It’s your property, do what you want with it, right? Wrong, and one local business in Alaska learned the hard way after a nosey patron decided she was going to protect others from the gravest threat imaginable – a cat.
According to Reason Magazine, Stormy, friendly cat who was a hit among customers, was spotted by a patron during her regular cat nap in the store. Apparently, the presence of the cat was enough to prompt this random individual to file a formal complaint against the business to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
A representative from the DEC’s Food Safety and Sanitation Program spoke to the local press also confirming that an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) also spotted Stormy going about her day in the store, causing the EHO to take additional action. According to the DEC, “Under the state’s food code, live animals, with the exception of service animals, seafood, and pet fish, are largely not allowed in Alaska food establishments.”
This begs the question, the cat obviously wasn’t a bother before, so why did this person decide to go out of her way to go ahead and bring in the State to solve an issue she could have just brought up to the store owners? Your guess is as good as any.
From the rise of internet memes ranging from “Permit Patty” to “BBQ Becky” what we are witnessing is a rise in the number of individuals who instead of trying to resolve a conflict themselves, they bring in the heavy hand of government to take actions far beyond what many would consider reasonable. Now, Stormy is being evicted from the home where the customers grew to love her and she grew comfortable at her old age. Some loyal friends of Stormy the cat have spoken to the local paper defending the cat, saying that the health concerns were out of line with reality.
“I’m in there every day, and it just seems like if the DEC is concerned about hygienics, having the cat there is a lot more hygienic than not having the cat there because the cat keeps the rodent population down,” one local customer said to the Homer News.
Either way, out of loyalty to the friendly cat, the store owners will be bringing Stormy home instead to live out the rest of her days. The moral of the story is, in a world where there is an ounce of control over another person’s private property, there will be people who try to cause trouble, even if that trouble is the existence of a fat cat named Stormy.
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