Elderly cat trappers avoid trial in eastern Oregon town

PRAIRIE CITY, Ore. -- An elderly couple accused of trapping their neighbor's cat can avoid a trial if they write a letter of apology and pay a $177 veterinary bill.

But Vera and Dorrance "Smokey" Wilborn don't seem ready to perform either task, the East Oregonian newspaper reported.

The Wilborns say cats have long been a nuisance in their Prairie City neighborhood. To deal with the problem, they set a trap in their carport last spring.

The cat's owner, Tina Willet, called Oregon State Police on May 28 to report that she had to rescue her cat named "Spook." She said Spook hadn't returned that night, so she went searching until she heard cries coming from the Wilborns' carport. Unable to open the trap, Willet took the cat and the device back home.

The Wilborns were charged with theft of a companion animal. The case was headed to trial this month before District Attorney Ryan Joslin of Grant County had the case dismissed by the justice of the peace.

Joslin told he Wilborns' court-appointed attorneys that he could refile the charges unless the Wilborns pay the vet bill, stop trapping cats and write a letter of apology to the Willets.

The Wilborns' court-appointed attorneys, however, said they had already rejected those demands in earlier court proceedings. "I'm ready for trial," said Markku Sario, who represents 87-year-old Vera.

Smokey Wilborn, 83, is also against the settlement: "That cat still comes up here."

Though she doesn't believe the Wilborns should do jail time, she thinks a fine would be appropriate. And she says animal cruelty would have been the proper charge -- not theft.

She noted that other cats have disappeared in recent years, and wants assurances the Wilborns will stop trapping.

No, I’m not lying. I was out of town, as I normally am on weekdays, and the bookstore owner called me in a panic, saying she’d just closed up the shop and gone out to her car as usual, and saw Gordie curled up under it as usual, and when he didn’t get up to greet her as usual, she reached to pick him up. He was clearly not conscious, but had no external sign of injury, and was still warm, and she thought there was a slim chance he was still alive, so I told her where my vet was (fortunately very nearby, and open 24 hours), and she raced him over there. He was dead on arrival, and I spoke with the vet, who said she could tell from the tar under his claws that he’d been hit. She said this is typically found in cats who realize a split second before they’re hit, that they’re not going make it by running, and instinctively try to brace themselves by digging their claws into whatever they’re standing on. She said that given the lack of any externally visible injury, he must have gotten a blunt hit on the side that knocked him out of the car’s path, stumbled over to what he regarded as a familiar, safe spot, and curled up (as he was found) and lost consciousness and subsequently died due to internal bleeding. He was not paralyzed, because he had walked at least 10 feet or so from the road, to a favorite napping spot, and curled up into a normal-looking position.

And I did not say I think “little kids should play in the street with traffic”. I noted that fact that children (including teenagers) do get hit by cars and killed, and that the fact that some of them meet this unfortunate end is not a reason to keep them prisoner by locking them indoors all the time. The cost would obviously far outweigh the statistically small benefit of avoiding being hit by a car.

As a conservative, I don’t believe in nanny state government controlling people’s lives by deciding what’s good for them, safe for them, dangerous for them, etc, and then outlawing anything that conflicts with government prescription for safety and health. Free people should be free to take their own risks, even though some of them will undoubtedly make bad choices or have bad accidents, and be seriously harmed or killed. We don’t need private gun ownership outlawed because a few people will accidentally hurt or kill themselves, or a few children will accidentally hurt or kill themselves or their friends, or a few criminals will commit a violent crime that they wouldn’t have managed to commmit with some other weapon. We don’t need junk food outlawed because a lot of people will overindulge in it, and shorten their lives by quite a few years. It’s really a good thing for a free society to value freedom over having a meddlesome government “protect” us.

Likewise, those of us who are in a position to control the lives of free-spirited creatures like cats, should not use our power to hold them captive, and force them to live a “safe” life that we may imagine to be “better” for them than a free life. Unlike dogs, they don’t launch unprovoked attacks on people, or join together in packs to become more violent than they would be individually, and they don’t poop in the middle of sidewalks. Their effect on other people is comparable to that of squirrels and wild birds (except that they don’t poop on car hoods and windshields like birds do). So the issue is what’s best for the cats, and freedom is best for most cats in suburban or rural settings.

Gordon died quite a few years ago, and is still remembered by people all over the neighborhood, including the postman. He had a great life, and would have been completely miserable if I’d try to keep him locked indoors. I tried it once for a day or so, when he was supposed to be taking some medication on a regular schedule for a few days. I closed the cat door, which has a built in locking door. He set about to shred the wallboard around the frame of the cat door, to remove the offending barrier and go back out. He’d very nearly finished the job when I discovered his little project, and opened the door. Keeping him indoors would have been imprisoning him, not protecting him.

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