Did the city have the right to do this?

To add: When the humane officer finally showed up at my door at 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning, he said, he was trapping “feral cats.”
I said, “My cat’s not feral!”
Then he started to preach to me that cats have to have their shots just like dogs…I interrupted and said, “She has her shots. She’s spayed too.” Well, that kind of stopped him cold.

I had called the pound on Wednesday to see if they had my cat, a black cat, they said “No.”
The officer said he’d taken her in on Tuesday.
So I went to the pound.
They took me back to a small room that didn’t have all that many cages in it, but couldn’t find her and couldn’t find her. Told me she wasn’t there.
There was a stacked bank of metal boxes that had no screen. You couldn’t see in or out. I suggested we double check them.
They said, ‘Well, that’s where we put the new cats to give them time to calm down in the dark, but there are no cats in there.”
Needless to say, I wasn’t fucking leaving without checking those boxes, if I had to do it myself.
She was in the 2nd box from the bottom. Surprise surprise. I wonder if she even got fed and watered during the time she was there…but she seemed no worse for the wear in the end.

When I went to file a complaint, the police chief said he’d waive the fines.

A bit later I talked to the humane officer again and he mentioned that he’d checked the data base and the dogs hadn’t been licensed with the city in 3 years, and the cat had never been licensed. He sounded vaguely threatening. Would they have had the right to bust me, big time, for all of that? We were looking at several hundred dollars worth of fines.
It felt quite Gestapoish, really.

All said and done, everyone, the two dogs and the cat, is up to date on their shots, everyone is spayed (and have been for years) and everyone is licensed with the city.

So, what say ye, Fluther? Does the city have a license to do this kind of thing on private property? Especially, were they going after my cat, specifically do you think?

Check what the city ordinances are, your vet may be a good source for impartial information. If your property isn’t fenced they may have some weird domain rights to carry out that kind of activity. I have heard of this before, in other places, and I agree that it sucks. Municipalities all over have very weird laws on the books, it could be for real. They might argue that seeing a loose, unlicensed animal might pose a threat (they could assume that it’s feral) and therefore be entitled to take that action.
I’m glad they waived the fee.
It might be something to look into and work on changing.

My property is fenced. The officer said the dogs need to be contained, but the cats don’t. You just have to be able to prove the cats are licensed (and they have to have shots and spay to be licensed) when asked.

I just don’t know why he didn’t say something to us. He knows us pretty well, what with the possum problems. He knows our dogs too. He just said, “I didn’t know you had a cat.”...

I mean, Wednesday night Rick was gone and I was kind of scared. The trap was gone Tuesday evening, but then it was back Wednesday evening (and our cat was gone.) I had no idea what was going on. For all I knew it was some deranged animal murderer setting traps for cats.
When I saw the trap out again I took it in the house. I was pretty worried that night that some deranged person was going to be beating on my doors wanting his trap back.

OK, that’s way the hell out of line to come inside your fence.

Just the back yard is fenced, and we have a big back yard. The side yard, which includes the driveway and the garage, is not. (I actually scored almost a double lot when I bought this house.)

I did rather sarcastically ask the chief, “Can he come inside our fence and round up our dogs and haul them off??”
I mean, they did that on suspicion, I guess, that I had broken some city law. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me. But damn it! THEY broke a Constitutional law. IMO they need to have a damn good reason to do that, especially if they don’t plan to talk to the citizen whose property was involved.

Not quite. Visible, unfenced property is different from the home.
Again let me suggest you talk to someone about the ordinances. They may have been well within the law doing that.

Does the cat wear a collar with contact information/tags?

I don’t understand. How is unfenced property different from the home? In this case, we have our back deck, which leads to the driveway. Across the driveway, and with the back of it against the fence, is the garage. Wait…I’ll take a picture…

Cats don’t need collars @Pied_Pfeffer. I told him that I wasn’t comfortable with putting a collar on a cat when they spend time outdoors. I’m afraid she’d could get hung up on something. He said a lot of people feel that way, and collars aren’t required. You just have to be able to prove that they’re licensed when asked. Like, throw the tags in a drawer or something.

I AM going to get them all chipped next week. It’s only $25 per animal at the pound. I didn’t realize it could be so cheap. My vet charges $75 per animal.

In my personal moral code, no they don’t, and if I were you, I’d want to plant some animal control officer traps… and/or go about the neighborhood finding their traps, releasing any trapped animals and dropping their traps into the sewer.

