Your cat may mean the world to you, but in American courts she’s no different than a TV or an air fryer.
With a quick resolution to a UK cat theft that made international news, it’s become clear that our friends across the Atlantic are way ahead of us in crafting laws that protect animals.
In the US, the legal system views pets as property. You can see the vestiges of our agricultural past in the way animal-related crimes are categorized. Here in New York, they’re found in Agriculture and Markets law, not the state penal code.
The former was written to handle things like compensation for killed or stolen livestock, not to recognize the emotional damage a thief does to both the person and pet when they’re separated.
Today laws forbidding puppy mills and defining the responsibilities of municipal pounds are lumped in with legislation governing things like farm fencing and how horses may be tested for performance-enhancing drugs ahead of county fairs. It’s archaic, confusing and limits the legal consequences for mistreating pets.
Credit: Breno Cardoso/Pexels
That means the penalties for stealing someone’s beloved dog or cat amount to a slap on the wrist. Your cat may mean the world to you, but in the eyes of the court she’s worth the $175 fee for adoption and shots you paid to a shelter.
That’s also why police enforcement is a crapshoot. If someone makes off with your furry friend, you might get lucky when you find out the local sheriff loves his dogs dearly and makes sure animal-related crime is taken seriously.
Or you might get a desk sergeant who thinks you’re wasting department resources, glowers at you from behind the desk as you submit your report, and leaves it in a pile with other things he believes are beneath the dignity of real police.
It’s easy to blame the police, but their attitudes are impacted by the outdated laws and a society that hasn’t caught up. SPCA law enforcement officers are often treated like Ace Ventura with a badge, and police agencies are reluctant to devote significant resources to cases that will amount to misdemeanor charges, which can be pleaded down further in court.
Credit: Alexandros Chatzidimos/Pexels
Compare that to the West Yorkshire police, who launched an investigation when security camera footage showed an Amazon delivery driver stealing a family’s cat a week ago. Happily the feline has been reunited with her people and is back home, but neither the driver nor the company are off the hook, as the police still have an active investigation.
In the UK, courts take animal-related crimes seriously, and so do the police. That’s because of several important pieces of legislation, starting with the Animal Welfare Sentience Act of 2022.
The law finally frees cats and dogs from any remaining association with property laws. Instead they’re viewed as what they are, sentient creatures who have their own feelings. It also recognizes animals like the octopus, which can be startlingly intelligent.
That opens the door to legislation like the Pet Abduction Prevention Act of 2024, which takes into account the trauma to the human and animal victims. Both dogs and cats are likely to be deeply confused and distressed at being taken from their people, and cats in particular don’t do well when removed from their territory.
When a judge sentences a person for, say, stealing a family’s beloved senior dog, he can take into account the stress both the family and dog endured, and the disruption to their lives. When a couple breaks up and both sides fight over a cat, the judge can base a decision at least in part on what’s best for the kitty.
You can’t do that when a law says the animal in question is no more important than a toaster.
The 2024 law cited more than 2,000 dog abductions and more than 400 cat thefts in 2020, and it has legal teeth — judges have discretion to put convicted pet thieves behind bars for as many as five years.
American lawmakers should take a look at how things are done across the pond. At a time when rancorous politics and divisive ideology stains almost everything, this is an opportunity for legislators of all ideological stripes to work together, earning a win for themselves, and most importantly, for animals.
How do you ensure people will heed warnings to steer clear of nuclear waste storage sites thousands of years in the future? One outlandish proposal involves genetically engineering domestic cats to glow in the presence of radiation.
Imagine you’re a person living five thousand years downstream.
Maybe civilization collapsed and restarted, maybe records were lost, or maybe like Etruscan, Harappan and proto-Elamite, the languages we speak today will be long forgotten.
At any rate, if you discover a forceful warning left by your ancestors from the deep past, would you understand it without translation or cultural context?
And if you’re the one tasked with leaving the message, how would you do it?
The message has to be enduring. It must be recorded in a format that will withstand the tests of time, conquest and natural disasters. The message must be comprehensible without cultural context, because we have no idea how language will shift in the future or whether our descendants will enjoy the knowledge that comes with continuity of records.
Lastly, the message must be both compelling and absolute in its meaning, because its content is vitally important: This site contains nuclear waste. Do not under any circumstances excavate or disturb the contents of this facility. It will lead to sickness, suffering and death.
