Dear cookie, do you get the impression you're all by yourself here? First of all, you need to read posts a little better - this wasn't a recent incident, this was years ago, and it didn't hurt the cats because they didn't go in there. Why in the world do you think they would? Do you think a cat is going to go ahead and walk on something that pokes it? I don't think so. I think trapping a cat, taking it to the humane society, and having them put it to sleep - which is what the humane society told us to do - was alot worse. We didn't want to kill the cats, hurt the cats, nothing, we simply wanted them out of our beds. And no, it wasn't my flowers I was concerned about - again, read a little better before you post your comments - I was 'concerned' about the smell in the front of my house because some so-called 'animal lover' thought it was better to let their cat roam free all over the neighborhood, not knowing where it was or what it was doing, peeing and crapping in people's flower beds, picking up fleas and passing them onto other people's pets, you know, wonderful things like that. Yeah, I got real tired of not being able to open up my kid's bedroom windows because it stunk out there; I got tired of every frigging day finding cat shit in the dirt outside; I got real tired of these wonderful cat owners opening their doors and caring so little about other people's property that they not only didn't know where their frigging cat was, but didn't much care either, because if they cared where their cat was, it would be inside. Animal cruelty? Give me a break. Animal cruelty is letting your male cat run free and impregnating every female cat in it's path so hey, now we have all these kittens that nobody wants. Animal cruelty is cat owners who have this so-called 'pet' but they're too lazy to take care of it so they let it fend for itself. Yeah, those are wonderful 'animal lovers'. I'd like to see you, just once, go out in your flower bed, reach in to pull some weeds, and have your hand sink into a pile of cat crap instead. You go do that, then come back on here and tell all of us it was ok. Fortunately, this is something that never happened to me because we made sure it didn't. Police? Oh please. Hubby works for the sheriff's dept., trust me, there was nothing wrong with what we did. As a nice officer of the law will tell you, it's our property and we have a right to protect it. You and your vet friend need to read up on exactly what constitutes 'animal cruelty', so next time you decide to get up on a soapbox and dump your opinion on someone who didn't ask for it, at least you'll have your facts straight.