Busselton Catnappers

Friday 15th May 2009
It was a busy day at the Café today, made even busier by a phone call from the local Ranger, informing us that he had our cat Sterling locked up in his pound.
The Ranger was only going to be at the pound for a short while, so Carolyn had to go home, pick up a cat box, go to the Shire Offices pay a huge fee and then drive to the pound to get the cat.
It turned out that the Ranger had picked up the cat last Saturday but didn’t have a Chip scanner on him, so left it until today to get the scanner in order to find out who the owner is,
If the Ranger hadn’t been able to get hold of us today, the cat would have been taken to the local vet tomorrow to be put down, now how unfair is that, we had been waiting nearly a week to find out what had happened to the cat and all the time the Ranger had him locked up but couldn’t be bothered to get off his arse and scan it for a chip.
Carolyn asked the Ranger where he found the cat, he said that he had picked it up from somebody’s garden, not too far from us, it had been caught in a Cat Trap.
The reason our cat had been caught in this trap was because they put food in it to entice it in, we are furious and are trying to find out where the trap was, needless to say the Ranger wouldn’t tell us.
If there is anyone out there who knows a friendly Australian lawyer who could give us some advice on this we would be most grateful.
Apparently the Shire of Busselton hands out Cat Traps to anyone who asks for one, the people who ask for them, Bait them up, catch a Cat, the Ranger picks it up and the owner has to fork out just under Two Hundred Dollars to get it back.
Now if somebody had prize Ducks or Pigeons and a Cat was coming along on a regular basis and eating the stock, we could understand the reason for having traps, the same as you would for Foxes etc, but there is nowhere round here that has that problem as far as we know.
The Cat got Trapped last Saturday and the Ranger picked him up the same day, the kids have been distraught all week because they didn’t know where he was and the Ranger made no effort to find the owner. We were hoping that the freedom of information act would enable us to find out where the trap is so that we can do our best to stop the cat from heading in that direction, as it is he is a scrounger, all the neighbours feed him and he does the rounds getting bits of food as he goes. When this person baited a trap, he would naturally assume that the food was for him.
The people who baited this trap did so to lure him into their garden, he may never have been there before and would possibly have never gone there if they had not baited it to entice him.
Ian reckons there must be a law about enticing a persons livestock off of its land, thereby denying use of said livestock from the owner, anywhere else it would be called stealing.
These people deliberately denied us of our cat for six days, keeping him trapped and caged in a way that he was not used to, they are thieves and should be accountable for their actions. We aren’t going to mention how happy Carolyn was,after paying the fee for releasing the cat from Prison, after collecting the cat from the pound, to then be given a fine for letting the escape artist do his act.
Fraser received an award in school assembly today for his results in his science test, he worked so hard and for so long on it he deserved it.
Because it was so busy during the day at the Café and Carolyn was called away, Ian didn’t get round to doing a lot of his work until the end of the day. He ended up making Chicken and Mushroom Pie Filling until 8pm, with Carolyn coming in to help between 6pm and 7.30pm while the kids were at Freaky Friday, where apparently the water was pristine tonight, or was that pissed in, I can’t remember, it’s been a long day.