I would have needed to check my anger when they told me the cages were empty and then I found my cat, to keep myself from trying to stuff the person into the cage.

Here is the view from my back door.. The fence is on the left. The trap was left on the other side of the RV, against the garage, but the RV was not there when he put it down.

This is the View from the street. Again, no RV at the time. It was wide open.

One more from the street

I mean, anyway you look at it, it’s on obviously private property. My broker said they probably have a special license to go on private property under certain circumstances, like cops, which makes sense. But to trap someone’s cat doesn’t seem to me to qualify as “certain circumstances.”

Oh, yeah, @Zaku. And when the humane society told me I was going to have to pay a fine to get my cat back that the dog catcher went out of his way to trap…? Oh, hell no. It could have been of $100+, just for the cat if they hadn’t backed down.

If he had just come and talked to me he would have learned my cat was up to date on her shots, and spayed. It just didn’t occur to me to register my cat with the city.

I’d prepare a write-up of all the details. I’m still in fantasy rage mode, entertaining the idea of starting a crowdfund to sue the city. Your legal liability seems limited to not paying their stupid license fees, which even with penalties is not that huge a deal. Their risk is a public outcry. I find your story extremely compelling, probably not from the point of view of our legal system (which heartlessly treats animals like objects with little or no value unless they’re pedigreed or something), but from the point of view of public opinion and so on, I think they have a lot to lose from your story getting attention. People IMO should and would be PEEVED. Putting traps on your property without telling you seems ridiculous. Failing to find your pet, asking you to pay a fine for a pet they trapped in its own yard, and lying to you about there being no animals in the cages it was in, are all screwed up. It might be worth checking with a lawyer about your specific liability. I think I would look around for local animal groups and see if they’d like to know the details of your case. You probably are not the only one whose pet has been trapped or even lost, nor the last who will be, so I think the story needs to be out there. There may be someone out there who will (possibly already is) compile similar cases and demand the city clean up what it’s doing.

I did get the name of an attorney. He actually works in the same building, on the same floor I work in. I’ll consider stopping by.

The inability to find the cat at the humane society was the fault of the kids who work for minimum wage there, not the city. It wasn’t deliberate…which was even worse, in a way because if they didn’t know she was there, was she fed and watered for the 2 days she was there? Locked in that black box that people can’t see in to? But she seemed OK, in the end.

The thing is, it’s a small town. By law they can’t punish you for turning them in or causing problems for them, but we know what that’s worth when it’s the law breaking the law.

Regardless of whatever wacky laws might be on the books in your community, coming onto private property to set an animal trap HAS to be illegal. I know here in CA. I have been told that by our local A.C. that one not allowed to set traps on any private properties without owner permission. If I wanted to trap a feral cat on someones elses property I would have to have their permission. I would be seriously pissed off about this!

Unless there are leash laws in your neighborhood or cats must be wearing a collar with ID I think this was a major crossing the line situation.

What were the “possum problems”? It sounds to me like this is more of a crossed wire situation than jack-booted thugs roaming around tromping on your rights. The 4th Amendment, if that’s the one you’re referencing, can be pretty fluid in the concept of stuff outside the cars and houses, and, in this case, the fence.
If the town knew you had possum problems, maybe they were trying to help out with that. Maybe they took the cat, not knowing it was your cat.
The fact that so many fees were waived indicates to me that they were trying to work with you.

I agree that it’s annoying and unnerving, but, like I said, unless you know for sure that the statutes don’t allow this, you might want to keep the peace.

Ok, so the poorly-trained kids working there weren’t lying, just incompetent. Still a problem that will result in unclaimed pets being killed, and which multiplies the impact of putting animal traps on people’s property without telling them.

One more violation/idiotic-incompetence comes to mind. Ok, so once there’s a trap on someone’s property, and they come back an find “a cat” in it – how about freaking checking with the property owner & neighbors before removing the cat? I can’t believe how screwed up that is. Cats range all over their neighborhoods – it’s ridiculous to trap for random cats.

I’m really peeved at your local animal control…

All I know is that I would be losing my fucking shit.
And possibly filling my yard with Anti Personnel Mines.

Everything you say is true @canidmajor. He did mention the possums…but we haven’t called animal control on them in 2 years because we haven’t had a problem since then.

Then he said he didn’t know we had a cat. I was thinking, “Do you know every single person in town that has a cat?”

