You may have been reading this week about the arrest of Caboodle Ranch owner Craig Grant. Mr. Grant operated a cat sanctuary in FL and was featured in a satirical piece on the Colbert Report about a year ago. You can see the very funny clip, which shows many of the cats and their environment here.
Local law enforcement, working with the ASPCA, have seized all of Mr. Grant’s cats (about 700). Mr. Grant intends to fight the cruelty charges. If he is ultimately acquitted, will the ASPCA give him his 700 cats back?
PETA has posted an “undercover expose” clip on its website about Caboodle. I’m not linking to it but if you are interested, you can Google it. It shows footage, obtained over a period of several months, of sick and suffering cats. The thing I have never trusted about the PETA “undercover expose” videos is that they compile them over months. This bothers me for a couple of reasons. How could any compassionate person watch a pet suffer for months – if that’s what’s happening – in order to document cruelty? Furthermore, if you stay at any sanctuary for an extended period, you are bound to see all sorts of things crop up and there is no way for viewers to know context once PETA has edited down months of footage to 5 minutes. For example, the place may take in one sick/malnourished/whatever cat a month and if you film for six months – BOOM, you’ve got 6 cats in bad shape for your video and you don’t have to disclose that they came in that way. Also it’s PETA so…
What are your thoughts on this case?