Stray Cats

Sochi officials have announced that they hope to make their city safer and more appealing by killing more than 2,000 stray cats and dogs before the 2014 Winter Olympics, according to the RBC Daily newspaper. "It's obvious that there should be no animals on the streets," Sergei Krivonosov, a government official, told the paper. "We have responsibilities to the international community. Killing [strays] is just a faster way to solve this task. " Russian press has reported public protests in response to the announcement.

Sochi officials have announced that they hope to make their city safer and more appealing by killing more than 2,000 stray cats and dogs before the 2014 Winter Olympics, according to the RBC Daily newspaper. "It's obvious that there should be no animals on the streets," Sergei Krivonosov, a government official, told the paper. "We have responsibilities to the international community. Killing [strays] is just a faster way to solve this task. " Russian press has reported public protests in response to the announcement.

In this age of "classic rock" radio, one has to suspect that any band reunion is a cash-in for the nostalgia dollars that have eluded band members in their solo pursuits. The Stray Cats would certainly seem to fall under suspicion as, since breaking up in 1982, Brian Setzer, Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker have each led careers that seemed likely to soon find them working night shifts at all-night mini-marts.

Life in the wild Re "Reaching out over feral cats," Nov. 19 These feral cats in South L.A. are not actually stray cats. They flourish and thrive because of the seemingly well-meaning humans who feed them. Without that food, many would die. Responsible pet owners keep their cats in their homes, where they are safe from other predators. Trapping, spaying and then releasing these feral cats won't do any good. These cats are not vaccinated against disease.

Paw prints on his Cadillac have prompted a San Fernando judge to turn his attention from felons to felines--with the harshest of penalties in mind. Alleging that dangerous "wild cats" are destroying cars in a judges' parking lot, Superior Court Judge Robert D. Fratianne has warned courthouse workers to immediately stop feeding the animals "or I will personally take steps to eradicate the cats."

"If it weren't for Carl Perkins," Brian Setzer declared Thursday night, "we wouldn't be here." That's true enough for a broad range of pop acts, but even more so for Setzer's Stray Cats, who reunited at the House of Blues to perform an energetic tribute to the late rockabilly pioneer.

An Echo Park man was stabbed and robbed early Saturday morning in the 4000 block of Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles police said. Arthur Margolis, 49, told police that he was feeding stray cats in the area near Sunset Boulevard and Sanborn Avenue when he was approached by two assailants who demanded that he turn over his money, Detective Maria Rivas said. Margolis told police that one of the two assailants demanded his money and pushed him. Margolis said he pushed the man back.

*** STRAY CATS "Runaway Boys: A Retrospective 81-92" EMI Records The Stray Cats were a dated pop phenomenon decades before their first album even was released. The style that the group revived with its most popular U.S. album, 1982's "Built for Speed," was '50s rockabilly. Patterned after Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, the Cats evoked bygone visions of sock hops, drag races and gang rumbles waged with knives and fists, not Uzis and grenades.

Only three people born since "Blue Suede Shoes" hit the charts have managed to follow Elvis Presley and his '50s peers to stardom by playing rockabilly music. Lee Rocker is one of them. He was still in his teens back in 1980, when he and his band mates in the Stray Cats--Brian Setzer and Slim Jim Phantom--began scoring hits with a musical style that had gone out of fashion before the Kennedy Administration began.

"It started out as a garage band and ended up with Jim and Britt doing the National Enquirer every other week." That's Brian Setzer's capsule summary of the Stray Cats' career, and while Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom's tabloid-perfect marriage to actress Britt Ekland neatly symbolizes the conflicts that contributed to the band's demise, Setzer thinks that the problems can be traced to the rockabilly trio's meteoric rise.

Before his rants about corruption made him persona non grata with the Communist Party, before he started agitating for the rights of children and evicted tenants, before he denounced the Beijing Olympics, there were the cats. In his prolific blog posts, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei wrote paeans to the dozens of stray cats who inhabited his studio and served as his creative muses. "The cats and the dogs in my home enjoy a high status; they seem more like the lords of the manor than I. The poses they strike in the courtyard often inspire more joy in me than the home itself," he wrote in 2006.

The line forms even before the doors open at FixNation in Sun Valley. The trappers come, five days a week, back seats and trunks loaded with feral cats. Inside is a highly organized production line: On an average day, about 80 cats will be neutered and sterilized, then released 24 hours later into the neighborhoods they came from. This largely volunteer effort seeks to control a problem that vexes cities everywhere: how to manage homeless, free-roaming cats -- thought to number at least 1 million in Los Angeles -- while trying to avoid euthanizing them.

There's something so immediately appealing about rockabilly music that it's easy to assume the invigorating style has been a bestselling fixture on the pop scene ever since its start in the '50s in Memphis, Tenn. In truth, only one pure rockabilly group has captured the mass pop consciousness over the last quarter century: the Stray Cats, whose engaging, early-'80s hits included "Rock This Town" and "Stray Cat Strut."

A month after Gov. James Doyle said a plan to allow hunters to shoot stray cats was making Wisconsin a laughingstock, the public advisory group that raised the issue decided Friday to let it die. "There is no need to push it any further," Steve Oestreicher, chairman of Wisconsin Conservation Congress, said of a proposal to allow licensed hunters to shoot feral cats that kill wildlife.

There's no getting around stray cats' new status as environmental varmints, to the point that a proposal to allow shooting of Wisconsin's stray cats is heading to voters. There are about 78 million pet cats in this country, at least 50% more than 15 years ago. An equal number of homeless cats -- both domestic strays and truly feral ones -- roam freely. Except for the indoor-only cats, most of these animals are eating birds.

The fight over stray cats here has turned downright feral. Hunters and feline lovers hissed at each other across the state Monday night as they participated in an advisory vote to decide whether to make stray domestic cats an unprotected species -- and potentially allow the public to hunt and shoot them.

The fight over stray cats here has turned downright feral. Hunters and feline lovers hissed at each other across the state Monday night as they participated in an advisory vote to decide whether to make stray domestic cats an unprotected species -- and potentially allow the public to hunt and shoot them.

Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed Fassi, who upset his former Bevery Hills neighbors by painting the nude statues on his lawn, has returned to Florida with a new mission--plucking unwanted cats from animal shelters and giving them a home fit for a king. "I have strict orders from His Royal Highness to put aside $2.5 million for cats," Victor Talaat, personal adviser to Fassi, said today. "We are going to send Asians through the United States to hunt the cats.

Two Wal-Mart employees have been charged with felony animal cruelty after authorities said they followed a manager's orders to shoot and kill a stray cat. The men, both assistant managers at the store, told police the manager had ordered them to get rid of the animal, which was living in a storage trailer behind their store. Christopher Anderson, 29, and Jeffrey Hardin, 21, repeatedly shot the cat with a pellet gun from the store until it died, a sheriff's report said. Wal-Mart conducted an investigation and said it had fired three employees over the incident.

The way Tom Dale tells it, it was just like any other morning. He was southbound on the 55 Freeway about 8:30 a.m. on Good Friday, between the exits for Chapman Avenue and the Garden Grove Freeway. For the most part, traffic was bumper-to-bumper. Then, he saw something coming toward him. What's that? A cat? Indeed. Out of nowhere, a black-and-white kitty (for now, let's call her Frisky) was trying to navigate traffic.