You Don't Have to Be a Cat Lover to Know This Is Wrong

I don’t like house pets, and this has been a sore spot in my marriage for most of the years Ed and I have been together. Ed likes pets, and I don’t. I don’t dislike animals per se, I just don’t want them running around my house creating work for me. Other people’s pets don’t bother me, and if I visit your home and you have pets, I will greet them and maybe even give them a rub or two. But, I don’t want any pets of my own, and on some level I think animals inside the house is just weird. I question whether animals really belong outside the house.

But you know where pets definitely don’t belong? In the freezer, that’s where. Not that Rodney Jon Blanchard agrees with me. Blanchard was arrested after it was discovered that he placed four kittens in plastic bags and then put the bags in the freezer.

A friend of Blanchard’s found the kittens after going to the freezer to get Blanchard a beer. When Blanchard wouldn’t allow the friend to remove the bags, she left and called the police. Good for her. She could have just sat on her couch talking to herself about how crazy her friend is.

When police questioned Blanchard, he said he’d placed the kittens in the freezer to give them a “time out.” Really? I wonder how much beer Blanchard had been drinking before his friend showed up.

This is one of those head-scratching stories that make you say, “What the heck?” What on God’s green earth would motivate someone to murder kittens by placing them alive in the freezer? It’s awful that he was trying to kill the kittens at all—but to place them in bags in the freezer? I can't help wondering whether Mr. Blanchard is either incredibly depraved or incredibly dumb, or both.

The kittens belonged to Blanchard’s son and his roommate, but those two were in jail after being arrested for their involvement in a “love triangle” shooting of another woman and her boyfriend. Yes, you read that correctly.

One can only surmise that Blanchard did not want to care for the kittens, but clearly he should have found another solution to his dilemma.

One of the kittens froze to death, but the other three are recovering. Blanchard faces four charges of cruelty to animals and one charge of simple battery. I hope that he gets whatever the law can dish out ... from its freezer. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.