Our pets see a lot, but they don’t usually talk about it. While a cat or a dog might know full well which daughter borrowed your favorite sweater, who spilled the ketchup on the carpet, where the toddler put your car keys, and how the balcony flower pot wound up on the car parked below, they aren’t telling.
But did you know that more and more veterinary forensics are being used in even serious court cases? Yes, more and more often, animals are testifying in court—well, so to speak. While your cat or dog won’t exactly tell all on the witness stand, what they leave behind can and will be held against criminals in some unusual ways.
One killer was convicted because of something he stepped in while committing a heinous crime. Yup, they found dog feces on his shoes and traced it to a pile of it left by a passing dog at the crime scene. In one case, a talking bird actually spoke up to convict someone of a wrong doing. And cat fur has been brought into court as evidence in more than one instance.
As reporter, Vicki Croke says in her article, animals have been helping crack horrific crime cases by doing nothing more than drooling, shedding, urinating, defecating, or bleeding.
So my fiction stories featuring Rags, the klepto cat aren’t so far outside the realm of reality, are they? Rags has been an eye witness. He has dug up clues to crimes. Yes, he has “pawed” more than one bad guy throughout the 28 Klepto Cat Mysteries.
One scientist claims that she’s put away over 500 bad guys on dog and cat fur evidence alone over the past 15 years. Here’s more on this fascinating subject.
http://thewildlife.wbur.org/2015/01/13/pet-csi-how-dog-and-cat-dna-nabs-bad-guys/
