, though even they never alleged the cats did it. They put cameras out because they think that's going to increase their safety. Now I'm across the street with a camera for a few minutes and they're boiling over. He's telling me, "I'm gonna call the police."

I said, "Please do, their number is 911?" He makes threatening moves toward the camera man, who really doesn't want to get in a fight. I said, "He's working for me, and I suggest you think very carefully about everything you do and everything you say at this time, because I'm filming you."

"I'm gonna call the police."

"Go do it, stop wasting time. You'll see what will happen."

He keeps asking the camera man, "What are you going to do with these pictures?"

I said, "He's going to give them to me. I'm paying him to do this."

"What are you going to do with them?"

"YouTube for starters, and probably a lot of other things that you'll be very unhappy about. They're all going to be legal just like your camera. Do you know what your problem is? You're rude. You put this camera up and it's been pointing at everybody for two weeks, and whether it's legal or not, it's rude. It's just rude pointing a camera at all kinds of people across the street that don't want to have cameras pointed at them. You seem not to like it. But you'd better get used to it because there's going to be a lot more of it."

"I'm going to call the police."

I said, "Stop talking about it and go call 911. And while the camera is rolling, you're on notice, don't ever come on my property again. You're trespassing if you do. I don't want you, your wife, or any of your four children on the property ever again. You've been filmed with me presenting that to you. Get the point?"

And he says, "I don't go on your property."

I said "Really? When you got robbed, you came over there. I don't want you coming over for any reason any more. Don't trespass."

Then he says, "Your gate closes onto that thing on our wall that's attached to our property."

I said, "So what?"

He says, "I want it removed."

"All right, you know what? You can remove it then, because if you think back about who installed it, you installed the whole fence, so if there's any aspect of it that's illegal, I'll come after you to fix it. Just give me a list of all the things that are improper or illegal, and I'll come back to you to get them done legally. You're the guy that got paid to put them on."

He says, "I want all those vines removed."

"Well, here's how it is. The ones that are on this side of the property line, you're going to save. But anything that's on the other side, you've got a gardener, have him cut it down, I don't care. If you cut a little bit into our side, I'm not going to say anything, do you know why? Because then we'll see into your yard better, and we'll be able to monitor your activities better, so you want less privacy? Cut the vines, be my guest, I give you my permission, cut all you want."

He calls the police, and about thirty minutes later the cops roll up and go in his house. They're in there for like forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, and they come out and they leave. They don't even come and talk to me. I think it's possible the cops said, "Where was this man when he was taking your picture? Oh, he was on the sidewalk across the street? I see. And you have that camera up there with a 360 degrees view capacity to see everyone, including the police when they're coming? I see. Did you have anything else you wanted to tell us today? And by the way, we checked your address and noticed that your son recently threw a piece of pipe at a police officer. Has he been doing that any more lately?"

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