Somebody hurt my cat, how do I find out who did it?

October 26, 2009 7:29 PM

Teenager next door had a party that spilled over into the field behind my house. My cat shows up severely injured. How do I get to the bottom of this?

Last Friday night the next door neighbor's teenage son has a rather large party in their back yard. Kids left their yard and were hanging out in the field behind my house. My cat later shows up and can barely walk. X-Rays at the vet show that she has a separated vertebra at the base of her tail but the tail itself has no injuries that would indicate a dog got her or she got caught in a gate. The Vet's conclusion is that somebody grabbed her by the tail and flung her. When I confront the parents and teen their response was "we didn't see anything, but we'll ask around." My daughter knows some of the kids that were there and has been checking Facebook to see if somebody might be bragging about it. I'm incredibly angry about this and would like to find the culprit. Anybody have ideas on how I can find out?

posted by Zebtron to human relations (38 comments total)

I think what your daughter is doing is all that can be done really. Even if the kid next door knows, he's not going to say anything, because that will get him and his parents and the culprit/his friend (if indeed they did it) in trouble. If you have no proof, little can be done. I would tell the kid that you will be watching he and his friends like a hawk from now on (which could freak him out enough to not get into any more trouble on or near your property in the future).
So sorry this happened. I also have a sweet kitty, and if ever this happened to her, I would come out with my guns a-blazin' too. I wish your kitty a swift recovery.
posted by greta simone at 7:36 PM on October 26

If I thought someone at a party hurt my dog on purpose, I would call the police, and see if they could get to the bottom of who did it.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:43 PM on October 26 [13 favorites]

Yeah, call the cops.

There is a huge fucking difference between abusing a cat and for example, a 15 yo drunkenly peeing in someone else's bushes. Note: I doubt the neighbors kid actually has knowledge of who did this, unless the party was fewer than 6 people or so.
posted by shownomercy at 7:46 PM on October 26

Consider asking the teen's parents to pay for your vet costs since they have a responsibility for what happens to a party at their house. (i'm not sure if this is legally true but it sounds logical.) If they don't want to pay, maybe they will have more incentive to find the person who did it.
posted by metahawk at 7:47 PM on October 26 [3 favorites]

This is pretty horrible shit to do to an animal, but sadly, I agree with greta that you probably won't find many facts. What you can do, however, is intimidate the shit out of the little bastard to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. If he knows that you and your cat are not to be fucked with lest serious consequences come his way, he'll probably do his best to keep his friends out of your field and away from your pets. Personally I'd threaten some form of skull fracturing, but go with whatever suits ya.
posted by Roman Graves at 7:48 PM on October 26 [2 favorites]

Yeah, sociopaths often start with animal torture, so it would be a good idea to find the culprit if possible. Of course, nonsociopathic teenagers also do really stupid stuff to "impress" their friends, but I think its worth involving the police if the vet can prove that this is an injury due to humans, not dogs. If there is someone who regularly or has previously engaged in this kind of behavior, that's the kind of person who should be under regular scrutiny from law enforcement.
posted by Maias at 7:50 PM on October 26

If this had happened to me, I'd call the cops and file a report, just to have a record in case something like this happens again, whether it be injured animals or vandalism. Maybe the parents of the teenage boy will keep a closer eye on future parties if they know that you mean business.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 7:52 PM on October 26

Also, does the field behind your house belong to you? If so, inform the parents that if future parties occur, no one is to be hanging out on your property or you will call the police. What kind of party was this? Do you think there was underage drinking going on?
posted by MaryDellamorte at 7:55 PM on October 26

Seconding Maias's comment - animal cruelty is often a precursor to violence directed at humans (see here) and I think this is information the parents should know regarding the kids that are hanging out with their kid and engaging on you their/your property.
posted by boofidies at 8:00 PM on October 26

oops, engaging in on their/your property
posted by boofidies at 8:02 PM on October 26

Definitely call the cops--if they're not totally overwhelmed with other things, they tend to take incidents like this seriously, because it is well-known that animal cruelty is a huge predictor of future violence toward humans.

Also, I'm so sorry. I would be absolutely burning with rage if that happened to my pet.
posted by HotToddy at 8:13 PM on October 26

I'm sorry about your cat: Give kittie my best wishes!

Definitely report this to the police, including the information given by the vet. It's important to establish a record for the future. Maybe there's also some aminal-abuse prevention organization you can register your complaint to?