The traditional trefoil warning sign is unlikely to scare anyone off. The new radiation hazard sign, right, seems unambiguous, but so do warnings on Egyptian tombs.
How do you phrase that in a way our naturally curious species will heed the message?
We certainly didn’t heed the warnings on the tombs of King Tut and other pharaohs. For all we know, humans of the future might believe the hidden chambers deep in Yucca mountain or buried 3,000 feet underground are filled with fabulous treasures and wonders beyond imagination.
They might interpret the warnings as superstition, meant to ward off looters, “grave robbers” and anyone else who might be motivated to break in. They might see the care and effort that went into encasing the objects and conclude there must be something very much worth preserving inside.
Or they might be driven by simple curiosity, as so many human endeavors have been.
A tour group visiting the incomplete Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. Credit: Daniel Meyer/Wikimedia Commons
Arguments about how to warn the future are at least as old as the Manhattan Project (1942) and the first nuclear power plants (1954 in the USSR, 1958 in the US), but there weren’t serious efforts to come up with a plan until the 1970s, when scientists, historians and other thinkers began to engage in formal efforts to find a long-lasting solution.
Some of the ideas are boring, some are impractical, and some are absurd, like an idea to create a “garden of spikes” atop nuclear material waste sites, to discourage people from settling in the area or excavating.
Unfortunately, one idea that’s still being kicked around is the concept of the radiation cat, or raycat.
Knowledge and language may be lost to history, signage may be destroyed, physical obstacles may be removed. But one constant that has endured, that has seen empires rise and fall, and has existed long before Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza, is the human relationship with cats.
They’re now valued as companions, but we still use them as mousers on ships, in heavily populated cities, in ancient structures and on farms and vineyards.
They’re embedded so deep into our cultural psyche that it would not be outlandish to think the archaeologists of the future may conclude the internet was constructed primarily to facilitate the exchange of images of cats.
Even the first high-bandwidth deep space transmission was a video of a cat, so in a very real sense, the dawn of a solar system-wide internet was heralded by an ultra high definition clip of an orange tabby named Taters, beamed back to earth from the exploratory spacecraft Psyche, which was 19 million miles away when it transmitted Taters on Dec. 11, 2023.
Consider also that the basic felid body plan — shared by domestic kitties, tigers, pumas, black-footed cats and the 37 other extant species — has barely changed in 30 million years, because cats are extremely successful at what they do.
In other words, cats aren’t going away, and domestic felines have a place in every human society.
So philosophers Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri conceived of the “living warning” in 1984. The idea is to alter the genetic code of felis catus so that the animals glow or change color in the vicinity of nuclear waste, using minuscule levels of radiation as the trigger.
There are natural precedents for this, including bioluminescence and several species of octopus that radically change colors and patterns on their skin to evade predators.
The second component, once the genetic code has been altered, is the creation of folklore: songs, stories and myths that will endure through time, warning people to keep cats close, treat them well, and run like hell if they change color because it means something terrible, something evil beyond imagination, is nearby.
To ensure the folklore of feline Geiger counters endures, an idea by linguist and semiotician Thomas Sebeok would be incorporated. Although empires and states rise and fall, there’s one organization that has survived for 2,000 years preserving a unified message: the Catholic church.
Sebeok proposed an atomic priesthood, an order that would pass the knowledge down through generations, continually seeding culture with stories and songs of glowing felines.
Spent nuclear fuel rods are stored in on-site pools at the facilities where they were used, but pools are meant only as temporary storage solutions. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
If this stuff sounds wacky, that’s because it is. We won’t figure out a way to ensure a message is received and understood thousands of years in the future without considering some off-the-wall plans.
Of course messing with the genetic code of any animal raises serious ethical questions.
We don’t have the right to play God and tinker with the genetic code of extant species. We don’t fully understand the immediate consequences for the health and happiness of cats, and we know almost nothing about the long-term effects on the species.
I’d also argue that we have a special relationship with cats and dogs, one that exceeds any obligations we may feel toward our primate “cousins” or other non-human animals.
Cats and dogs have been living with humans for a combined 40,000 years. They have been molded by us, they are dependent on us, and all that time in human proximity has led to unique changes.
