To think cat owners are unreasonable for insisting that drivers MUST stop if they hit a cat?

[OtterlyMad]

Some of the people on my town’s Facebook page lose their minds when a cat is killed by a car. It’s automatically blamed on speeding (despite there being no evidence of this) and there are always lots of comments along the lines of how “disgusting” it is that the driver didn’t stop and make the owner aware.

None of them seem to appreciate that the driver might not have time to track down the owner. For example, perhaps they are on their way to work, a job interview, wedding, funeral, court, airport, hospital, dentist, client meeting, school pick up, etc. Plus cats can wander quite far and don’t all wear collars so tracking down the owner could be a real challenge - even more so if driver isn’t local to the area!

Obviously it’s devastating for people to lose their pet in this way (I’m an animal lover and have owned pets all my life so I get it) but surely this is a known risk of allowing cats to roam freely? And owners accept that risk because they feel it gives their cat a better quality of life, even if that means their life is shorter as a result?

My locals are now campaigning to make it law that drivers who hit a cat must not only stop and find the owner, but also HAND OVER THEIR CONTACT DETAILS. To do what with?! So the cat’s owner can give the driver grief and/or demand compensation they’re not entitled to???

Am I the only one thinking this is ludicrous?

You are being unreasonable - drivers should be required to stop, track down the owner of the cat and hand over their contact details.

You are not being unreasonable - injury/death by vehicle is a sad but accepted risk of cats having the right to roam so drivers should not be required to stop.

If you hit a dog the dog owner doesn’t pay to fix you car though?

Why do people seem to think a dog is more important than a cat?

The attitude that it should be a legal requirement to report hitting a dog, but not a cat???

There's a cat a few miles from me that does this! I always have a happy smile when I see him waiting to cross!

If my DH or DS announced they'd hit a cat & then just continued on like nothing had happened, I'd go ballistic & they'd be going back out to find it immediately.

I don't think it should be law, necessarily, but isn't that just decent behaviour? Any vets bills should be on the owner, too. But l do find it hard to believe that cats appear out of thin air & that (generally) if ppl were paying proper attention they'd have seen it & been able to react accordingly. I live very rurally & have never hit an animal & I don't exactly practice Sunday-driving. I've been in the car when a bird has flown directly into it's path & it was totally unavoidable, but birds fly!

Stopping to check means the cat might live, leaving it means it will almost certainly die. Why would you want that? You did it, with your car, it's your responsibility.

Fwiw, though, our cat is indoor/leashed cos I'm not wholly on-board with free-roaming due to cars, kids & wildlife 🤷🏼‍♀️

But I do think anyone who hits an animal & doesn't stop to check on it is a dick

So basically fuck all outdoor cat owners then, as they’re the ones who have hurt their own pet by negligence. Also, fuck them for sending their pet out to kill wildlife and other people’s pets.

Fuck them.

Yes they do. If their dog gets into the road and you hit it they are liable for the damage to your car.

No-one is saying dogs are more important. Dogs aren't allowed out unsupervised and if one causes an accident and/or damage the owner could be held liable. Quite happy for the same rule to apply to cats.

My friend ran over a cat in France when it suddenly darted out into the road. He was towing the caravan and couldn't slam on the brakes for fear of jackknifing. All three wheels (two car, one caravan) went over the cat, so I'm sure it died immediately.

It was late at night, so we just carried on driving.

How would we have possibly tracked down the owner?

It’s not about one being more important than the other, it’s about the responsibilities that come with it. I’d be in complete agreement with making cats the same as dogs in law but the cat owners would be up in arms.

A young driver hit our old boy (he was 19, cat not driver). The driver stopped, read his collar and knocked to tell me. He then took a towel and picked him up. Our cat had died instantly.

I wasn’t angry with the driver. He was quite upset. he said our boy had simply ran out in front of him and there was nothing he could do. I was incredibly grateful because his kindness prevented our son seeing his beloved pet lying dead when we left the house the next morning.

To lots of people, it’s “just” a cat but if drivers can find it in themselves to stop, it could make a big difference to someone.

It's not about importance, it's about how the animals are regarded differently in law, and about their different needs as species.

Dogs as historically working animals are considered the responsibility of their owner and were historically more valuable. They're in the same category as livestock, for the purposes of this thread. Owners must keep them under control, and if you hit one you need to report it.

Cats are different. They are not working animals. It is generally acknowledged that they need to roam. Owners do not need to keep them under control. The downside of this is that there is no legal requirement to report if you hit one when driving.

Now if cats were to be added to the same category as dogs and livestock, there would be a requirement to report when a cat is hit by your car, but consequently owners would have to keep their cats under control and not allow them to roam.

I don't know which is better, but it's not as straightforward as "make it law that you must stop for a cat" because that comes with a lot of other ramifications.

I lost a cat to a re-homed racing greyhound. My cat got in their garden, the dog killed it with one bite & the owner was devastated. So was I!! But I wasn't angry, not in the least. The same cat was hit by a car a few years before, the driver wouldn't have checked cos she would have run off - no idea how cos it had ruptured her diaphragm & all her organs were in her chest. Somehow she made it home, jumped thru the window & got on my bed where she wasn't allowed (by order of her sister), I'd never have known there was anything wrong had she not been there. Vet was stunned she survived not only the accident but the surgery.

