THE GAME BREEDER 



139 



damage is not out of proportion to the 

 danger." Applied to the cat question 

 that means : The owner of a garden in 

 which birds brood may kill cats appear- 

 ing there if he is able to prove that these 

 cats prey upon the birds and their broods. 

 To be sure, judicial decisions unfavorable 

 to owners of gardens, these owners hav- 

 ing killed cats, are not lacking. But in 

 these cases there were culpable accessory 

 circumstances, such as the use of firearms 

 without a permit, or inadmissible near- 

 ness to inhabited buildings. 



Our laws are unquestionably inade- 

 quate, and for that reason the govern- 

 ment and the representatives of the peo- 

 ple will very soon be obliged to take new 

 measures for the protection of birds. 



The experiment of taxing cats has also 

 been tried in order to reduce their num- 

 ber, but this measure has been taken only 

 by towns, and the result cannot yet be 

 seen. 



An important point of view is given, 

 in any event, by the fact that the domestic 

 cat — with you in America as well as here 

 with us — cannot be considered and es- 

 teemed a native animal belonging to the 

 lineal fauna, but that it is an imported 

 stranger which one can justly return to 

 the house of its owner. There is no 

 reason why the privilege of roaming 

 about freely, denied other domestic ani- 

 mals, should be given to the cat. 



According to Dr. Clifton F. Hodge this 

 is practically the solution of the problem 

 reached by Baron von Berlepsch in Ger- 

 many, and there cities provide traps 

 which are continually kept baited and set 

 for stray cats. According to this writer 

 Hamburg has 300 such traps that during 

 the three years previous to the publica- 

 tion of his book had rid the city of 6,226 

 cats. He mentions Berlin, Hamburg, 

 Elberfeld, Barmen, Frankfort, Lineburg, 

 Nuremberg, Pirna, Oels, Breslau, etc., as 

 making official provision for the destruc- 

 tion of cats, and states that in Munster 

 there has existed for some years an 

 "Anti-Cat Society" which has already de- 

 stroyed several thousand of these "beasts 

 of prey." 



In Europe the cat owner seems to have 

 been defeated in the higher courts. In 

 America the owners of domesticated ani- 



mals have their rights defined by law, 

 but the status of the cat seems to have 

 been determined largely by the opinion 

 of the presiding justice, who may regard 

 it as domesticated or as a wild animal. 



The following is an extract from a 

 newspaper report of a portion of the de- 

 cision of Judge Utley of Worcester in a 

 case where Dr. Dellinger was arraigned 

 for injuring and destroying cats that 

 were molesting birds that he was en- 

 gaged to care for : 



A cat is a wild animal. There is no 

 wilder animal in Christendom. It is an. 

 animal that can't be controlled and you 

 can't tell what it will do when it gets out 

 of its owner's sight. A man on his own 

 property has a right to protect it, and 

 when wild animals encroach on it, he is 

 justified in getting rid of them. I find on 

 the evidence presented in this case that 

 the defendant was justified in doing what 

 he did. I don't mean, however, to assert 

 that a man has the right to throw stones 

 promiscuously any place. The defendant 

 is discharged. (Judge Samuel Utley, 

 Criminal Session of the Central District 

 Court, in re Thomas Butler vs. Dr. Oris 

 P. Dellinger. — Worcester Evening Post, 

 September 27, 1905.) 



There is a later decision in Maine 

 which is favorable to the cat, but the cir- 

 cumstances were reversed, as the owner 

 of the cat was the defendant. 



The following appears in the Rural 

 New-Yorker : 



A man in Maine owned a valuable fox 

 terrier dog which went upon a neighbor's 

 property and chased a cat. While it was 

 doing si the owner of the cat shot the 

 dog and i.illed it. The dog's owner sued 

 the neighi'.ir for damages, and won a. 

 verdict on ,he ground that the cat is not: 

 a domestic .animal and therefore not en- 

 titled to legal protection. * * * The 

 cat owner was not satisfied and appealed 

 the case, his lawyer making a long argu- 

 ment to show that the cat is even more a 

 domestic animal than a dog. He suc- 

 ceeded, and the court reversed the lower 

 verdict, which means that the cat owner 

 was justified in protecting his property. 

 He apparently had as much right to kill 

 a dog which chased his cat as he would 



