The headline is a quote from a text a man allegedly sent to his girlfriend after abusing her cat so badly that the poor kitty had to be euthanized.
The story is grotesque, tragic, and sadly not uncommon. Between 75 and 89 percent of domestic violence victims who have pets report that their partners threatened, abused or killed their companion animals, according to research from the ASPCA and SafeHouse, a non-profit that provides direct support to victims of domestic violence.
In the incident referenced above, an Indianapolis man was arrested and charged with killing a domestic animal and torturing or mutilating an animal, both felonies. The suspect, Rashawn Bentley, originally tried to stage the violence as the result of a break-in, but was undone by his own menacing texts to his girlfriend as well as photos of the injured cat, according to the local NBC affiliate, WTHR.
Just so it’s abundantly clear how we feel about this issue: if you abuse, harm or kill a cat, you’re not a man. You’re a weak, despicable, cowardly facsimile of a man whose “flex” is taking your frustrations out on an innocent animal one twentieth your size.
You should be arrested, charged with the most severe penalties under the law – even if they’re not commensurate with the horror of the crime you’ve committed – and imprisoned for years. The other inmates should know you killed a cat. You should be removed from society, because if you think taking life is an acceptable way to vent your frustrations, there’s something clearly wrong with your brain and you are a danger to animal and human alike.
Of course the majority of these attacks, especially targeting cats, are committed by men, but women aren’t off the hook here either. Some women do try to harm significant others by killing or abusing their cats, in straight relationships and relationships between women.
Ignore that study on supposedly healthy ‘vegan cats’
Headlines about a new study in Frontiers In Animal Science are trumpeting the supposed benefits of vegan diets for cats, who are obligate carnivores.
The media stories style the effort as a large-scale study involving more than 1,300 participants.
In reality it was an online survey that recruited cat caretakers from Facebook and recorded their subjective opinions about the health of their cats.
Everything, including reported weight, mobility, questions about potential physical problems, times fed per day, sex and neuter status, et al, was filtered through the self-selected respondents, not pulled from veterinary records. The respondents weren’t given reference illustrations or standardized criteria from which to base their subjective assessment of their cats’ weight.
There’s no way to determine if the people who participated were being honest, keeping records, guesstimating or just having a bit of fun.
To be clear, most of our criticism here is directed at the way online publications reported the results, not necessarily the authors of the survey, who chose a much more dry, cautious headline: “Impacts of a vegan diet on body weight and related health disorders in 1,305 cats: an exploratory cross-sectional survey.”
Obviously, even a jazzed-up version of that honest headline would never be used by click-chasing modern media.
Ninety percent of the people who responded were female, and 71 percent were from the UK, according to the published paper.
Then the authors kneaded the data with the usual opaquely-named practices: “exploratory regression analysis” (a data-mining technique), regression models (AI-assisted statistical technique that involves comparing existing data with the result you predicted/hope to see), sensitivity analysis (changing variables to assess their impact on the overall findings), and so on.
When all was said and done, 4.1 percent of the meat-eating cats and 3.1 percent of the vegan cats were over their ideal weights, in their humans’ estimation. Meat-eating cats were also more likely to be underweight (2.3 percent) compared to vegan cats (0.8 percent).
The conclusion? The findings were “non-significant,” the researchers wrote, along with the obligatory call for more research on the topic.
We should also point out that in addition to their classification as obligate carnivores, cats require specific proteins and nutrients (taurine, arachidonic acid, vitamins A and B12) from meat-based diets that they cannot synthesize themselves and are not found in plant-based protein. “Vegan cat food” must have those proteins and nutrients added. If cats are deprived of them, they suffer slow, painful declines that result in organ shutdown and death.
Because of their evolutionary history, cats aren’t as adept at breaking down plant-based starches and their bodies don’t produce enough of a specific enzyme (amylase) that breaks down starch and complex carbohydrates.
Human ideas of morality aren’t applicable to cats. Feed them meat.
