Cat snuggle party disrupted by police
"Come out with your paws up!"
Iceland can get pretty chilly this time of year. What's a stray neighborhood cat to do but throw a snuggle party in an unoccupied home? Unfortunately, the home's human neighbors noticed "several cats" moving in and out of the house via an open window. They contacted police for assistance, and when the officers arrived on the scene they found several cats (two or three; their report was unclear) which were "snuggling on a couch that had been left behind by the previous residents."
The snuggling cat party was broken up, the aforementioned snugglers were evicted, and police officers secured the property. One wonders, when will the next cat snuggle party spring up? And where?
This is not the first time police have been called out to deal with a cat problem. Although typically these calls involve cats being mistaken for a cougar or an escaped circus lion.
If the problem of cat snuggle parties becomes a serious problem in Iceland, perhaps police officers would do well to consider bringing the cats onto the force, in the same way that a criminal can become a valuable information resource. The Los Angeles Police Department has adopted several colonies of feral cats and put them to work in their stations and parking garages.
The Working Cats Program in Los Angeles re-homes captured colonies of feral cats and puts them to work as the ultimate form of non-toxic, eco-friendly rodent control. These colonies are cats who could never be put in homes. The program captures, spays or neuters, microchips, and vaccinates the animals before finding responsible parties who will pledge to provide lifetime care for the cats (including providing food and water, and annual medical checks).
Mice and rats have become a huge problem for several police departments in southern California. The feral cat teams were so successful at eradicating vermin in the Wilshire Division's parking lot that the LAPD requested more cats for the Southeast, Central, and Foothill divisions.
Japan, however, has kicked it up a notch: the Kyoto police force have a cat named Iemon who is an official police cat. Found abandoned at the age of two weeks, Ieamon (pronounced "ee-eh-mon") even has his own official police cat outfit.
Lemon spends most of his time at the station, where he assists the officers with important duties like tapping at pencils and lying on desks. However, Iemon is brought along when Kyoto police respond to reports of suspicious phone calls, where he provides emotional support to victims who are comforted by the friendly, fuzzy officer.