A controversial Common Council bill to control Kingston's cat population has hit a roadblock. Mayor James Sottile vetoed the law at a public hearing last night, to the delight of several dozen onlookers. The Daily Freeman reports:
The mayor said he did not “want to put a law on the books that we certainly cannot enforce.”
Kingston alderman Robert Senor, the measure's main sponsor, doesn't think much of his political opposition:
“He had a bunch of cry babies at City Hall this morning, and he fell to them,” said Senor, D-Ward 8.
But former alderman Richard Cahill is pleased:
The Council may very well override the veto, but I hope at least two members of the Majority see the light. Sottile has set up a task force to study the problem of feral cats. Hopefully, the Council will allow the task force to meet. This can only happen if the Council does NOT override the veto.
A spaying/neutering provision of the cat law apparently caught the city's most virile felines in a wicked logical bind. In a touching display of bipartisanship, the Dog Federation of New York reached across the aisle to aid their feline counterparts, penning a letter to Mayor Sottile that pointed out the Catch-22. Alderman Andi Turco-Levin of Kingston's 1st Ward has the letter on her blog:
Under the proposal, any cat "outside the residence of its owner" must be surgically sterilized. There are no exceptions, making cats prisoners of their own homes and unable to venture into their own backyards under any circumstance unless they have been neutered. Ironically even a trip to the vet for the purpose of sterilization would be illegal in Kingston under this over-reaching and poorly considered proposal. The law effectively requires every single cat in Kingston to be rendered sterile, unless it never crosses the threshold of its owner’s home in its entire life.
Despite the mayor's veto, it's not over for the cat law. Unless a few aldermen switch their votes, the law has enough support from the Common Council to force an override of the mayor's veto.
Photo of peevish cat by Flickr user Hannibal Poenaru. Published under Creative Commons license.
