KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City, Missouri, woman wants the city to make an addition to its animal control policy after she said her pet was killed and left for her to find in her front yard.
Amy Pepper said she was traumatized after coming home from work Sunday night to find a black trash bag with her dead cat inside.
"I had no idea that when I opened the bag that it was going to be my cat," Pepper said.
Pepper initially thought the cat's death was intentional until she called the Animal Health and Public Safety Department for more information.
"They told me that they had been dispatched to my location, my address that night, and someone had reported a deceased cat," Pepper told 41 Action News. "So, they had come by and bagged it up and scheduled a pick-up for disposal."
John Baccala said animal control was following protocol after being called to a report of a cat hit by a car.
"It would have to be unusual circumstance before we would do anything but leave it for dead animal pick-up," said Baccala, a spokesman for the city's Neighborhoods and Housing Services.
Pepper said she was told it could be up to three days before the cat was picked up for disposal. With no note on her front door or on the bag, Pepper feels that the situation was handled poorly.
"If he hadn't been left here, I may have never known what happened to him," Pepper said.
Swayze the cat was not microchipped. Baccala and the city are pushing for pet owners to license their pets and have them microchipped for instances like these.
"In this particular case, it would have come in handy because we had no identifying markers on the cat," Baccala said.
Pepper said she would have all of her pets microchipped in the future but she also wants animal control to be more sensitive in situations like hers moving forward.
"I feel like animal control could have at least notified on the door of the person whose yard they left it in," she said.
If you come across a dead animal, the city asks that you call 311 during the day and the non-emergency police line overnight at 816-234-5111.
