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Animal Law

Elderly man goes to jail for 9 days for feeding cats; advocacy group hopes to rewrite law

A 76-year-old Texas man did not spend nine days in jail for feeding stray cats for nothing.

David Parton said he wouldn’t have paid the $900 he was eventually fined, as the Gainesville citations piled up, even if he had a million dollars. So he served his time, later explaining to reporters that he felt divinely called to feed the cats, according to CBS DFW and Fox 29.

“God told me to keep feeding them and leave the consequences to Him,” Parton told CBS.

It may or may not have been divine intervention, but his situation caught the attention of Alley Cats Allies and the animal rights group has retained Tatum Erlandson & Neu to revise the city’s stray animal ordinance.

“It seems really severe that someone would spend any time in jail at all for doing something that was compassionate,” said attorney Eric Erlandson.