PAWTUCKET -- A ban on pit bulls, the first by a municipality in
the state, received final passage by the City Council last week.
The ban, effective Jan. 1, bars the introduction of any additional pit
bulls into the city and places severe restrictions on the owners of the
pit bulls already in the city.
It requires pit-bull owners to license their dogs and have the license
number tattooed onto the dog's inner lip for identification.
The ordinance also requires pit-bull owners to spay or neuter their
pets, keep them confined and place a muzzle on the dogs when they take
them out into the public.
The pit-bull ordinance passed unanimously. But a provision limiting the
number of cats per household was placed on hold, following protests from
cat owners.
City Councilman Donald R. Grebien said that, in view of the objections
he had received, he was considering proposing a revision that would
impose a limit of seven pets per household, regardless of how many were
dogs and how many were cats.
The ordinance, as drafted, would have limited the number of cats to four
per household and the number of dogs to three.
The pit-bull ban was sought by Animal Control Officer John Holmes
following a spurt in the number of the pit bulls in the city and a spate
of unprovoked attacks.
In one case, in 2001, a woman who was nine months pregnant was mauled by
her landlord's pit bull outside her home on Cottage Street.
Five months ago, an unlicensed pit bull belonging to Jonathan J. Siwy,
22, of 23 Winthrop Ave., bit a 7-year-old girl who was visiting him,
taking off part of her cheek.
Mindful of the attacks, the City Council voted for the ban, even though
it drew protests from animal-rights activists.
However, the council relented in limiting the number of cats per
household, when Kelly Carse, a Flint Street resident who identified
herself as acting director of the Massachusetts Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter on Cape Cod, spoke out against
the proposal.
Carse said such a restriction would place her one cat over the limit and
have no effect on animal hoarding.
Over the summer, hordes of animals were found in houses on Ballston
Avenue, Pidge Avenue and Benefit Street, in a house trailer on Manton
Street and in apartments on Lonsdale Avenue and Montgomery Street.
In all cases, the animals were confiscated and taken to the animal
shelter or animal hospital on the grounds they posed a threat to public
health.
Council members said the four-cat limit was necessary to solve the
animal-hoarding problem and restrict the cat population in a city as
densely populated as Pawtucket.
Carse disagreed.
"Has anybody done any research about what a hoarder is all about? Does
anybody know that a four-cat limit will have absolutely no effect on
hoarders?" she asked.
"These folks are psychologically unbalanced and they need help to remove
their animals," she said.
When council members said they planned to revisit the limit, and
possibly ease it, Carse said, "But my concern is what happens as of the
first of the year? What happens to my fifth cat?"
John J. Barry III, City Council president, sought to reassure Carse,
saying that no one would come into her house and take away her fifth cat.
But Carse continued to protest the limit, prompting City Councilman
Robert E. Carr to propose delaying that provision of the ordinance.
"To help you with the January 1st issue, I'll ask for a moratorium,"
Carr said.
Carr's motion to impose a moratorium passed unanimously. "We will be
taking this ordinance and looking at the cat portion of it,' said the
chairman of the Ordinance Committee, City Councilman Thomas E. Hodge.