If you're willing to spend money, maybe you can hire a lawyer. IANAL, but maybe you can try to recover the vet fees? After all, the cat is your property, isn't it? And it was damaged by the partygoers? I bet farmers and livestock owners have to deal with injuries to animals, and maybe there is some legal avenue to pursue? Like I said, I'm not an expert, and I don't know how this would play out, at all. But it seems, from what you say, that an injustice was done, and maybe there is some remedy you can pursue in court. Might as well give a local attorney a call, the worst he can do is tell you "Sorry, can't help."
posted by HabeasCorpus at 8:23 PM on October 26

Get your pet inside if there is a rowdy party. A trusting animal and drunken idiots don't mix.
If someone did that to my cat I wonder from time to time if I would have enough self control to not go to jail over a vicious assault.
posted by dino terror at 8:25 PM on October 26

File a police report. If you have the time and the money, talk to a lawyer. If they think it's appropriate, they could write a demand letter for the vet bill and maybe talk about what you should discuss with the neighbors--like telling them that the next time their kids have a party that is noisy, you will call the police, and if they get on your property, you will call the police and press charges for any applicable crimes if given the option by the authorities.
posted by ishotjr at 8:32 PM on October 26

That is awful! Your poor cat. I wish I had something more practical to add beyond calling the cops. I wonder if your local chapter of the SPCA or the Humane Society might have some good advice or other options to consider. While it is unlikely you will be able to prove who actually hurt your cat, I imagine an investigation and being asked questions by officers would scare the crap out of the little bastards. Even if the actual culprit never comes into contact with the authorities, word will still travel pretty fast that things like injuring animals are taken seriously, and should make someone think twice before being so cruel. Also, I think it's fair to say that most kids like animals. As gossip about this incident travels, some peer shaming may follow, which if it protects your pet and others, is a very good thing indeed. I hope your cat has a speedy recovery!
posted by katemcd at 8:41 PM on October 26

You let your cat run around outdoors unsupervised. It got hurt. You're responsible. Don't let your cat outdoors unsupervised and this won't happen. Even if you do "find out who did it," what are you going to do? There's not much you can do, short of breaking the law seeking revenge on someone who may or may not have hurt your cat (unless they step up, cop to the crime and offer to pay in full - but really).
posted by torquemaniac at 8:48 PM on October 26 [2 favorites]

You let your cat run around outdoors unsupervised. It got hurt. You're responsible.

Bullshit. The cat wasn't injured by an animal acting naturally, or injured accidentally by a human acting normally; it was injured by a human acting intentionally and aberrantly. And, criminally.

Even if you do "find out who did it," what are you going to do?

Have them arrested and prosecuted for cruelty to animals, which is illegal in every state in the US and a felony in most. And, publicize their name and crime on the Internet, which will be part of their Google karma forever.
posted by nicwolff at 9:01 PM on October 26 [27 favorites]

Do call the police. As others have pointed out, the police are interested in this sort of thing. If the kid has another party that spills onto your property (it's unclear whether this one did or not) or is disruptively noisy, call the police. Your neighbors sound like dicks; I'd quit being overtly friendly with them until they act like they're taking this seriously.

You let your cat run around outdoors unsupervised. It got hurt. You're responsible.

Sounds like they live in a rural area. It is perfectly reasonable to have an outdoor cat in a place like that. It is also reasonable, no matter where you live, to expect that the neighbors' drunken son will not injure said cat.

Even if you do "find out who did it," what are you going to do?

Throw the book at him. Cruelty to animals is against the law in the civilized world, and with good reason.
posted by Commander Rachek at 9:07 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]

Sending the cops over to his house (with a sufficiently "this is a very serious matter" demeanor) will probably ensure that kid has no more parties at his house, at least if the parents are normal people. They won't be able to find out who did it, though.
posted by ctmf at 9:19 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]

Actually, you didn't say: do the parents know about your cat's injury and its likely cause, relative to their kid's party? Obviously it depends on the parents, but where I come from and where I live now, no cops would be required if I told one of my neighbors something like that had happened. They'd be horrified and the kid would immediately be put on solitary confinement and prison loaf, personal knowledge of the incident or not.
posted by ctmf at 9:23 PM on October 26

You let your cat run around outdoors unsupervised. It got hurt. You're responsible.

Nice "blame the victim(s) mentatlity you've got there."

Even if you do "find out who did it," what are you going to do?

Start revealing potential sociopath for what they are, rather than waiting for it to get worse?

Sociopaths don't just start with animal cruelty, often, by the time they're caught abusing animals, they've already abused people.
posted by Good Brain at 10:41 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]

Involve the police. Report both the party and what happened to your cat. At the very least it ought to prevent more parties from happening in your backyard, and put the kids involved on notice that what they did is not something that is going to be taken lightly.

I would not trust or depend on the kid's parents to do the right thing; however seriously they're taking your complaint, they'll take it that much more seriously when it comes from the police.

