Cat Rant

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Poor Kitty

Hi everyone. 
I’m a cat guy. You know from past posts that Doug the Dog lived here for nine years. I grew very attached to him. So it’s not that I dislike dogs, it’s just that, given the choice, I’d rather have a cat or two as pets. 
There are two cats left over from the colony that my ex and I took care of. 
They refuse to come inside. For 16 years, they’ve been living in houses made from camp coolers and eating on the front porch. 
For a few days before I left on that recent trip to BC, I hadn’t seen one of them. It was a small tuxedo female named Rooney. She’d been AWOL before but usually returned after a week. 
I have a wonderful cat lady, Cathy, who’s been feeding my cats while I’m away for the whole 16 years. She wasn’t able to spot Rooney while I was in BC. 
So I did something I should have done before I left. I went to the animal control Mississauga website, which had a page for “found” (stolen) animals. There was a picture of my cat, and according to the cat police, she’d been in their prison for 11 days. 
On Friday, I went over there to claim her. I couldn’t prove it was my cat, so I got in touch with Patti, who was my cat-rescue partner, and obtained the vet documents. 
The next day, Cathy and I went to the pound with these documents, and though it proved that the cat was mine, before they handed her over, they gave us a very condescending lecture.
“I’m not letting you have this cat if you’re just going to put her outside.” 
“We’re not. “
“Just remember, you can’t put her outside.”
“We won’t”
A few minutes later:
“Don’t put her outside.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“You can’t have this cat if she’s going outside.”
“We know”
Then, after a consultation with another “official,” she again said:
“We’ve decided that you can’t have the cat if she’s going outside.”
It was all very irritating. 
“That will be 705 dollars.”
“Big deal”, perhaps some of my American readers are thinking. “It’s Canadian money”. 
Well, it’s still more than 500 US dollars.
It was as if they had kidnapped my pet and were holding her for ransom. 
I don’t get why my tax dollars are spent on the useless task of rounding up cats.
Cats don’t cause problems. They don’t attack kids, and they don’t carry diseases. They keep the rodent population down, and they stay out of the way of people. They kill birds, I’ll admit, but they’ve been around long enough for the ecosystem to adapt. Has anyone noticed any lack of those flying shit storms that defecate everywhere? Cats bury their waste products.
Why not focus (and spend my tax money) on the real urban and suburban dangers like Coyotes and Raccoons? 

While We’re At It

If there is some concern over the wellfare of cats, how about we start by prohibiting Veterinarians from performing the barbaric practice of de-clawing?

Even If You Don’t Agree

It’s my birthday today. I get to have at least one rant.