When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have cats

Devil cat? Well, maybe there’s some kitty crazy in the eyes….

Shiny the cat looks innocent enough, but in England, where guns are really outlawed, this mild-looking moggy has been holding a whole village hostage.

A pet cat has been accused of launching a series of attacks across a village and putting residents and pets in hospital.

The black tom called Shiny has been nicknamed the ”Devil Cat” after being reported to the police fives times over its violent behaviour.

Locals say Shiny chases children, picks fights with dogs and even bursts into people’s homes to claw and scratch them.

Its victims say they are so scared they retreat behind locked doors and arm themselves with hoses and mugs of hot tea whenever they see the black cat prowling the streets.

Despite being reported to the police officers are powerless to act because laws designed to combat dangerous dogs do not apply to cats.

Shiny’s owners say they are trying to curb his behaviour and he has been neutered and booked in to see an animal psychologist.

But many residents in the Cornish village of Little Treviscoe want to see Shiny put down.

Victim Paula Burton, 42, was rushed to A&E in July after Shiny clawed her arms and legs. Miss Burton managed to fight him off but suffered bruising and cuts that required antibiotics.

via ‘Devil cat’ hospitalises villagers in attacking spree – Telegraph.

How ineffably British. They have nothing to fight this feline from Steven King with, but a cup of hot tea; and the bobbies would love to help, but they’re tied up in red tape. “It’s more than me job’s worth, missus”. (That sort of craven, contemptible character that says such a thing is known in English slang as a “Jobsworth,” naturally).

While it’s hard to take cat-scratch wounds terribly seriously, consider that Shiny and his millions of cousins come equipped with very sharp teeth in a mouth full of bacteria, very sharp claws which are themselves usually a petri dish of microbiological badness, and their own little microenvironment for mammalian parasites, some of whom would just as soon make their homes on, or in, a human.

Plus, there’s the annoyance and iritation of having one of these tuna-powered buzzsaws coming at you.

Of course, the logical answer: the family who own Shiny and have no trouble with him, keeping his neighbor-biting and -clawing self indoors, doesn’t seem to have been considered.

Now, we know some of the readers of this blog are or have been big-city cops in such garden spots as Detroit, Chicago and Houston. And we have to wonder what they think about the cops in Cornwall who’ve been called out five times to take statements from cat-attack victims. Our guess for what they think about a police force that has to deal with crises like that: “Are they hiring?”

Exercise for the reader: instead of a village in Cornwall, imagine Shiny pulling this stunt in, say, a village in West Texas.  What’s the over-under on Shiny’s life expectancy, and what caliber would the fatal wound be?

Disclaimer: No cats were harmed in the making of this blog post. We can’t vouch for injuries to English villagers.