Cat survives snare; owner wants answers

WASILLA — A cat named Henry served as the latest reminder of the tension between country and city.

Last weekend, Kelly Bennett could not find Henry. With the memory of the cat she never found last summer still fresh in her mind, Bennett was worried.

Monday morning when she was getting ready for work, Bennett heard Henry come in the back door of her house in the Forest Hills subdivision off Palmer-Fishhook Road.

Henry was screaming like a hyena.

When he turned sideways to her, Bennett saw a wire tearing into Henry’s abdomen. She tried to cut it off with her wire cutters, but the wire was too tight to fit the blade underneath.

She rushed him to All Creatures Veterinary Hospital. Henry went into surgery and came out stitched up with four drainage tubes and dosed heavily on antibiotics and pain medications. Bennett said Friday that she was taking Henry in that day to have the tubes removed and get a progress report on his recovery.

“The doctors said he shouldn’t be alive,” Bennett said. “He looks like he’s two pieces sewn together.”

The doctors also told Bennett the wire was the snare from a trap. The vet said it is impossible for the snare to come lose on itself, so someone must have cut the cat from the trap without removing the wire, Bennett said.

She turned the snare, pictures of Henry pre- and post-surgery and bill from her vet — $686 — in to the State Wildlife Troopers.

Tory Oleck, detachment commander for the wildlife troopers, said his office in Palmer sees cases like this once or twice every year. While he could not say if trapping was legal or not in this particular area of Palmer, trapping season is most definitely closed.

Illegally placed traps are can bring with them a fine of up to $10,000 and a year in jail, Oleck said. If the trap catches a pet, and the investigation determines it was an accident, his department still holds the trapper accountable. If it is determined to be intentional, it is ruled as a destruction of private property and is no different than shooting it with a gun.

Bop Haskell, chief animal control officer for the borough, said there is an ordinance against trapping domestic animals.

He said he sent an officer to Bennett’s neighborhood to check for the snare, but admitted, “That’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Haskell has only held his job since November, but he said this is the first incident of snaring he’s heard about.

He also said animal control has live traps people can use if they want to trap a nuisance animal.

As for Henry, he is being nursed back to health by Bennett who is expecting he will have a full recovery.

“I don’t know anybody is intentionally doing this, but this is my second cat,” Bennett said. “To think that people even do this to animals is sick. It’s a horrible way to die.” She said everyone she has talked to in her neighborhood is livid. “There are children and grandchildren who play here.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.