I'm not sure—unless someone brags about it on Facebook or something similarly stupid—that there's much of a chance of actually finding and punishing the person who hurt your cat, so that's not necessarily a realistic goal. But I would go to the police now, get things down on paper so that it's clear you mean business. And if another party gets going, don't wait until something happens before you drop a dime.

Of course you're not going to stop a bunch of teenagers from getting drunk, but you can at least cause them to move somewhere else, where it's less likely that something bad will happen to your cat (or for that matter your property, your family, or yourself).

Also, this ("You let your cat run around outdoors unsupervised [...] You're responsible") is bullshit. Every state that I have ever lived in has had companion animal laws that protect cats, even when they're allowed to roam. (Some states even protect strays and ferals even if all you do is feed them.) While it is true that outdoor cats lead substantially riskier lives than indoor ones, it is not unreasonable to expect that no one go out of their way to harm them. The person who does is clearly at fault and in the wrong by every reasonable moral standard, and thankfully most legal ones as well.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:01 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]

I would start with the police, but this is an issue that a local newspaper or TV station might want to run with. There's a large reservoir of public anger toward animal abusers. With publicity, perhaps a reward, and the safety of an anonymous tip line (media or police, it hardly matters), you might get the identity in short order.
posted by dhartung at 12:02 AM on October 27

I think it may be counterproductive to go around pointing fingers or intimidating the neighbours' kid without any evidence. Most of the kids who were at the party probably had nothing to do with your cat's injury. As long as the kids kept off your property (is the field on your land?) and the offender doesn't fess up you don't have much to go on.

However, the parents and the kid are somewhat responsible for the behaviour at the party so I think a stern warning and perhaps some sort of police involvement are warranted.
posted by quosimosaur at 12:54 AM on October 27

Are the police actually going to do anything if the OP contacts them? I wouldn't think that they would have time to bother in a situation like this, but maybe I am wrong. Do they have polices about looking into animal abuse besides obvious cases like dog fighting?
posted by afu at 2:01 AM on October 27

Start revealing potential sociopath for what they are, rather than waiting for it to get worse? Sociopaths don't just start with animal cruelty, often, by the time they're caught abusing animals, they've already abused people.

While I can understand concern for a beloved cat, can we not go this route, please? Suddenly the question has gone from the (not entirely established) situation of animal cruelty to "let's go after the sociopath with our pitchforks!"

Otherwise I agree with with others have said. Contact the police.
posted by thisperon at 3:39 AM on October 27

I'm sorry your cat was hurt. If indeed the neighbors' friends did it, they are cruel.

One of your previous questions indicates that you are in Ft. Worth. If you are there, and in the city limits, Ft. Worth's leash law requires that "Cats must be kept from roaming beyond the boundaries of the owner’s property." (PDF, page 3). If you go the route of contacting authorities, first weigh for yourself the advantages of that against the disadvantage of being penalized for breaking that law.
posted by Houstonian at 4:07 AM on October 27

Houstonian, there is no indication here that OP's cat roamed beyond the boundaries of its owner's property. The issue seems to be that the neighbour's child (and friends) roamed into the OP's property.
posted by onshi at 4:30 AM on October 27

No one is going to admit to this. But it is possible that someone may rat someone out. You can motivate the rat with fear or greed. I would offer a reward to flip on the assh*le who is responsible.
posted by jasondigitized at 4:51 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]

What you can do, however, is intimidate the shit out of the little bastard to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

This is an incredibly stupid idea, which you should under no circumstances do.

You don't actually know what happened to your cat. I'm sorry he got hurt, but coming out guns-blazing based solely on the supposition of a veterinarian who's basing his opinion on what sounds like pretty shaky forensic evidence is going to do much more harm than good. Short of someone coming forward as an eyewitness, you don't know that the cause of the separated vertebra was a person, much less a person acting maliciously.

You also don't know, based on the specifics of your question, that the trauma happened during this party, or even on your property. It sounds like you live in a pretty dense neighborhood, and that the cat is out on its own most of the time... without anything more specific than that, all you know is that the injury happened within half a mile of your house, sometime in the day-or-so-long period that included this party. The cat could have been anywhere during the party, or he could have been injured by some 12-year-old shithead neighborhood kid earlier in the day.

And lastly, a point that shouldn't even need to be made explicitly: if you show up on your neighbor's door making threats, the police are not going to come knocking on your neighbor's door; they're going to come knocking on yours. No one saw what happened to your cat, but someone will certainly sure see you trying to intimidate the neighbor's kid. Going over and asking about it (if only to put the situation on the parents' radar) is just about all you can do, and I wouldn't hold out much hope that someone's going to brag about it on Facebook.

