Kitten burned alive, and reflections on Singapore’s record
A nice person in the US wrote to enquire about Shadow’s wellbeing and mentioned the case of Adam, a feral kitten trapped in a cage and set on fire by 2 girls in Sonoma county, CA, USA (details and updates here on pet-abuse.com).
Adam (source: SFGATE.com)
I googled for news coverage of poor Adam, and found this article (dated Wednesday, July 18, 2007) on SFGate.com representative and balanced of the views about animal cruelty cases like this.
I quote (emphasis mine):
It is difficult to quantify the will to live, but a tiny kitten that was set on fire and nearly burned to death is as good an example as any.
Wrapped in towels in a cage at the Animal Hospital of Cotati, Adam, as the hospital staff calls him, is struggling to survive against all odds.
The kitten was only 8 weeks old June 19 when two 15-year-old girls allegedly poured flammable liquid on him while he was trapped in a cage and lit a match.
An 11-year-old boy and his friend saw the smoke and heard the cat shrieking amid what they described as the girls’ laughter. They found the kitten cowering near death in bushes next to a creek and brought him to the apartment manager.
The girls, whose names have not been released, were charged in Sonoma County Juvenile Court with felony cruelty to animals last week after an intensive search, a $10,000 reward fund and a Bay Area-wide furor.
The barbarity Adam endured stunned and angered community leaders, who cite studies showing that young people who abuse animals are more likely to someday abuse people.
“Hurting or terrorizing or torturing animals is one symptom of conduct disorder,” said Lisa Boesky, a San Diego-based clinical psychologist, who specializes in identifying violent tendencies in juveniles. “We need to ask the question, ‘Why did they do this?,’ and then address that.”
The money and attention being lavished on Adam has angered many in the neighborhood, where a 16-year-old boy was killed a year ago to much less outrage.
“The mentality here is: They can put up a reward for a burned cat, but they can’t put up a reward for a kid who got killed,” said Shawna Shaffer, the apartment manager who called for help after the kitten was brought to her office. “But we’re talking (in both cases) about the way kids are being raised in this neighborhood.”
Some are questioning the decision to keep the cat alive at considerable expense instead of putting it out of its misery. The surgeries and care alone will probably total from $20,000 to $30,000, Hinkle said. Money is being raised by Forgotten Felines, and the veterinary surgeon, Lisa Alexander, has been operating pro bono.
“He is fighting for his life, so we would never bail out on him at this point,” Hinkle said. “This is what compassion looks like, what the children in that neighborhood need more of in their lives.
“From my perspective, those girls need more help than this kitten. My goal for Adam is for him to be the poster child for what the community can do if it comes together.”
It strikes at the heart of the problem, th recognition that animal abuse is something to be looked into, not waved aside as youthful impulse or worse, curiosity or fun. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would like to cite again Singapore’s record and prevailing attitude, ie, not enough is being done!
Ironically, today’s editions of the major local papers ran features on how the law is going to study the psychology of kleptomania and set benchmark sentencing/rulings that it hopes will help both convicted kleptos and the society. Now why isn’t this applied to animal cruelty cases? It sure doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the logic, does it?
Also, I note the mention of community leaders’ reaction and the community’s reactions. Once again, Singapore’s prevailing attitude is shown wanting, to put it very mildly. (More here. And for the latest and freshest, check this latest TNRM caregivers vs authority saga on Dawn’s blog, taking place between 20 Jul to 24 Jul 2007: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
I’m appending both the SFGate.com article and the klepto article in today’s TODAY for ref.
Adam, the torched kitten, may need all 9 lives
COTATI
Adam, the torched kitten, may need all 9 lives
With ear tips and tail amputated, he’s vulnerable to infection — burned back is an open wound
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
It is difficult to quantify the will to live, but a tiny kitten that was set on fire and nearly burned to death is as good an example as any.
Wrapped in towels in a cage at the Animal Hospital of Cotati, Adam, as the hospital staff calls him, is struggling to survive against all odds.
The kitten was only 8 weeks old June 19 when two 15-year-old girls allegedly poured flammable liquid on him while he was trapped in a cage and lit a match.
An 11-year-old boy and his friend saw the smoke and heard the cat shrieking amid what they described as the girls’ laughter. They found the kitten cowering near death in bushes next to a creek and brought him to the apartment manager.
The girls, whose names have not been released, were charged in Sonoma County Juvenile Court with felony cruelty to animals last week after an intensive search, a $10,000 reward fund and a Bay Area-wide furor.
Little Adam purrs and bats playfully at toys in the dog-size cage inside the hospital and has free rein in the master bedroom or in a playpen at the home of head nurse Tina Wright, who takes him with her every night.
But he is a long way from being out of danger. His tail and the tips of his ears had to be amputated, and his entire back is nothing but raw tissue, the skin having been burned completely off.
“If left untreated, he would die,” said Dr. Katheryn Hinkle, the head veterinarian and owner of the Animal Hospital. “He would get an infection. You can’t have that much open skin and not get an infection. He is also very vulnerable to viral disease at this point.”
The kitten has already undergone two operations in which the surgeon stretched skin from his sides and partially covered the open wound on his back. He will need several more skin-stretching operations before the wound is closed, including grafts from other areas of his body.
