Aug 18, 2026 · 28 min · 10 segments
Send us Fan Mail When a family breaks down, who gets the cat? That deceptively simple question drove four to five days of Superior Court…
Stephen ThieleHostSo, OK, so there was a, you know, as was typical in these things, let's sort of lay the groundwork.
Family breakup, issues with a younger child who was, I guess it was a tween at this point, voting with his feet to a certain extent in terms of visitation, custody, parenting,
And there was a fight about, you know, the custody and access issues and the son, you know, visiting the father.
And really the cat became a bit of a pawn, I thought, in the larger parental battle over the affection of the child and where the child should, how much time the child should spend with the father.
And there was all sorts of kind of dark, um, and sinister, um, notes in this case about the father kind of talking about talking about the son, uh, hurting animals.
Well, you know, the credibility of the parents, uh, was left much to be desired in terms of the evidence that they gave.
They seem to have contradicted themselves all over the place, which kind of leads to an interesting, uh, To me, an interesting finding at the end of the day in terms of, you know, how was the judge supposed to believe either parent as to who owned the cat? You know, I just want to back up a little bit, Gavin, because, you know, we're going to talk about this case and it's it's weird in a way, but.
Except, you know, we had one of our colleagues send this around and said, you know, the court is spending a lot of time determining where a cat is supposed to live and who owns a cat.
I mean, one of our associates we sent around the case was back, well, I'd be in court fighting about my dog.
So, OK, so there was a, you know, as was typical in these things, let's sort of lay the groundwork.
Family breakup, issues with a younger child who was, I guess it was a tween at this point, voting with his feet to a certain extent in terms of visitation, custody, parenting,
And there was a fight about, you know, the custody and access issues and the son, you know, visiting the father.
And really the cat became a bit of a pawn, I thought, in the larger parental battle over the affection of the child and where the child should, how much time the child should spend with the father.
And there was all sorts of kind of dark, um, and sinister, um, notes in this case about the father kind of talking about talking about the son, uh, hurting animals.
Well, you know, the credibility of the parents, uh, was left much to be desired in terms of the evidence that they gave.
They seem to have contradicted themselves all over the place, which kind of leads to an interesting, uh, To me, an interesting finding at the end of the day in terms of, you know, how was the judge supposed to believe either parent as to who owned the cat? You know, I just want to back up a little bit, Gavin, because, you know, we're going to talk about this case and it's it's weird in a way, but.
Except, you know, we had one of our colleagues send this around and said, you know, the court is spending a lot of time determining where a cat is supposed to live and who owns a cat.
I mean, one of our associates we sent around the case was back, well, I'd be in court fighting about my dog.
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