In the immortal words of Bumble the Beadle in Charles Dicken's 'Oliver Twist'... 'Then sir, the law is a ass!'

Historically the law has been 'a ass' many times, and much worse than a ass...it has been used to crush, to enslave, to punish the innocent, to destroy, to enrich, and to prop up power.

Bad law is only changed when enough people refuse to obey it.

Speaking for myself, I try not to break any good, or reasonable, or even harmless though irritatiting laws. But like many other animal lovers, I would refuse to obey the law to return an animal to suffering and death. I would hazard a guess that a lot of animal-lovers would go to jail before revealing Cheech's whereabouts.