The veterinarian who killed a cat with a bow and arrow has had her veterinary license suspended for one year, reports the MySA news website. Kristen Lindsey, DVM, bragged about killing a cat on social media back in April 2015. While she claims it was a feral cat, but there was evidence that the cat was her neighbor’s pet named Tiger. The backlash was immediate: Social media users called for criminal charges and launched a petition to have her license revoked. Lindsey was also fired from her job at Washington Animal Clinic in Brenham, Texas, and was condemned from various veterinary organizations and schools. The Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners held a hearing this past April to determine if she should lose her license this past April. According to MySA, Lindsey will not be able to practice for a full year, and will have to practice under probation for four years after the year is over. Brian Bishop, Lindsey’s lawyer, has vowed to appeal the ruling. In a statement to Veterinary Practice News, he said: "Dr. Lindsey and I are disappointed that the Board ordered suspension of Dr. Lindsey’s license based on an action that had nothing to do with the practice of veterinary medicine. We are also disappointed that the Board has, for all intents and purposes, chosen to take sides in the culture war between the animal rescues zealots — who have campaigned to destroy Dr. Lindsey and her family — versus rural property owners who have the right to protect their property and their own animals from feral animals who are destroying their property and threatening their own animals. Dr. Lindsey did what she did to protect her property and her own cat from an animal that was trespassing on her property, damaging her property, and endangering her domestic cat and her horse. It is also disingenuous — if not absurd — that the individual who now claims she owned the cat didn’t care enough about the cat at the time to give it a collar and tag – or any evidence of ownership, or to get the animal vaccinated for rabies (in an area where rabies was pervasive), or to prevent the animal from roaming wild in an environment where it was likely to be eaten by coyotes or otherwise suffer and perish. It should be very troubling to regular people that the State of Texas is spending precious tax dollars on the prosecution of someone who killed was simply protecting her property from a free-roaming feral animal, and that this Board doesn’t have the integrity that the District Attorney in Austin County had to stand up to an irrational — but loud — lynch mob of zealots. We will be appealing the Board’s decision to the District Court and we are confident that common sense and justice will prevail.”