“Every week he’s going to have some skin-grafting technique to close that big gap on his back,” Hinkle said. “There’s not enough skin on the sides to complete the job.”
Hinkle said it will take at least two more surgeries and possibly several months before Adam’s exposed areas are covered. She said the most difficult part is the feline’s rear end. “He’s got pieces of his pelvic bone sticking out,” she said.
“The degree of injury is greater than our normal level of trauma that we care for,” Hinkle said. “He’s our most critical patient, and we’re watching him constantly.”
Adam cannot leave his cage inside the hospital because of the danger of contamination, and nobody is allowed to touch him without gloves. His bandages are changed every morning at 7 a.m. He eats both dry and wet cat food except after surgery, when he is on an intravenous pump for 24 hours to monitor his intake of fluids, medicines and painkillers.
“Monitoring the IV pump requires me to stay up all night,” Wright said. “It is exactly like having an infant. I have to haul all the stuff back to work in a diaper bag.”
The kitten was one of six feral litter mates captured along with a male cat on a Santa Rosa farm and brought back to the trapper’s apartment in the Apple Valley neighborhood. The plan was to get the cats spayed and neutered at Forgotten Felines of Sonoma County, an organization dedicated to controlling wild cat populations humanely. The cats were to be turned loose on the farm again after being sterilized.
The trapper left three cages on his porch overnight, but the two containing the other five kittens were stolen. The male cat was left on the porch, and nobody knows for sure what happened to the other kittens.
The barbarity Adam endured stunned and angered community leaders, who cite studies showing that young people who abuse animals are more likely to someday abuse people.
“Hurting or terrorizing or torturing animals is one symptom of conduct disorder,” said Lisa Boesky, a San Diego-based clinical psychologist, who specializes in identifying violent tendencies in juveniles. “We need to ask the question, ‘Why did they do this?,’ and then address that.”
The money and attention being lavished on Adam has angered many in the neighborhood, where a 16-year-old boy was killed a year ago to much less outrage.
“The mentality here is: They can put up a reward for a burned cat, but they can’t put up a reward for a kid who got killed,” said Shawna Shaffer, the apartment manager who called for help after the kitten was brought to her office. “But we’re talking (in both cases) about the way kids are being raised in this neighborhood.”
Some are questioning the decision to keep the cat alive at considerable expense instead of putting it out of its misery. The surgeries and care alone will probably total from $20,000 to $30,000, Hinkle said. Money is being raised by Forgotten Felines, and the veterinary surgeon, Lisa Alexander, has been operating pro bono.
“He is fighting for his life, so we would never bail out on him at this point,” Hinkle said. “This is what compassion looks like, what the children in that neighborhood need more of in their lives.
“From my perspective, those girls need more help than this kitten. My goal for Adam is for him to be the poster child for what the community can do if it comes together.”
Adam’s next surgery will probably be on Thursday or Friday. “In the end, he’ll be adopted into a good home,” said Wright, who also works for Forgotten Felines. “I have the option (to adopt him), but I try not to think too far ahead.”
E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/18/BAGR3R2ETO1.DTL
This article appeared on page B – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Kleptomaniacs, why do they keep on stealing?
This story was printed from TODAYonline
Kleptomaniacs, why do they keep on stealing?
Psychiatric evidence in case against shoplifter will help set sentencing benchmark, says judge
Wednesday • July 25, 2007
Leong Wee Keat
weekeat@mediacorp.com.sgA kleptomaniac who stole while serving probation for previous thefts was yesterday given a brief respite from a heavier sentence.
Judge of Appeal V K Rajah adjourned a prosecution appeal against the sentence to call for further psychiatric evidence on kleptomania — a mental illness in which one has the impulse to steal.
Besides the incidence and prevalence of the illness here, Justice Rajah also asked for evidence on the circumstances that may lead to kleptomaniacs here stealing.
Noting that the prosecution would rely on this case for future benchmark sentences, Justice Rajah said the new psychiatric evidence would aid the Courts in deciding on “the right equilibrium” between deterrence and rehabilitation for future kleptomania cases.
Goh Lee Yin, 26, was spared a lengthy jail sentence in May even though she had stolen while on probation. She stole two handbags from Coach and Louis Vuitton, worth about $2,300 in total, midway through her probation last year.
In Nov 2005, the former Chief Justice Yong Pung How had set aside a 2.5-month jail term imposed by a district judge and placed her on 24 months’ probation instead.
CJ Yong had said: “The court was unfortunately saddled in this instance with having to choose between imprisonment and probation, neither of which represented a truly satisfactory or appropriate solution.”
Midway through her probation last November, Goh committed the latest offences and was sentenced to a day’s jail and a fine of $8,000 in the Community Court.
In his grounds of decision, Community Court Judge Bala Reddy said Goh “has to realise that she has breached the limits of rehabilitation efforts that were aimed at enabling her to seek treatment and stay out of prison”.
Goh first shoplifted when she was nine, initially stealing items of little value such as razor blades and cosmetics.
Her lawyer, Mr Spencer Gwee, told the Court that she had fulfilled a condition of the probation order in serving 250 hours of community service.
The appeal case will be adjourned to a further date.
Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.
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