34 WILD ANIMALS. 



cats were not the subject of larceny by reason of their base 

 nature.^^* 



They are, however, the subject of civil remedies, and in a 

 Canadian case it was held that where one is killed the measure 

 of damages is above the market value if there are circum- 

 stances of aggravation."^ The question of property in cats 

 is there elaborately discussed. The court said, inter alia: 

 "Whether feres natures or, as other authorities consider them, 

 domitce natures, the point to be decided is whether cats being, 

 as well as dogs and certain other animals, what the law terms 

 of a base nature by reason of their not being fit for the food 

 of man, are or are not the subject of property. For if they 

 are, there is no doubt that trespass will lie for kilHng them, 

 since damages may be recovered in that form of action for 

 any injury of a forcible kind done to anything whatever in 

 which a man has property. . . . What say the authorities on 

 the point? So far as I know it has never been the subject of 

 a judicial decision in any of the courts at Westminster. The 

 only sources, therefore, to which we can have recourse for 

 information are the text-writers of authority; and the only 

 one who supports the view urged for the defendant at the trial 

 is Mr. Chitty in his work on the Practice at Law. He there 

 lays it down that 'Trespass in general lies for taking any ani- 

 mal or bird out of the actual possession of a person who has 

 secured the same ; but no action lies for enticing from the 

 premises of the owner and afterwards killing or injuring a cat, 

 which is not considered of any value in law.' He quotes no 

 authority for this statement, and, so far as I have been able 

 to ascertain, it is wholly unsupported by any [citing as au- 

 thorities for the proposition that civil remedies exist even 

 when the animal is not the subject of larceny, Bl. Com., Bac. 

 Abr., Toller Exrs. and the Report of the Criminal Law 



'^' 2 East P. C. 614. So held also in one of the lower courts of Mary- 

 land. See 40 Cent. L. Jour. 41. 



"° Whittingham v. Ideson, supra. 



See Harris v. Slater, 42 Sol. Jour. 711, for an example of a partnership 

 in a cat and in the prizes it took. 



