What do cats DO?

Today I went to a CLE (continuing legal eddication) course. (In case you don't know, lawyers have to put in a certain amount of CLE hours per year, even after law skool. BUT they don't make us take any more exams, and they don't make us answer stupid law school questions like: If John builds a garage two inches over Mary's property line, and then sells his property to Joe, who builds an airplane in the garage which later crashes in the bermuda triangle, which crash becomes the subject of a top grossing hollywood film whose stars inexplicably all suffer bankruptcy within ten years, causing a lack of funding to certain charities which support the preservation of certain amazonian flowers which are used to create a medicine which regulates Mary's heart, and Mary then dies of a heart attack, who gets her Royal Cotton Tea Set?) Oh gads but i do digress.

At any rate, today was a very worthwhile CLE, because one of the sections was on Animal Law. The prof was David Wolfson, a corporate lawyer who also happens to be an animal lawyer and animal rights person. He was great.

My interest in animals far predates my interest in law, and my interest in animal law predates the whole law school song and dance, so I was gratified that stodgy old new york is suddenly taking notice of this very important and cutting edge area of law, and offering CLEs on it.

Wolfson was great. At one point he was explaining the valuation of animals in tort law. Since animals are considered property, if someone kills your animal, they owe you property damage. (animal lovers reading this, this is the state of the law as it stands. FLAWED??? Uh yeah...) In New York, this property damage is limited to market value or "intrinsic value". Market value is obviously an absurd way of valuing animals for people like me, whose animals have always been strays or ferals with ZERO mkt value. And, no one seems to know what "intrinsic" value is, but in the courts it seems to have something to do with the animal's function, for instance a seeing eye dog or guard dog would have a higher intrinsic value than a lap dog.

As Wolfson was explaining valuation, he started talking about his cats. he said that he loved his cats, and got a lot of pleasure from them, but, in terms of intrinsic value, he couldn't quite figure out what, exactly, cats *did*. He kept asking, "what do cats DO?" It was quite amusing. What indeed?

Well I have an answer. Read it HERE

Needless to say, I'm oversimplifying the legal aspects of Wolfson's talk on valuation. And, Wolfson didn't limit his talk to the plight of companion animals, he does a lot of work for farm animals too, who are arguably the most abused (think veal calfs, hen battery cages, gestation pens. One tidbit (no pun intended...) of information is that the US and Canada have virtually NO laws regulating the treatment of farm animals, and let the farmers themselves determine what "usual practices are", while many European countries have adopted laws prohibiting certain farming practices. I know, I know. More US bashing, more Euro promoting. What evah, they are ahead of us in a lot of ways, folks. I mean, Abba proved that long ago...(oops, that's scandinavia. oh well.)

At any rate, Wolfson doesn't think animals should be property.
Especially not cats...