Leader: Nature overruled in the case of cat versus dog

Published on Thursday 10 November 2011 03:17

IS AN attack by a dog on a cat a matter for the courts? It is if you’re Bobby the cat and you’ve suffered a broken jaw and femur and other internal injuries as a result.

And if you’re Bobby’s owner you may be very distressed. But not as distressed as C-Jay, the two-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier cross who is now facing the death penalty after being found in a neighbour’s garden with a severely injured Bobby clasped between his jaws. Yesterday, C-Jay’s owners lost an appeal against the ultimate sanction of the law.

Now, bull terriers may be prone to an attack or two. But C-Jay had no previous convictions. He was not on early release or breaking a curfew. As a dog, he was following his natural instincts. Dogs often have a go at cats. There was no threat to people or to public order.

Meanwhile, as for cats, they are hardly the saucer-eyed innocents of the animal world. How many mice might Bobby have pounced upon with impunity? And who represented them in the Justiciary Appeal Court in Edinburgh yesterday?

The case would seem to have the makings of an appeal to the UK Supreme Court if the law of the land ruled also over the law of nature. For a hobbling Bobby would surely have been fair game for a C-Jay on probation, however strict the supervision order.

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Christian Wright

Friday, November 11, 2011 at 10:50 AM

Hearthamme wrote:"So the fact that an unleashed dog narly killed a cat doesn't bother you? What if that unleashed dog nearly killed a kid, would that bother you?" _______________________________________________________ It would indeed; and if the dog had rabies and bit someone, that would bother me; or if it terrorized old ladies and made their lives a living hell, that would bother me, too. However, the dumb animal in question did none of those things, and it does not, so far as has been reported, have rabies. Therefore, on the basis of the facts in this case, we can safely say that this fine creature but two years old, is to be put to death for following an instinct inherited by way of natural selection, over which he has no control. In my view this is unnecessary, profoundly dumb, and the justification given for executing it is crass and risible. Incidentally, your name wouldn't be "White" or "Bonomy", would it?

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Hearthammer

Friday, November 11, 2011 at 08:12 AM

So the fact that an unleashed dog narly killed a cat doesn't bother you? What if that unleashed dog nearly killed a kid, would that bother you?

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Christian Wright

Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 06:44 AM

Yet another self-inflicted black eye for Scotland's out of control judiciary. One really has to wonder about the competence of Scottish justices like Iain Bonomy AKA "judge Dread" (so called after he jailed one criminal for 10 years for not snitching on another one within 24 hours). This time he has gone after a dumb animal whose only "crime" has been to follow an instinctive urge natural selection has bred in his kind over eons. _______________________________________________________ It is one thing for a hick JP of limited ken like Mr White to make an ass of himself in this way, but quite another for a supposedly experienced judge to offer such a cosmically dumb explanation a why this beautiful animal should forfeit its life. Would it not behove the learned judge to spend his time in consideration of more pressing issue, say for instance, the incompetence and endemic graft that is a blight on his profession in Scotland, than to act as executioner of one of nature's glorious and wondrous confections? _____________________________________________________ If the Law is sometimes an ass, it is made so by asinine judgments like this. Stupid is as stupid does, I suppose, and there is no shortage of it in this disgusting decision. Shame on you, Iain Bonomy. Shame on you.

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