Pet cat’s leg amputated after getting caught in illegal trap

CALIFORNIA -- When Stephanie Waldrip saw her brown-and-white cat Scruffy standing in the tall grass by her Royal Oaks house, she immediately knew something was wrong.

“I said to my husband, ‘He doesn’t look right,’” the 63-year-old says. After a minute peering at the forlorn animal, her husband went to check it out.

 

 

“He ran down the embankment and he let out this yell I’ll never forget,” Waldrip says.

 

Scruffy had stepped onto an illegal leg trap, which clenched tightly above his little paw. He dragged it like a ball and chain all the way back home. The Waldrips took Scruffy to their Watsonville vet, where the doctor tried to save the paw but eventually had to amputate.

 

“He looks like a little mini Frankenstein,” Waldrip says. “He has stitches all the way down his body.”

Waldrip is furious about the trap, which she believes was placed somewhere near her property. It was the cat with the misfortune this time, but Waldrip also worries about her neighbors who have six kids

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“They’re very active children,” she says. “They could be making a fort back there, they could be running around playing. It’s just too much to even imagine what could happen to them as well.”

 

 

Capt. Don Kelly of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife says leg traps have been illegal in the state for well over a decade. In that time, though, he’s come across a handful in the Central Coast.

 

“Those traps are still out there, for some reason,” he says. “Many may have been set long ago, when trapping of the nuisance species was still allowed and were never picked up.”

 

Fish and Wildlife is investigating the trap that caught Scruffy to see if they can determine where it came from. That particular trap looked as though it may be for capturing foxes or coyotes, Kelly says.

 

Kelly says if someone comes across a leg trap to mark it with an overturned box and to call Fish and Wildlife.

 

“They’re not illegal to possess they’re just illegal to use,” he says.

 

 

Meanwhile the Waldrips want to do their best to protect animals and children from these situations.

Stephanie Waldrip says she wants to start a website: Justice for Scruffy and Friends.

(Monterey County Weekly - Feb 6, 2014)