I'm a watcher, it's what I do. I watch statistics, alerts, pending court cases stemming from complaints and arrests. I keep my eyes peeled for animal abuse both locally and across the country.

I've been perfectly content to click on links, read the often heartbreaking details, sometimes becoming quick to anger after viewing some of the more graphic photos. Anger is possibly the greatest motivator, but up till now it has done little to spur me to action. Perhaps it has just taken time for so many of these incidents to build enough to actually say, "Enough" and work to do something to change what needs to be changed.

I remember back in 2003 they ran a story in the local newspaper. At the time I was living in Missouri, and the incident had occured in Liberty. A man named Charles Benoit had grabbed a stray kitten near his apartment and took turns with his friends holding the animal down on a hot barbeque grill, laughing and making jokes as the kitten cried and tried to squirm out of their grasp. When confronted by a neighbor who asked what was going on, Benoit himself turned, and shouted toward the balcony where she was standing, "We're grilling cat, come on down!" By the time she had rushed downstairs to rescue the kitten it was already severely burned, and the group was on their way out of the courtyard, muttering obscenities under their breath.

The kitten was taken to a local vet, but later had to be put to sleep as a result of the burns. This story takes an even more frustrating turn at this point. Although Benoit was charged with animal cruelty and ended up in police custody for a period of nearly a week, his friends proved relentless in harrasing the only witness with disturbing notes delivered to her home and constant threatening phone calls. During that week I followed the story closely, thinking that surely this was the case where the charges would stick when most of the others before it hadn't. Wrong again. Not two weeks later she recanted the story and said the whole thing had never happened. The case was dismissed.

They got to her with intimidation, and Benoit walked free with not so much as a slap on the wrist.

Hindsight is always 20-20. I can't help thinking now that if more effective legislation had been passed and harsher penalties in place, this jerk would have served jail time for his offense.

This is why I always consider it a victory of sorts when I hear of certain anti-cruelty bills passing in the House, or Senate. Recent legislation like:

A bill that would increase animal cruelty to a felony that was passed by the Utah House on Thursday, two days after it appeared to be headed for demise.
House Bill 61 passed on a 48-24 vote and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Or this one:
The Mississippi state Senate has voted for an animal cruelty bill that outlaws organized fights between dogs and pigs and prohibits the torture or killing of cats. The bill passed Tuesday.

Small items to be sure, and possibly overlooked by much of the general public. I consider each a success all the same.