Neighbor shoots GF’s cat (cat fine). “Iron Curtain of Mid-GA" work starts tomorrow.

The BBQ Pit
121

How is a fence going to keep out an average cat? Our backyard is fenced in with a standard fence and we have stray and roaming cats aplenty. I see them merrily jumping up and walking along the fence top all the time. Unless you construct a 10’ tall fence (not approved in most residential areas) I don’t think it is going to matter. In cases like the OP’s where the cat is old, it would work, but most cats would still be able to get through. I guess putting up a fence “to keep out the cats” would never even occur to me.

Our dog chases roaming cats away but she is going to catch one some day I fear. I would feel terrible if our dog ever hurt or killed one but I also don’t want her to get scratched by an unknown cat, or for my 2 year old son to get bit or scratched either.

I wouldn’t hurt them but they really are a nuisance. They get in our son’s sandbox (we do have a cover for it now) and pee in the flowers, and get our dog riled up. The 2 that come around most often obviously are not strays, they are too well fed and groomed for that, but I don’t know who they belong to.

I agree that the neighbor was out of line, and you know the situation best. If you feel your neighbor hurt your cat on purpose, knowing it was your cat, and old, then he probably did. I just know that there are lots of cats in our neighborhood and I don’t recognize them all, even our neighbor’s. It does sound like they are stepping up and taking responsibility though. But being a pet owner myself I also agree that cats should be kept indoors and that it is the owner’s ultimate responsibility to keep their own pet safe. Like others have said, it looks like a minor mistake here (letting the cat out once, not habitually) was met with a big penalty. I hope your cat recovers fully and that you can get along with your neighbors.

122

Like everyone else, I disregard laws that I think are stupid if I have a reason to do so. Or have you never broken the speed limit?

Do you think that legality = morality? Or that if something is illegal, it is automatically immoral? If so, you have a very skewed view off immoral

Of course not, because I regard it as immoral. For the person breaking in, I couldn’t care less whether or not he regards it as moral or not. He should be either shot (if I’m home) or prosecuted by the law.

123

That’s exactly what I said. What kind of moron puts the feeder that height unless they want to do a little shooting.

124

I was glad to see on page 2 that Tripler acknowledged that the only person who knows exactly what went on that morning was Jimbo.

Altho Tripler and NC believe Jimbo has seen their cat before, they cannot say with certainty that he recognized it as theirs. Maybe his brain was booze-addled, and maybe he just doesn’t pay much attention to and differentiate between cats.

Also, even assuming this was the first time Pipsqueak was in his yard, no one knows whether he has had problems with cats killing birds in the past.

Given the neighbor’s reaction, my guess is that he would not have shot the cat had he known it was yours. And even if he had known, I bet he certainly didn’t intend it to penetrate. Probably would have been better if he had kept some rocks up on his deck to toss at cats, instead of shooting BBs/pellets.

I don’t know what type of cats you guys have that you think are going to be slowed down by any fence that is not electrified. Also, my experience has been that outside cats do as bad or worse to each other in fights, compared to that ding Pipsqueak got. I’m not going to go back, but I don’t think you said it even needed a stitch! The cat received a minor injury, and will recover quickly. Sure it could have been worse, penetrating organs or the spine. But it wasn’t. It also could have been a lot less severe, glancing off. I’m not sure couldas really inluence how I perceive this.

Bottomline remains IMO, if you had kept your cat in your house, under your control, or even in your sight, it wouldn’t have gotten shot.

Are you going to continue to let the cat out unsupervised? If not, why? Because Jimbo is an asshole? Or because bad things can happen to unsupervised cats.

You never mentioned what the vet bill was. Tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars? It doesn’t strike me that an appropriate result might have been to split it. But that’s just my opinion.

Some interesting law out there regarding the dollar value of cherished pets. In most cases, it isn’t anywhere near what the owners believe. Although I believe you would be in a better position suing for vet bills, than recovering damages had he outright shot and killed Pipsqueak.

125

Well, they can’t say much fairer than that. I hope this brings this unfortunate episode between you and your neighbors to a close.