Only recently, a delivery driver stopped by my business & was out of the van visibly distressed, so I went to check on him. Poor guy was in bits cos he'd nearly hit a loose dog just up the road, he needed to stop to gather himself but he was going right back to the house (really rural, only house there) & let them know. Cos that's just decent. I gave him a hug & he was shaking like a leaf

But the last location on the tracker means your animal could be located and you weren’t left wondering what had happened to it.

Not to be to graphic but I would expect a cat to be hit by a car and that not to crush a tracker- crushing a tracker means it’s gone under a wheel which I would assume was a subsequent vehicle. If you hit a live animal in the dark it can be difficult to identify what it is- if you run over roadkill I doubt any driver would recognise it to be a cat.

Again the diving to the conclusion the driver is a cunt, is a bit much. It’s the risk you run if you allow your animals to roam free

Yep. I'm not sure some of the moralising cat owners on the thread have fully clocked this. If you want more obligations, they'd work both ways. Be careful what you wish for!

If I hit a cat and knew roughly where it had come from I would make the effort to try and find whose it was, if not if it was safe to do so I’d put it at the side of the road.

on the other hand though I can’t quite make it work in my head how these cats are so beloved yet allowed out to roam and potentially be killed and the driver it’s the knob head. I think that anyone wanting a cat should be made to cat proof their garden solving the problem of their ‘beloved’ pet being run over and the nuisance they cause to neighbours. Thankfully the village I live in (which is two rows of houses either side of a main road) has sensible residents who don’t have cats

*Why do people seem to think a dog is more important than a cat?

The attitude that it should be a legal requirement to report hitting a dog, but not a cat???*

The legal requirement to report hitting a dog to the police (not the owner, a vet or a charity) is because it is illegal for dogs to be out of control and so the owner may be liable for prosecution.

It's nothing to do with importance or assisting the dog in any way and the 'stop' part only references the need to make the phone call asap. The driver is not legally obliged to do anything at all with the dog, or to assist the dog. Just to report the poitential crime of it being dangerously out of control.

No, they're sleeping at home. I've definitely woken vets up. They take turns being on call. If the phone rings they go into the practice or straight to a farm, depending on what's needed.

Im prepared to be called heartless here, but I really don’t want to pick up roadkill and have it in my car!!!! If you’ve allowed you cat to roam the streets fine, but that’s the risk you choose to run, I’m not being penalised by your decision and picking up a dead animal and having its corpse messing up my car. If it might be saved then of course I’ll take it to a vet. But if you want to be contacted put a collar with details on it I’m not driving it anywhere for a potential chip check when most aren’t even chipped anyway.

@AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii
on the other hand though I can’t quite make it work in my head how these cats are so beloved yet allowed out to roam and potentially be killed and the driver it’s the knob head”

Our old fellow was beloved. We didn’t know that he was managing to find his way out to the front of the house over 7 ft walls aged 19! We’d never seen him out there.

We subsequently cat proofed the rear garden, for the other cats.

I didn’t think the young driver who hit him was a knob at all. He was upset and kind and I felt bad for him and very grateful that he’d taken the care to knock.

I would imagine - and I admit I don't know about these things as I don't use vets - that a large city practice with numerous vets and perhaps several branches within the same city would be more likely to have someone on site around the clock. A small rural "James Herriot" style practice with just one or two vets isn't going to have people there all the time.

If you hit a dog the dog owner doesn’t pay to fix you car though?

If you hit a dog because it was dangerously out of control (ie running in the road) then, yes, the dog owner will be paying for the damage. That's one of the reasons why dog owners have public liability insurance as part of their insurance cover.

I hit a cat once, it ran off, i couldn't find it anywhere and wasn't about to start knocking doors at 4:30am

I'd never let my "beloved pet" wander the streets so i'd never own a cat.

My cat was killed in broad daylight, and had been lounging in our garden only 2 hours before we were traced. We had no reason to track him at that point.

We are presuming the impact of the hit caused his collar to come off, and that is how his tracker was destroyed.

Of course, we won't actually ever know if that is what happened as rhe driver failed to help or alert anyone in the nearby houses 🤷‍♀️

And yep, damn right that driver is a cunt for not at least alerting someone to what had happened.

Depends on the practice - mine don’t do out of hours at all, the nearest PDSA surgery is used as a dedicated out of hours for lots of vets, so if you phone them you get a message directing you there

Others team up and take it turn about to have one surgery in the area open for all their clients

It is not always possible to stop. I would not stop for a dog or cat on a very busy road where stopping is not allowed. If it was a dog I would report it to the police as that is the law. The police would not have expected me to stop nor would they expect a woman driving alone at night to get out of her car. They would have just expected her to report it.
Where I live there would be very little chance of much of a dead animal being left anyway, the kites or other scavengers would take it.
You don’t see so many loose dogs in roads about these days. Maybe in a few years more cat owners will keep them in and you won’t see so many cats.