Snake abuse

Animal control lied to you.

You cannot simply have a animal in your possession for three days and it automatically becomes yours. If that was truly law, then a lot of very pricy animals would be stolen on a daily basis and hidden for that 3 days.

I'm not saying that you "stole" the kitten. Obviously, you picked up a abandoned kitten. But TECHNICALLY by law(at least in my state), you must attempt to find the owners for ten days, THEN the animal is considered abandoned. But you must make a attempt. The most common "attempt" is to put a vaguely worded ad in the Lost/Found section of a newspaper(usually free) and after that, you're usually golden.

But IF it were a owned animal and the owner finds out you have it and you cannot prove you made a "reasonable" attempt to the judge, then it's the original owner that will recieve the animal back. In your case, the woman would easily have been charged with neglect IF she could possibly prove it was her kitten, which she could not. She would probably also be charged with "endangerment" for placing kittens outside in a box like that. Since the box was placed outside without supervision, that could possibly be stretched to be considered abandoning the kittens(same as if she put the box out beside the highway and drove off, sort of).

Have you considered threatening to call animal control? I don't know if that will make a difference with this guy as he sounds like a jerk, but maybe he doesn't want animal neglect on his record?

No, we were thinking of telling him we were going to call animal control. Just got back, one of their friends wants the bp, and he is going to come talk to me in a bit. Ill let him know whats what, how to set things up and all that, and point him towords this forum

Where are you guys looking up these laws???
Im not calling you out wolfy, i believe you, but i wanna lookup up the laws for my own state.

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

Where are you guys looking up these laws???
Im not calling you out wolfy, i believe you, but i wanna lookup up the laws for my own state.

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The laws regarding animal care/abuse are often different depending on the state and county/city you live in. You can easily find out what they are by going to your local county government website.

You should be able to look up ordinances for your state, your city, your county, township etc, at the various websites devoted to the laws for the places. But be prepared to sort through a lot of junk to find it. Also, the laws may contradict each other, in which case MOST of the time, they will fall back on the highest level, i.e. the state law over the town ordinance.

I looked up the abandoned animal laws for my state and county for my grooming shop, in case a moron left their dog with me and never picked up, then showed up weeks(months?) later on, claiming they wanted "their" dog back.

The town I was in didn't have seperate laws, since it's a teeny town, barely more than a traffic light and a school.

Snake rehomed to a proper owner. Had the extra setup up and running.
Everyone was happy, snake is happy, no cops

Yay congrats!

Yes im relieved. Theyve been without power for about a week now, havent had the cash to feed her since they got her, and now shes in a nw home. Informed the rehomer of the conditions, and said she was going to the vet anyways.

I agree with you, of course. In my case I believe since the kitten was in such obvious bad shape, and I had pictures to prove it, the officer said it would be considered abandoned and therefore after caring for it for three days it would be considered mine.

I do know I found out the hard way if I take in a stray animal of any kind and keep it for longer than 5 days, animal control won't take it. I had a couple of older kittens show up on my lawn, so I ran an ad in the paper with pictures. After 10 days with no response, I took them to animal control because my local shelter could not take them. I had to fight tooth and nail with the officer's there. They told me, stray or not, since I had them for longer than 5 days they were now mine, and they would not take "owned" pets. I told them they were not mine, that I simply ran an ad in the paper in an attempt to locate the owners. They told me, next time not to waste my time. I was to bring them straight there. It was the owners job to look for them, not the other way around. Which didn't sound right to me, but I gave up arguing after about half an hour. They finally agreed to take them with a donation from me. I won't make that mistake again.

Anywho, I'm glad things worked out for everyone involved.

Gale