Gary Busey, Pet Judge

Case One: The Plaintiff wants to give “Mousey Tongue”- the cat that he shared with his wife- a Viking funeral. He has spent weeks building a small boat that will be set ablaze with the cat inside and has already received permission from their gated community to send Mousey Tongue into the great beyond in the pond adjacent to their golf course. His wife has other plans. The Defendant wants the cat to be interred in the pet mausoleum that she and her father built when she was a girl and where they’ve buried all her childhood pets.
Case Two: The Plaintiff has a dog she believes to be the reincarnation of her late husband. Since she considers him to be family, she wants to add him to her health insurance as a spouse. The Defendant, the owner of a small kombucha business that employs the Plaintiff, is certain that pet insurance doesn’t cover aggressive treatment for her late husband’s/new Pomeranian’s heart condition. He has all his necessary paperwork and believes it’s a pretty clear-cut case of insurance fraud.

Case One: The Plaintiff has been trying and failing to get her neighbors to pick up after their German Shepard when it defecates on her lawn- a frequent occurrence. All of her hints, pleas, and threats have gone unheeded. Since deciding to take her neighbors to pet court, she’s been collecting the dog’s feces in a plastic storage container as evidence. The Defendants insist that their neighbor left “fecal remnants” from some random animal on their doorstep and deny that their dog is responsible. Case Two: The Plaintiff is a Hollywood producer. He is suing his ex-fiancé and her parrot for allegedly ruining his collection of movie memorabilia. The Defendant says that she is not responsible for the actions of a bird they shared.

Case One: The Plaintiff wanted to immortalize his recently-deceased pet raccoon, “Bandit”. He picked out a taxidermist and explained that he wanted Bandit stuffed in a normal pose. The animal came back from the taxidermist well-stuffed, but not as the Plaintiff remembered. The Defendant says that he was very proud of his raccoon work. He had really been enamored with the Plaintiff’s story and wanted to do something special for him. Case Two: The Plaintiff left his prized mastiff with a dog boarder where it was put into a general play area with other types dogs, including French Poodles. He can now hear a “weak droop” in his dog’s bark, and is suing for pain and suffering, citing the ridicule he endured from other members of his dog park, who could also hear the dog’s new listlessness. The Defendant has run her pet boarding business since she got out of college and has never had this sort of complaint. She insists that dogs cannot have accents or influence each other’s vocalization patterns.

Case One: The Plaintiff is suing his local dog walker for animal discrimination after she’s refused his tortoise, “Mr. Shelley Berman,” as a client. He maintains that tortoises love a good walk every day, which he would do himself, but he works long hours at his job. The Defendant counters that taking the turtle around the block takes roughly six hours and “that alone should say everything you need to know.” Case Two: The Plaintiff wanted her son to have the best birthday possible, and since “Friends” is his favorite TV show, she hired what she thought was the real Marcel the monkey to come to the party. Soon after he arrived, she realized that Marcel and was clearly an imposter. The Defendant insists that he never implied that his was the monkey that played Marcel in “Friends.” He simply named it “Marcel” and tries to bring joy by supplying a delightful creature of mirth.

Case One: A small church group was very excited to visit the Florida gulf coast for Spring Break. Reservations at a local hotel were made a year in advance, but only during check-in did they disclose that as part of their religion they would be bringing poisonous snakes onto the property. The Plaintiff claims that their religious freedom allows them to bring snakes into the hotel. The Defendant counters that her guests and staff were put in danger from having the serpents on the property. Case Two: The Plaintiff is a designer of specialty handbags using exotic animal skins. He had contracted with an exotic animal breeder to sell him a litter of coatimundi that he could kill and skin for handbags. The first two coatimundi turned out to be just meerkats whose pelts were way less valuable. The Defendant claims that he didn’t understand that the Plaintiff was asking for animals to be skinned, and that if he did he would have never sold them to him.

Case One: The Plaintiff was extremely distraught after the death of his pet hamster. Some weeks after, he engaged a pet psychic to see if he could contact the hamster. Not only did he succeed in doing so, but the hamster gave stock tips from beyond the grave. After the investments turned bad, he realized that he may have been duped by a fraudulent psychic. The Defendant insists that she only repeats what animal spirits tell her to say, and she herself was surprised to hear the hamster give so much financial advice. Case Two: The Plaintiff is in the process of breaking up with her boyfriend after a year of living together. Unfortunately, they share a pet goat named Vincent Van Goat, which the Plaintiff paid for and wants custody of following the acrimonious split. The Defendant isn’t sad about losing his girlfriend but wants to keep Vincent Van Goat, as he has always been its primary caretaker.