Mayor: Sorry about the killing-kitten jokes

MONTREAL – A Quebec mayor is sorry for joking about how he likes to kill cats.

Stephane Gendron has posted a letter on the website of his radio show explaining that his “dark humour” had done nothing to raise the level of debate over animal control.

It was on his radio show last week that Gendron said that, when he sees a cat in the street, he accelerates.

The mayor and shock-jock radio host even told his audience that he backed up over a newborn kitten with a pickup truck the other day and was sure it didn’t feel a thing.

His statement comes after the SPCA said it had opened an investigation into the mayor, whose town of Huntingdon, Que., is near Montreal.

Gendron has spoken before about the problem of stray animals. His town council recently adoped a bylaw requiring sterilization of all cats.

In his statement, Gendron says smaller communities don’t have animal shelters and euthanizing every stray at the vet is unaffordable. He says that the proliferation of cats on his own property has become a big problem.

While the statement offers an apology, and refers to dark humour, it never categorically states whether he was telling the truth on the air.

The SPCA says that in its investigation it’s now looking for people who might have evidence to support the claims the mayor initially made on the air.

Gendron has frequently stirred controversy with comments on a variety of topics in the past, aired on different media platforms over the years.

Last year, he apologized for calling Israel an apartheid state that doesn’t deserve to exist.

He was once removed from television by a now-defunct network for making controversial comments that resulted in numerous complaints.