15 Hating Cats

After six months of working with his father, Keith felt a renewed urge to drive out to the badlands and slaughter animals. Les thought he knew how it started. “We couldn’t permit strays. That was in our bylaws. Dogs had to be on a leash. Keith got rid of some stray cats and I didn’t stop him. In fact I almost persuaded him to do it. But I never taught him to kill. Never! My way was to drown ’em in a gunnysack. Once I saw him take a kitten and smash it down. Killed instantly! It made me shudder.”

For once, the father-and-son memories almost meshed. In Keith’s version: “One of our tenants had a problem cat, and I warned her to get rid of it. One day Dad and I went to her place to fix a leak, and the cat was still around. Dad said, ‘What do you intend to do about this, Keith? You’re too soft!’ I threw the cat on the pavement to stun it. Then I wrung its neck like a chicken. I said, ‘Is that what you wanted?’ I drove a few miles and threw it out the window. That night I told the owner, ‘Fluffy ran away. Live with it.’ She moved out the next day.”

Following his customary practice, Keith blamed his harsh attitude on his father. “Dad said, ‘You’re gonna control the area, Keith. If an animal becomes a pest, shoot it.’ I got real good at hitting dogs on the run. I bought a CO2 pistol and accidentally shot a neighbor’s dog and had to pay the vet to dig out the pellet. After that I took a few strays to the pound, but they found their way back.

“I decided to take no prisoners. I killed the pests with whatever I had at hand—hammer, sickle, scythe, screwdriver, shovel, or my bare hands. I’d take a dog into the sagebrush, give him a good kick, then open fire with my thirty-thirty. I tossed the suckers out the window at fifty miles an hour.

“I baited trash cans with poisoned meat and collected bodies in the mornings before anybody got up. One night I killed seven cats and kittens. I caught a dog in our garbage and used a hook scythe to cut off his head, but the blade only went halfway and he ran into the woods. I threw cats in the incinerator. I set one on fire and it ran for the barn. Flames everywhere! Another cat got into our burn barrel. I put a piece of plywood over the top, poured in gasoline and threw in a match. The cat howled till it was cooked. It made me hot and hard.

“I enjoyed the feeling of power. I liked taking a cat or a dog into my room and poking it with a stick. There was no running away from Keith the Avenger. I knew it was wrong to hurt dumb animals, but I did it anyway. It was just…an urge.”

 

Keith’s little sister made frequent complaints about his cruelty, but she was ignored. “Dad and Keith both hated cats,” Jill recalled. “Keith bragged about wringing their necks and throwing them in the garbage. I was taken aback by this. You don’t do that to animals. We never dreamed he would do it to people.”