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Resident Questions Policies After Cat Mauled by Dogs

Resident Wants Better Pet Protections
Pleasanton CA - Kristine Gialdini says her 16-year-old orange tabby cat Argyle was mauled to death before her eyes by two dogs that had escaped from their home. She wants to help prevent the same trauma from happening to others.

She plans to attend Tuesday's City Council meeting to share her experience. She wants to encourage residents to report loose dogs in their neighborhoods to create a paper trail on problem pets. She would like a notification system too, alerting neighbors they are living near a dog that has killed an animal. Even though the dogs' owner, Gerard Boyance, was cited and fined, Gialdini doesn't understand why the dogs were allowed home after the attack.

"If they are going to kill my cat, they're going to kill someone else's cat," she said. "If I knew my dogs had killed someone's pet, I couldn't look at the dogs the same way."

Referring to the city's "two-cat minimum," Gialdini said that essentially, we have to wait for another animal to be killed and hope it's not a kid. A dog shouldn't have a second opportunity. But the animal control officer countered by saying that the first time a dog attacks a person or animal, it is usually an accident. Beyond that it becomes a question of the dog's nature or the owner's negligence.