Hope everyone is having a beautiful Sunday. 

Something happened in our peaceful little town this past week that has caused both heartache and anger. The conflict had been going on for months. There has been a colony of feral cats living around a factory, now abandoned, in downtown Loudon for over seventy years. Many people’s domestic pets came from this colony and most likely my Bubs and LuLu are descendants. They hurt no one, kept vermine at bay and nearby residents entertained. Instead of finding them the pests they were later described to be, those humans who lived nearby cherished and nurtured the cats. One resident, a retired judge, led the fight to preserve them. She not only provided food and sheltered, she also had many of them spayed and neutered and found homes for both cats and kittens. About a year a a half ago, our city commission hired a new city administrator. This is a man who was asked to leave his last position for reasons not revealed. We do have a problem with vultures that roost in mass on downtown structures. They aren’t harmful but can be terribly disturbing, like a visual bad omen or harbingers of disaster. There is nothing that can be done about the vultures because they are protected by law. No one really knows why they inhabit our town in such huge numbers but the newly hired city administrator became convinced that it was the feral cats that were attracting them. As most people know, this is an irrational concept because vultures only eat carrion. Many people saw the two species coexisting peacefully. Still, this fellow decided that the solution to the over population of vultures was to kill the cats. He proposed poisoning them last year but the retired judge and cat caretaker informed him that would violate the animal cruelty laws and she would make certain he was prosecuted. Still, he appeared to be intent on destroying the cats. It seemed to become a crusade with him. Last Wednesday, he and his assistant carried through their threats covertly. Without warning, they gathered up the dozen cats, two of which were pregnant and all of the kittens already promised to good homes, and then fast tracked their euthanasia. They were all dead before the end of day. His assistant is actually head of our local ASPCA! That evidently didn’t give her greater love for animals but it did give her the knowledge to know how to classify the cats as strays so that they wouldn’t be held for the required seventy four hours. Their excuse for this atrocity? They told someone that there are plans to tear down the buildings where the cats reside and didn’t want them killed then. Evidently, since they killed them, they just didn’t want the corpses that might attract more vultures. People aren’t happy. There is supposed to be a city council meeting tomorrow night. I don’t hold out much hope that anything will come from it. It usually feels as if it is an us against them battle when it comes to the citizens versus the commissioners. But, unlike the city administrator and his assistant, they are elected officials. I live outside the city limits so I don’t really have a vote in this matter but I still plan to be there tomorrow night. I have a best friend who lives down town but is having surgery tomorrow and so can’t attend. I can at least stand in as her presence in the crowd I hope shows up to protest.