I’m still a little disturbed by her implication that he WOULD have shot any other cat than yours, but maybe that’s another battle for another day (and maybe not even for you to fight).

126

Not at all. Why would you come to that conclusion? You are the one who changed ‘wrong’ to ‘morally wrong.’

Do you not see a bit of a problem for society if the general rule were “Personal morality trumps the law”? I am not advocating burglary, but if one’s personal morality is the final arbiter, the burglar is no more in the wrong in breaking in them you are in shooting him. And it leads to situations where some folks think it is just fine and dandy to take a head shot at a neighbor’s pet when plenty of potentially non-lethal options are available.

127

I don’t think it necessarily trumps the law. If you get caught breaking an immoral law, I don’t think you should avoid punishment by claiming that the law is immoral and therefore you are entitled to break it.

However, most people’s morality will keep them from doing things that are illegal. I know it’s immoral to kill someone, regardless of what the law says. The same thing with most other crimes. I don’t refrain from committing crimes because the law says so – I refrain from doing so because my own code of morality says so. I think the vast majority of people are in the same boat. Those who don’t think this way, I would imagine, are already criminals.

Yes, in his mind, he’s not acting immorally. So what?

Sure, because it is just fine and dandy. The cat is on his property, either destroying it or getting ready to destroy it. While I think it may be a bit of an over-reaction, the property owner is well within his right to kill such a pest.

128

So most people’s morality is the standard now? What happens when your personal morality is in conflict with most people’s morality? Most people would think that shooting at a neighbor’s pet is wrong (i.e. immoral,) yet you cite your morality as sufficient reason to do so.

Isn’t law essentially derived from most people’s morality?

Gah. Where to start? Criminals are people who commit crimes. To commit a crime is to break the law. You have already asserted that law and morality are independent of one an other. Do you wish to retract that now?

If you defend your actions as being allowed under your personal morality, then you must accept the same defense from anyone else as being equally valid.

You said you read the thread. How about you show me anywhere in it that suggests the cat was preparing to destroy his property.

129

Re-reading, I see Tripler stated intent to supervise the cats in the future and his reasons. Sorry I missed that first time around.

Also, whoever described the bird feeder as irresponsibly placed “3 feet from the ground” - I don’t think I’d describe it that way. The metal support from which the guy’s 3 bird feeders hang appears to be the type that is sold specifically for that purpose, and appears quite similar to ones in my back and frontyards. At its highest point (the top of the curve) mine are taller than my 6’3". The portion of it from which the feeders hang are (I estimate) at least 5 feet high. It is possible that the bottom end of the tube feeder is as low as 3’ from the ground but i think it would be higher. I’ll eyeball mine this evening when I get home. But the other feeder and the suet are definitely considerably higher than 3’.

The top of the bird bath OTOH, is probably about 2.5-3’ above the ground.

Might not be a huge matter, but just suggests to me how folks with a point of view will exaggerate minor things to make their position seem more reasonable. Moreover, seed spills from the feeders, and several species of birds prefer to feed on the ground.

I’m no expert, but I believe he would be better served to have them sited near bushes instead of relatively in the open, to provide birds more cover. But other than that, I don’t see anything particularly incompetent with his methods. He has 2 different seed feeders and appears to have a suet cage. And he’s providing water in a clean appearing birdbath.

I don’t blame Jimbo at all for wanting to dissuade cats from frequenting his feeder. Tho considering the totality of the circumstances and with the benefit of hindsight, I’d say his use of a BB gun was not the best option.

130

Agreed. There is so much of that is this thread that I pretty much lost interest. Nothing kills a fine debate/discussion as much as people resorting to strawman attacks and other intellectually inferior debating tactics.

Examples:

I mention that, after witnessing a roaming cat actively killing birds at my feeder, that I would probably get a bb gun and plink a cat on the butt if I another one started killing my birds. Within minutes, the OP and others are screaming that I am a gun-toting “sicko” who enjoys sitting on my porch blowing away people’s pets who just happen to make the mistake of looking at my birdfeeder.

Another poster, wildly exaggerating, blurts out an inane and preposterous faulty analogy. He equates plinking a cat on the butt with a bb to someone “yanking a 20 gauge on my cardinals”.