No animals on this planet can match them when it comes to reading human emotions. Our little buddies pick up on our emotional states before we’re consciously aware of them partly because of their robust sensoriums, and partly because as their caretakers, our business is their business.
A clip of a cat named Taters was the first data burst transmitted to Earth using NASA’s upgraded deep space network. Credit: NASA/JPL
We bear a responsibility to both species and the individual animals. It’s not just the fact that without them, our lives would feel less meaningful. It’s the indisputable fact that without them — without dogs who flushed out prey on yhr hunt and guarded small settlements, without cats who prevented mass starvation by hunting down rodents — we would not be here.
Cats and dogs play a major role in the story of the human race. We are indelibly linked. Their DNA is not ours to tinker with, and they are not tools we can repurpose at our convenience.
Thankfully the US Department of Energy has never endorsed the concept of raycats. While there is a website advocating for a raycat program and small groups around the world dedicated to its propagation, the interest is mostly academic.
The Raycat Solution, which maintains a site dedicated to the idea, has a FAQ which says its supporters are serious about its potential usefulness, but for now most experts see it as a thought experiment and reminder that the problem must be dealt with eventually. At some point NIMBY will have to yield to reality, and wherever the US ends up storing nuclear waste, it’ll need to be secured, sealed and marked.
The goal is for the message to endure at least 10,000 years, at which point scientists say the radiation will be minimal.
That’s assuming that the future holds the collapse and rebuilding of human civilization, or at least a technological backslide in which the majority of our species’ knowledge is lost.
We like to think things will be brighter than that and instead of glowing to warn people of danger, cats of the far future will be where they belong — with their human buddies, exploring new frontiers on starships with plenty of comfortable napping spots.
Header image depicts the Alvin Ward Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia, the largest nuclear plant in the US. Image via Wikimedia Commons/NRC
[1] The nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain was initially funded and approved by congress in 2002, then was canceled and de-funded in 2011 after significant pushback from people who live in Nevada, along with their representatives in congress. Plans for the site have changed several times in more than two decades, leaving the US with no central, secure site to store nuclear waste.
For more than two weeks after adopting him, I still didn’t have a name for my cat.
I imagined something badass, something funny, something better than all those boring pet names. But the playful, energetic, bold little kitten in front of me was no Brasidas (my favorite Spartan), Mo (my favorite pitcher) or Timothy Cavendish. (My favorite character from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.)
So I kept calling him buddy while I waited for something to come to me, and then it became obvious: He is Buddy.
Original? Nah. But it describes him perfectly, and to me that’s the best part about adopting him, my first-ever pet.
We’re pals. Amigos. Chums. Accomplices. Buddies.
Buddy as he exists in his mind!
I don’t consider myself his “dad” even though I have parental, protective feelings for him. He’s my buddy who wants to be involved in everything I do, whether it’s helping me greet trick-or-treaters at the door like he did last night, batting a paw at my guitar strings to add his special touch to my recording takes, or just hanging out while I’m reading.
I knew it intuitively, but the best advice I ever got was to always remember your little friend, be it a cat or dog, has his or her own feelings.
There’s a lot of confusion around the word sentience and people often confuse it with the concept of sapience, but there is no doubt about it: mammals like cats and dogs, avian species like corvids (ravens, jays, crows and magpies), and even cephalopods like octopus are sentient.
They think. They feel. They experience emotions like joy, sadness, excitement, anxiety, love, loneliness and more, just as intensely as we do. They may not be able to articulate those feelings in words, but they’re real.
More than half a century’s worth of science has confirmed that fact at every step, and we continue to learn more about animal cognition with every advance in technology that allows us to peer deeper into their minds.
Awww, he tolerates me!
When you treat your pet with respect and keep their feelings in mind, you’ll have a friend for life.
A loyal friend whose love comes without condition.
A friend who won’t lie to you…except maybe when it comes to food. After all, Bud could win an Oscar for his role as a starving cat, even though a single glance at him confirms he’s never missed a meal.
If you’re where I was years ago and considering bringing a pet into your life, ask yourself if you’re ready for a commitment that could last two decades, if you’re ready and motivated to give an animal not just a forever home, but the best life the little one can live.
Remember that kittens and puppies grow up fast, and think about whether you’d rather have a whirlwind of energy who will wreck your sleeping habits for months, or an adult furball who is much more chill. Remember that you will have to do things you don’t like, whether it’s scooping a litter box or bagging poop on a walk. There will be expenses, scares, the occasional puked-on rug.
