A hungry Brit, who remains unnamed, called West Yorkshire police to press charges against his girlfriend and her cat because the cat ate his bacon.
"Me girlfriend has let the cat eat my bacon," the man could be heard telling a dispatcher in an audio clip of the call released by police, according to the New York Daily News. "I want to press charges."
The operator, seemingly unfazed by the bizzare nature of his call, asked the man if he wanted to press charges against the cat or his girlfriend.
Both of them, he said.
"It's not a criminal offense to let your cat eat your bacon," the emergency dispatcher calmly said, according to Time. "We don't arrest cats. I'm very sorry."
The man tried to plead his case, asserting that his girlfriend looked on as her cat ate the hungry mans bacon: "No, but me girlfriend allowed the cat to do it," he pleaded, according to the New York Daily News.
Unmoved by his plight, the operator apologized and told him that bacon-eating cats did not constitute an emergency.
The man took the news in stride, and responded, "Alright, love," according to SFGate.
Thus, the cat - and the man's girlfriend, got off scot-free.
Surprisingly, officials report that they receive odd calls like this quite often.
"Someone rang us at two in the morning to ask who the actor was that played Magnum P.I.," Tom Donahoe, customer contact supervisor of the West Yorkshire force, told the Yorkshire Evening Post.
While amusing for readers, police note that the use of emergency hotlines for such matters can have serious rammifications.
"A lot of the time, we're talking about a matter of seconds between us being able to get to a genuine emergency effectively and not being able to," said Donahoe. "Therefore having people's lives put at risk."