And the most blatant example? The OP quotes his neighbor as saying he intentionally aimed for the cat’s butt. Desperate to try to bolster a weak position and win the argument, Contrapuntal takes inflammatory rhetoric to a new low by claiming that the man took a head shot at a neighbor’s pet’.

And on and on and on.

131

I think the problem here is that no one belives you can just sting or plink a cat with a bb gun. We’re in a thread about a cat that got shot with a bb gun and was very injured, with pictures. As far as I know, there’s no power gauge on bb guns to go back from serious injury to plink, so I’m not sure how you can specify that your bb gun would only startle the cat, when we have evidence of bb guns seriously injuring cats

132

The OP specified that it was a pump-action BB gun. There’s plenty of control over the power of that type of gun. The velocity of the projectile is directly proportional to the number of pumps. Most BB guns, in my experience, top out at 10 or 12. The neighbor claimed* he pumped his four times. When, as a stupid kid, my friends and I had BB gun fights, we all had pump action guns and the rule was “two pumps only.” I never had my skin broken, even from point-blank range.

  • Am I the first one in this thread to wonder if the neighbor was lying about the number of pumps? The devastation described in the OP seems awfully severe for four pumps at 30+ feet. I’m wondering if the old guy, being obviously mean-spirited, didn’t crank the shit out of it and then lie about it afterwards.
133

I guess this means my post just shows that “as far as I know” isn’t very far when it comes to bb guns :wink:

134

That thought occurs to me too. That is a surprising amount of damage for four pumps.

135

Poor Pipsqueak.

I don’t agree with shooting animals but I do understand why a bird watcher would want to scare away a cat. A bullhorn or strategically placed mouse traps might do the job more safely. Sounds like your neighbors are doing the right thing, so try to forgive them for their momentary lapse of reason.

136

Well, are you thinking bb gun, or pellet gun when you say that? Don’t pellet guns put out more force per pump, even with bbs loaded into them? Four pumps on a pellet gun might be the equivalent of “pumping the hell out of it” is what I’m saying, and the neighbor is too stupid to realize this. (And he ought to know, at that!) How about he gets shot in the left buttock with “only” four pumps with his own pellet gun loaded with bbs while wearing cotton slacks? Let him feel what he did to that cat! :mad:

137

On the flipside you are only paying attention to the neighbor’s claims of shooting the cat in the butt, which are proven highly suspect by the vet’s testimony. The cat was shot when it was facing the shooter, and the bullet wasn’t far from the spine, and could also easily have hit vital organs. That’s more of a shot intended to seriously harm/kill than “plinking the cat on the butt”. So…who is putting strawmen out? :dubious: Pot, kettle.

138

Yeah, that was me the OP, where I clearly stated the analogy of drawing weapons on animals simply tresspassing.
OneCentStamp, you raise a good point. He clearly said to me (and I would testify to) that he said “four pumps”. He’s a character, but I read him to be specific where it needs to be.

My problem continues to be the fact that in my neighbor’s mind, even in a lapse of judgement, that–and quote me on this: tresspassing = a call to arms.

He hasn’t come over to apologize to Nawth Chucka yet, but I think they are waiting on me to get back this weekend (Gawd, I lurve ‘damage control’). Anyway, I expect them to apologize and give me a check for reimbursement. Verse that, I’m going to give them an objective earful that ‘yeah, you shot my cat, but what about the next cat you shoot? You could have another bill! Use a Goddamned hose!’

With that, this thread has turned into a trainwreck. I’ve stated the facts–and rather simply. I’ll give it a day to resolve the current ongoing disagreements, but I’d rather stick to A) when to arm and fire; or B) how Pipsqueak is doing.

Tripler
NC pits the condition of the cat. I pit the condition of morals where wandering is a shootable defense.

139

I am thinking pellet gun shooting bbs. That’s the only type of gun that fits the description, to my knowledge.

140

I say the gun was probably already charged, and he gave it one or three pumps on a semi-full charge. Only way he could have hurt a cat like that from that distance.