But the joy you’ll get, and the friendship you’ll have, will make it all worth it.
And if you’re sure, find yourself a buddy at your local shelter. Your life will be better for it.
P.S. If you’re a fool like me, you can also have fun imagining your cat or dog in absurd scenarios based on their personalities.
Patches was the biggest cat the staff at a Virginia animal shelter had ever seen, and was within snacking distance of the all-time record.
When Patches was surrendered to a Virginia animal shelter in mid-April of 2023, the staff — including longtime veterans of cat rescue — were taken aback.
The six-year-old feline weighed in at a staggering 40-plus pounds and was so big, the shelter staff had to keep him in an office because the largest crates they had were barely large enough for Patches to turn around.
“We thought we had seen big cats before, but he was definitely the biggest that we’ve ever seen,” Richmond Animal Care and Control’s Robin Young told the Washington Post at the time.
Patches was in dangerous territory for his personal health, and if allowed to continue gaining weight, he’d threaten the world record for a domestic cat, which is more than 46 pounds. (Guiness World Records stopped recognizing the heaviest cats decades ago because the organization didn’t want to encourage people to overfeed their cats in pursuit of the record.)
Top row: Patches in the early days shortly after his adoption. Bottom row: Patches after losing a significant amount of weight.
Last week, Patches reached a new milestone, weighing in at 18.94 pounds after more than two years of eating healthy and getting exercise with the help of Kay Ford, a retired businesswoman who adopted him.
It’s an incredible achievement, and one that was hard-fought, as anyone familiar with cats will know. Many well-fed cats can convince almost anyone they’re starving.
Ford’s pitch to the shelter made it easy for them as they fielded a flood of adoption applications for the chonkster, who had attracted plenty of attention as soon as the shelter posted about him online.
Ford told the shelter she was experienced, committed to helping Patches get down to a healthy weight, and would look forward to the challenge. She’d put on a few pounds during the pandemic, she added, and would lose weight alongside her new pal.
“I’ve had cats all my life,” Ford told the Post at the time. “It just seemed like the right thing.”
Ford with Patches shortly after meeting him. Credit: Richmond Animal Care and Control
She agreed to meetings at the shelter to review a weight loss plan and began documenting Patches’ progress on a Facebook page, Patches’ Journey, which now has more than 53,000 people following the feline’s transformation.
His diet isn’t over, and it’s a lifestyle change meant to be permanent, but there are a lot of people who are proud of the (much less) big guy, who now looks like a completely different cat.
A California cat tries her paw at culinary creations, while a video of a void demonstrates the power of feline persistence when it comes to annoying their people into doing their bidding.
Who says cats don’t love their people?
A California cat named Wendy decided to add a little, uh, flavor to her family’s dinner.
When Wendy’s human mom walked back into the kitchen after feeding the family’s dogs, Wendy’s odd behavior prompted her to check an internal camera to see what the tabby was up to.
The footage showed Wendy dropping a dead mouse into the pot.
The foster fail’s humans, however, didn’t appreciate Wendy’s special ingredient.
“As you can guess,” Wendy’s human “mom” told a local TV news station, “it was takeout for dinner that night.”
Wake up, humans!
Anyone who claims cats are oblivious to the people they live with has never really spent much time around the little stinkers.
This void cat knows precisely how to annoy her people to the point where they give up on sleep and get up to feed her:
Which is interesting to me because that’s precisely what Bud used to do, with two key differences: 1) He’d raise and slam the flap to his litter box, which had a distinct creak from the joints, 2) He didn’t do it to get food, since he already gets a bowl of dry food and fresh water just before bedtime.
He did it to wake me up so we could hang out and be amigos.
If I succumbed to his assault of annoyingness, he’d give me a “Mrrrrrp!” like he was saying “Right on, dude. Righteous! So I’m gonna lay on your chest with my nose two inches away from yours and just, like, stare at you all creepy-like while you scratch my head, deal?”
I’ve since replaced that litter box with one that also has a cover, but no flap. I regret that decision, because now Bud just stands on my face and shrieks “MRRRRAAAHHH!!! MMMRRRAAAHHH!” into my ear.
I should have known there’s no winning with our feline overlords.
Pain In The Bud 