It’s the fact that he didn’t ask, that bothers me the most. That’s what lead to all of this….I didn’t know who was setting the traps, and for a while I was scared.

My cat ended up in solitary for 3 days and I don’t think the pound even knew they had her! I called on Wednesday, when we realized she was gone, and they said they didn’t have her. In fact, he’d taken her in the day before, on Tuesday. I didn’t get to her until Thursday.

He never apologized. Not really. He did look somewhat regretful when he realized he’d taken our cat. But he immediately started to lecture me that cats have to have shots, and have the same restrictions as dogs. His attitude was as though he was sure I didn’t know this. But healthcare is what you DO when you have animals, not just because it’s the law.
He was surprised when I said she was current on shots, and was spayed. The only thing I’d overlooked was getting her registered with the city. That never occurred to me.

Then, hours later, back at the police station, where I was talking to the captain (who made the call to waive the fees,) who called the Animal Control guy in, it was like he made some sort of veiled threat when he said “I checked the system. Your dogs haven’t been licensed with the city for 3 years.”

But one call to the vet, and within an hour they were all registered with the city, and it couldn’t have been done that fast if they weren’t all current on their shots and spayed.

I’m sure he meant well, but an apology would have been nice. Instead I felt like I got that veiled threat of hundreds of dollars in fines for not have the animals currently registered, as though to say, “Don’t make problems here…” That upset me.

Then I told him that there is a feral black cat who lives around the house across the street and between her, and this black tom who hangs around, they seem intent on providing the neighborhood with a new litter of painfully cute black kittens every three months. That’s actually where Vanta came from. For whatever reason, that momma cat put Vanta on our deck, tucked into a corner, about two years ago, and we brought her in.

What we had here was a “failure to communicate.”

You are also right to suggest let bygones be bygones. It was just an ultimate frustration that could have all been avoided if he’d just talked to us first. Which he should have done. And which I’ll bet he will do in the future.

AND I DON’T EVEN LIKE THAT CAT!!!! She’s mean to me!!! But she’s my cat.

What a bunch of fucking Nazis! I’m not sure what I would do, but talking to a lawyer might be part of it. (And a city councilman might help).

I would talk to code enforcement officer and if he tells you that the animal control officer had the right to do what he did, according to town code, I’d ask to see it in writing.

I’d stop and talk to your lawyer friend, since he is free, it seems. I’d speak to code enforcement officer first to get his take on it.

I’d probably be writing a letter to the Mayor, too, and cc’ing the boss of the animal control guy.

We have too many vague, baloney laws here in the US. Please stop voting them in.

The trouble is, I like him.

If I were you and I liked him, I’d start by going and having a conversation with him. I’d approach him and just say “It’s not clear to me why you came onto private property to trap my cat. It’s not clear why you came past my fence to do this.” See what he says.

This is really horrible and could have resulted in the death of your cat due to sheer incompetence.

It makes me wonder how many other people they do this to and how much revenue they derive from all of the other people who don’t register a protest as you did and just pay those fines relieved to have their pet back.

Coming onto your property to set the trap is just wrong on so many levels (even if they do have some CYA statutes on the books.

But I’d definitely run it by the lawyer to see if they had any right to do this at all.

I will let you all know what the lawyer says.

I honestly don’t think it was any kind of scam by the city. I think maybe he thought he was doing us a favor. People make mistakes. But now he knows otherwise.

Beside the point that they trapped your own cat on your own land (which I think is disgraceful), I am concerned that they had lost track of her after her capture. I think it is the city’s fault. They should have a strict guideline the kids at the pound should be following. They didn’t know she was there so you can bet she wasn’t fed or watered. They call themselves a ‘humane society’? If they are a registered SPCA, there are regional offices you can report your problem to. I would absolutely do that too. Their processes need to be sorted.

How is trapping your own cat on your own property doing you a favor, @Dutchess_III?

jca, The control officer thought he was trapping feral cats. I don’t like the idea that this petty ‘city officer’ has the right to come on to anyone’s property and set traps without the home owner’s knowledge or permission. They aren’t even allowed to do that here unless the dog or cat is reported as being neglected or has bitten someone. But I did find out that if a dog gets lose, I can make up any story I like to get it carted off and put down if I don’t like it or the owners (there is a high profile case going on here now that I’m so angry about I could spit tacks)

He thought he was doing us a favor, @jca. He mentioned something about the possums we’d had problems with 2 years earlier. He didn’t know we had a cat.