Posted on 12/22/2005 10:49:03 AM PST by aculeus
A man who was caught on CCTV repeatedly driving his car over a cat has been spared jail.
Barry Haggerty, a 58-year-old chartered surveyor from Buckinghamshire, claimed he ran over the cat 11 times because he wanted to put it out of its misery.
Haggerty was heading for work when he ran over Mixey the cat on April 12. He returned to the scene and drove forwards and backwards over the animals as it thrashed around in pain, eventually killing it.
He pleaded guilty to a charge of animal cruelty and was sentenced by Milton Keynes Magistrates to a period of imprisonment of six weeks, suspended for 52 weeks. He was also ordered to do 60 hours' community service and to pay the prosecution costs of £4,182.
Dean Price, the defence solicitor, said Haggerty was "an animal lover" who was trying to put the cat out of its misery and had reacted with "horror and remorse" when he was shown CCTV footage of what he had done.
He told police he thought he had killed the cat outright when he first hit it but he returned and ran it over a further 10 times just to be sure.
The four-minute CCTV footage showed Haggerty's silver Renault Clio drive forwards and backwards over the one-year-old tortoiseshell female 10 times over a two-and-a-half-minute period.
The cat could clearly be seen thrashing its legs and tail in agony. Haggerty is seen to get out of his car at one stage to assess the state of the cat.
"I feel really awful," Haggerty said. "My only thoughts were how can I stop this animal suffering. The only thing I had was the car. I thought I was acting in the best interests of the cat."
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If that is how you'd define the mechanism whereby an animal senses and can respond to the stimulation, how is it different in a human?
"...and had reacted with "horror and remorse" when he was shown CCTV footage of what he had done."
Like Tookie Williams?"
The ONLY thing I said was "Like Tookie Williams"
Immediately you assumed that I was equating killing a human being with killing a cat.
I was making a sarcastic remark about this guy's apparent "horror and remorse" when he saw a picture of himself running over a cat 11 TIMES, with Tookie Williams for his feigned "conversion".
That's all.
Imediately you assumed I was equating killing a cat with killing a human being.
I don't even wish to address that analogy as it is irrelevant to the point I was making.
Either YOU have a serious problem in that YOU view any sympathic expression about somebody killing an animal with a PETA-like evaluation of human life, OR you totally misinterpreted what I was saying.
The latter is very possible as a written format for expressing ideas is inferior to a face to face conversation.
If you were misled by my original remark, I apologize. And I think you owe me an apology for making insinuations about me which were totally inappropriate.
No they don't.
While domesticated cats certainly retain much of the predatory nature of their wild "cousins", enough of the killer instinct has been bred out that a quick and certain kill is not assured. What YOU describe as "playing" is actually the cat fluctuating between two instinctive impulses: to kill OR to ignore. If the prey remains motionless, the cat will likely ignore it. But if the prey moves, the cat will reflexively attack (albeit with much less competence than wild felines).
That's why cats sometimes chase their own tails or like to "play" with string or yarn. They're instinctively programmed to attack something that shape that is moving: snakes!
That's probably about how a large predator assesses the responses of a human as it rips out the first big bite. "I bite food, it makes a loud noise, so what?" Most humans, excepting you apparently, are better able to comprehend what another sentient creature is feeling. Animals, like very young humans, don't appear to be able to "put themselves in another's shoes", and consider what it must feel like to be that other creature in the given circumstances. But, also like very young humans, this does not mean they aren't feeling anything themselves. A 2 year old human which hits or bites its newborn sibling out of instinctive jealousy, doesn't grasp that it is causing the little creature pain, but torture the same 2 year old and s/he he will definitely experience agony.
Absolutely.
Carolyn
The punishment for running over Tabby or Fido is greater than drowning a baby in a toilet.
Some people never develope empathy....I think it's from inbreeding.
There is no punishment for accidentally running over Tabby or Fido, nor for humanely euthanizing Tabby or Fido (either at the vet, or with a clean close-range shot to the head). Quick killing of newborns is generally viewed as a panic reaction, especially when, as usual, it's by a very young mother who has good reason to fear abuse from a parent if the baby is discovered. Such cases virtually always draw at least a short prison term or a psych hospital term. The girl who drowned her newborn in a toilet at a high school prom a few years back, and then went right back to dancing, spent at least a couple of years in prison, as I recals, with several years of parole/probation afterwards. Repeated infliction of severe pain on a newborn, whether or not resulting in its death, or serious neglect of a newborn (such as not feeding it), will result in a signficantly longer prison term. Sadly, what those deliberate heinous acts do NOT result in, is sterilization of the perpetrator before release. As a result, most of the severe child abuse cases we hear about are "not the first time" cases.
