76-year-old man jailed for feeding stray cats

Man refused to pay fine for feeding stray cats and was sent to jail
(Image credit: iStock)

An elderly man in Gainesville, Texas was forced to spend nine days in jail after he refused to pay a $900 city fine for feeding stray cats. The town made feeding strays illegal as a way to reduce the cat population, but in the uproar over 76-year-old David Parton's stint in jail, animal advocates are working with a local law firm to lobby for a more humane and less invasive approach.

As for Parton, his refusal to pay the fine was a matter of principle: "Oh, no, if I had a million dollars I wouldn’t have paid it. Hell, no. No!" he said. He is mainly worried about cats who may have died during his time in jail — while he was incarcerated, the cats went hungry and the city boarded up several of the cats' holes. Parton has been unable to find many of his feline friends since his release.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.