TORONTO — After saying on-air that he happily enjoys running down cats and newborn kittens in the street with his pick-up truck, the mayor of Huntingdon, Quebec has apologized.
“First of all, cats have no business being in the road. If a stray cat in the road, bang! Accelerate,” laughed Stéphane Gendron last Tuesday during his radio show on CHOI 91.9 Radio X, where he moonlights as a shock-jock.
“The other day I backed up over a newborn and I’m sure it didn’t feel a thing,” he said.
“The pickup passed over him like it was nothing. I was so happy. Yes!”
Gendron described the cats in his town as an urban plague and continued to detail the brutal ways he offs them, including watching a litter of kittens die of thirst.
His apology, posted on the radio station’s website Sunday, follows the Montreal SPCA launching an investigation into the small-town mayor’s comments.
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The SPCA said they’re looking for people who might have evidence to support the mayor’s statements.
In his statement Gendron said his remarks were greatly exaggerated and were meant as “dark humour”. But it doesn’t state categorically whether he was telling the truth on air.
“I made largely exaggerated comments on the overpopulation of cats that constitutes a nuisance in our urban and rural areas,” his statement said.
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“I myself have to deal with this problem on my property, with many dozens of stray cats that come and cause problems. I admit that the imagery used served no purpose in advancing the debate on this issue.”
Huntingdon, 75 kilometres southwest of Montreal, recently passed a bylaw forcing pet owners to sterilize their pets or face a fine.
The mayor said in the statement his town doesn’t have an animal shelter and they can’t afford to euthanize every stray.
A petition calling for a police investigation into the mayor’s comments has garnered over 9,000 signatures.
Gendron was investigated by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council in 2012 after saying that Israel is an apartheid state that doesn’t deserve to exist on a television show he hosted. He later apologized.
Mayor Gendron wasn’t available for comment on Monday.
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