The horror!
He should have used his cell phone to call the China Dragon restaurant.
Problem solved.
"Your understanding of animals' minds is not based on facts."
Absolutely!
"Are you saying by your post that animals don't feel pain?"
Correct. "Pain" is a subjective word and has no context outside of humans. We only know that other humans feel pain because we are one ourselves and WE feel pain. It is a thing that cannot be measured.That is the only basis we have.
We don't have that basis in animals, so my post 105 applies.
If your question was inadvertently addressed to a Santaria member, you should have added the option of "Bit the head off".
That is ludicrous. Absurd.
*You* automatically cry out in pain if you're slashed; so somehow, that's *just* an "autoMATED" response that has nothing to do w/feelings?
This makes no sense whatsoever. Why cry out? What's the purpose? If the animal feels nothing, there's no point in crying out! For crying out loud....
A cat is most definitely a living being; a car is not. I love both, but I'm well aware it's my CAT that experiences pain, whereas my inANIMate car does not.
"If that is how you'd define the mechanism whereby an animal senses and can respond to the stimulation, how is it different in a human?"
It isn’t different in a human machine. It is the same. But the human machine is merely what we occupy. You and I are not the body we occupy any more than we are the car we occupy when we drive. Our feelings of pain are merely via our connection to this body, and our interpretation of the stimulus originating at our nerve endings. And this does not even get into our feelings when shunned by a group, etc. when nothing has been physically done to us. Animals do not contain a human spirit. They are basically automatons.
I think of the human machine as a fighter plane with a pilot, and animals as drone aircraft. What makes the fighter more important to protect is not really the fact that it is more expensive to produce. What makes it more valuable is that it contains a human pilot. What makes a human body more valuable is that it contains a human soul. Once the soul leaves, the body is just so much meat, like a car at a junk yard.
Yeah. You can never perfectly trust them to keep themselves from mauling small children...
...oh wait, that's dogs! ;-)
I "put myself in the shoes" of humans, not animals.
Well, having read most of the posts; people are upset. Okay then, how would you have dealt with the cat having been run over once and it was still alive?
The driver's statement was that ""I feel really awful," Haggerty said. "My only thoughts were how can I stop this animal suffering. The only thing I had was the car. I thought I was acting in the best interests of the cat." From that, I derive the thought that he tried his best to put out the cat. Yes,the cat suffered pain, but did his actions result in less duration of suffering for the cat? If so, then the cat was treated humanely just as if it went to the vet.
He most likely did not have a gun. The UK is a gun control society where even airguns are restricted. I think he may have been panic stricken. Have you ever been in that state? That is why he could have done that multiple times.
Using any other instrument such as a shovel,boot, or a tire iron just looks to some people as unnecessary cruelty.
Taking him to the vet sounds like a good idea, but the cat would have been suffering longer and it would have cost him some money that he may have needed. Who knows. I was not there so I cannot say the state of his finances. Call animal control? Wait how long while kitty is expiring horribly? I don't want the creature to suffer long.
There was another poster who admitted hitting a bird and he kept driving although he felt bad. Some other poster called him a Heartless B*****D.
D*MN*d i fyou do, d*MN*d if you don't.
"Some people never develope empathy....I think it's from inbreeding."
You're not showing me much empathy. ;)
I think maybe this was perfect. I'm not big into animal "abuse" jailing (mainly cuz the term "abuse" is ABUSED just as much as "torture"), but I do think there should be exceptions.
I'm betting this man had "good" intentions; he was just stupid. So, maybe he shouldn't have gotten 6 weeks, but at least a week or so should drive home the point to him and others that such abuses are just too much.
Some1 intentional - go ahead and give'em 6 weeks.
If he was just run over or struck once, I wouldn't make it worse than the couple weeks.
What scares me is that a) people might think they can go around abusing OTHER PEOPLE'S animal property w/impugnity and b) it might illicitly condone rage and abuse and such people could be very unstable around ANY living being. We should send the message that out-of-control behavior is BAD.
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