Cat Is Out of the Bag

During the Mar. 2 council meeting, a resident at the public microphone described seeing something unusual. The speaker, who said he lives near Montilla and Jeronimo, began by saying his neighborhood is experiencing an increase in stray cats and coyotes. He said he was troubled by his observation of a city employee who was driving an animal control vehicle. The worker was driving around on a January morning and stopping in city parks and neighborhoods to let cats out of cages. The resident said, on one occasion, the worker parked in a driveway, got out of the vehicle and shooed a cat out of a cage. The cat ran into the street, where it was nearly hit by a car.

After he followed the city employee who was distributing cats around the area, the resident said he called the animal shelter to report the license plate number and ask what was going on. He said the person who answered the phone didn’t want the number. She responded by saying the employee who was letting the animals out was “new” and had recently undergone two weeks of training. She said he had held a similar position in another city, but the implication of her remark wasn’t clear.

After two weeks of training, perhaps the employee very well understood that his job was to take animals that had been turned over to the city facility and let them out to fend for themselves. Could the trainee have been the victim of a two-week-long misunderstanding? Cats on the loose can be eaten by coyotes or run over by cars – a cruel ending for someone’s lost pet.

Following the resident’s comments, Mayor Frank Ury said, “We’ll get back to you on that.” Actually, Ury needs to get back to taxpayers who are funding the animal shelter and expecting to get what they paid for. What they’re getting instead is cruelty to animals at the hands of city employees.