So, you can file the police report (and that's a good idea, if only to establish a pattern in case something like this happens again down the road), but I wouldn't expect much to come of it; there's no evidence they can go on to substantiate an animal cruelty charge, and I highly doubt that the neighbor is going to crack and confess to everything even if they do come around to ask about it.

Again, I'm sorry your cat got hurt, but this is one of those maddening times where there isn't much you can do except keep him inside the house and try to establish a pattern in case there are other incidents in the future.
posted by Mayor West at 5:29 AM on October 27 [5 favorites]

I agree that you should call the cops and file a report, but that nothing is likely to come of it.

A cat we had when I was growing up got a very similar injury (had to have his tail removed and lived happily ever after; hope your kitty is fine). FWIW, our vet said he might have been hit by a car hard enough to cause the separation, but not hard enough to cause visible wounds. My recollection is that the vet speculated he could have been "bumped" (my image was always of the cat being kind of sideswiped by a tire).
posted by Mavri at 7:39 AM on October 27

Yeah, thinking this happened at the party is leaping to an unfounded conclusion. Anyone within your cat's roaming radius could have done this. Also, it would be an odd cat that sees and hears a loud, cacophonous, ongoing rowdy ruckus and goes towards it rather than away.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:51 AM on October 27

I'm really sorry - that's an awful thing to have happen.

But I think reiterating a couple of cautions are in order: the evidence is circumstantial that your cat's injuries are related to the party. It's certainly possible that that is what happened, but it is not at all certain.

Second, the thing that happened to your cat is terrible, no argument, I think there has to be a tiny bit of thinking about intent. Assuming someone at the party indeed grabbed her by the tail and tossed her, I think Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity") is in order. I can imagine a drunken teenager doing that without thinking it would harm the cat. Doesn't make it excusable, doesn't heal your cat, doesn't help at all, but DOES mitigate the intimations above that you MUST have a serial killer in training living next to you.
posted by dirtdirt at 8:21 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]

You don't know that the neighbor kids did anything at all. You suspect. You are probably right. But you don't know.

One thing I have learned in my short, brutal life, is that sometimes all the signs point in one direction - but not to the truth. It's probable that someone threw the cat; it's entirely possible that it was someone who had nothing to do with the party.

Keep your mouth shut, and your eyes and ears open.
posted by Xoebe at 10:41 AM on October 27

File a police report. Call the local chapter of your SPCA. But these organizations probably can't do a lot to protect the other pets in your neighborhood, until/unless there is a pattern in place here of this kind of thing happening - and being reported - multiple times in your community. (I'd also mention, though it sounds so cynical, to keep in mind when filing your report that a large group of white/middle-class kids engaging in presumably underage drinking and horsing around is likely to draw a very different response from law enforcement than a large group of minority/poor kids doing the same thing. Maybe the cops in your neighborhood are stellar individuals who would never profile like that or harass a poor and/or minority kid who was innocent of injuring someone's pet, but, well, crazier things have happened.)

I'd by no means say you should simply leave it at that, though. My impulse would be to make some small posters and wheatpaste them around the neighborhood. Use the posters to explain what happened to your cat and when, explain that you don't know who was involved, and urge local pet owners to keep an eye out for their pets so nothing like this happens to them. Increasing awareness within your community is probably the first and more important step to stopping this kind of thing from happening again. You don't have to point fingers or name names - just don't be silent about this. If something like this happened in my neighborhood, I'd want to know - not to go after any individual for retribution, per say, but just for the safety of my own cat and my friends' cats.
posted by ellehumour at 10:42 AM on October 27

File a police report. Nothing will happen and the person will never be caught, but at least you will have done something.
posted by coolguymichael at 12:35 PM on October 27

I'm sorry to hear this about your cat.

I think it's incredibly sadistic, teenage drinking party or not. I'd report it to the police and include the vets report. I hope the police take this seriously.

It's a little too coincidental to think that someone at that party didn't inflict this injury to the cat, frankly, especially judging from the doctors report.

In the future, I'd harass the partyers every single time. Phone the police for noise violation, underage drinking... anything and get it shut down immediately.

Someone at that party saw something. I hope the police get names of those attending and interview them all. There were those inside partying, who were the ones that left for the field.

In Canada, if I'm having a party and a guest drives off drunkenly and kills someone, do you know that I am responsible for allowing that guest to drive off while drunk and for them being inebriated in the first place and would be charged?
posted by alicesshoe at 12:19 AM on October 28

I assume your cat is going to continue to roam the neighbourhood. Do you want people to say "There is the cat that belongs to that nasty Mr Zebtron, let's kick it"? If not, I suggest you refrain from the extreme measures being suggested here. They won't do your kids much good either. And all this when you don't even know if the injury was deliberate, or that this group were involved.
posted by Idcoytco at 4:18 AM on October 28