Cruelty to Non-Livestock Animals (PC 42.092)

Answer 1

A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly:

(1) tortures an animal or in a cruel manner kills or causes serious bodily injury to an animal;
(2) without the owner’s effective consent, kills, administers poison to, or causes serious bodily injury to an animal;
(3) fails unreasonably to provide necessary food, water, care, or shelter for an animal in the person’s custody;
(4) abandons unreasonably an animal in the person’s custody;
(5) transports or confines an animal in a cruel manner;
(6) without the owner’s effective consent, causes bodily injury to an animal;
(7) causes one animal to fight with another animal, if either animal is not a dog;

“Abandon” includes abandoning an animal in the person’s custody without making reasonable arrangements for assumption of custody by another person.

“Animal” means a domesticated living creature, including any stray or feral cat or dog, and a wild living creature previously captured.  The term does not include an uncaptured wild living creature or a livestock anim