Cat-Car Interactions

The petition is entitled make it compulsory for drivers involved in an accident with a cat to report the accident to the Police and the explanatory notes say

"Every year, hundreds of beloved pet cats are run over and killed on our roads but it is not a legal requirement to report an accident involving a cat, as it is with dogs. Cats are not classed as animals within the Protection of Animals Act 1911, from where the rules stem. Cats as pets are no less loved than dogs and careless drivers should have to report it to the Police if they are involved in an accident with a cat. Many owners whose cats simply didn't come home would have achieved closure had the drivers concerned been legally required to report the accident to the Police."

I'm a cat-lover, but use of phrases like "achieve closure" bring me out in rabid wish to murder someone's cat.

The police are quite busy people. There are quite a lot of feral cats who belong to nobody. It is quite easy to hit a small animal like a cat without harming it, or without knowing what's happened ... I once saw a cat go under the wheels of the car in front of me - hurtle across the road and go right under the wheel, which passed over its midsection - and then continue to hurtle up the bank on the other side of the road, apparently unhurt. Really strange sight, that was.

I don't think I've ever hit an animal, but I do think it's possible to do without knowing. And more than possible to do it without knowing what you've hit. If this were made law, and if I did hit something, I'd get paranoid and probably end up reporting having struck a squirrel a possible glancing blow, because it might have been a cat, or something.

If you just made it a requirement to stop and check what you'd done and report it if you'd actually killed a cat, I suppose a very, very few people might hear what's happened to their cats who wouldn't otherwise.

At what cost, though? In police time, in particular - for every dead cat reported presumably they'll have to take some kind of action to try to track down the owners, or at least keep a register so people who's cats are missing can come and check ...

How complicated. How expensive in time. How ... pointless.