Open comments Caturday! Although not mentioned in the headlines, today’s the day for open comments: anything off-topic, marriage proposals or modeling contracts for Buddy, updates on your own cats, suggestions on stories to cover and whatever else is on your mind. Happy Caturday!
Header image credit: Pexels
I think I probably shouldn’t say what I would like to do to the monster who abused the poor defenceless cat – it just makes me so sad and angry – I hope that he is jailed and someone does exactly the same to him while he is incarcerated.
Regarding people who try to force a vegan diet on cats (who are obligate carnivores) that is misguided abuse in my opinion. If you want a vegan pet get a rabbit or hamster ffs!
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He’ll probably get a light sentence, if he gets any jail time at all. That’s the BS thing about crimes like this. There’s no consequences for doing it. This ass probably got a months long sentence that was waived and a small fine. How is that paying for what he actually did? I’m sorry, but I’d break his MF-ing legs SLOWLY and then move on to other body parts just so he could experience just some of the pain and suffering that he inflicted on that innocent baby.
There needs to be serious jail time if this sort of thing if it’s going to be curbed. It won’t ever go away because humans are assholes. But maybe having to spend YEARS in prison for injuring/killing an innocent animal is a thing, these asshats might think twice before doing it.
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I looked up the charges in Indiana penal code and they carry a maximum sentence of five years in state prison, up to $20k in fines, psychological counseling, and post-release conditions like being prohibited from keeping a pet.
He’s also been charged with lying to the police/misleading an investigation.
If he’s convicted there are a lot of factors that come into play, including prior history, but it’s impossible to say what the sentence will be.
We absolutely do need stronger animal welfare laws with more prohibitive sentences.
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I mean, I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t momentarily indulge a thought like “Wouldn’t it be great if the penalty for conviction is tossing animal abusers in tiger pits?”
You know, have fun with it. Have some wizened old guy with a magnificent beard read the sentence from a scroll while a buddhist monk sounds a gong, like some sort of ritual scene cut from Enter the Dragon.
But jokes aside, I always come down on the side of preserving life, and I don’t think humans have the right to end life, human or animal.
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I have no printable comment
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I hear ya. These are allegations so far, but very disturbing.
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ANYONE who feeds their cat a vegan or vegetarian diet should be immediately arrested for animal abuse. Purrsonally I’d like to see them guillotined. Or drawn and quartered…
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I’ve done a bit of research into it, and so-called vegan cat foods are just as heavily processed as the worst commercial cat foods containing meat. At best people will pay a lot for ultra-processed cat food with taurine et al added, and at worst their cats will suffer over a long period.
I just don’t think it’s worth the risk, especially when it’s an effort to apply human morals to a species that is specialized as carnivorous over millions of years of evolution. Their bodies just aren’t built to consume and break down the nutrients in plants.
As a vegetarian, do I love the smell of Bud’s beef or salmon meals? Definitely not, but I love him and want him to be healthy.
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I’ve been a vegetarian for over 40 years and I’ve NEVER wanted to turn my cats into one. Going vegan is a thing now, unfortunately, and those morons who are feeding their cats a veg diet are o nly doing it to seem “virtuous”. Feck them. Charge them. Turn their cats over to a no-kill shelter who will find them LOVING homes.
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I enjoyed reading your response regarding the perpetrators of animal violence. They deserve far worse. Always gets my blood boiling when I read about this kind of violence. The sentences currently aren’t nearly harsh enough and it would take a tremendous amount of advocacy to even nudge that, unfortunately. Humans have to be their voice, as all these poor creatures can do is cower in the corner and hope that the voilent outbursts end.
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Agreed 100% on the penalties not being commensurate with the crimes, the difficulty of getting lawmakers to take this seriously and especially with giving voice to animals. Anyone who thinks animals don’t have feelings and don’t feel pain is not a serious person and is not tethered to reality.
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Anyone that thinks animals don’t feel pain have never stepped on their pet’s paw or tail by accident before. They most definitely do feel pain just like we do. I don’t know why people can’t figure this out. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to get it.
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Exactly. Stepping on their tails is the worst, and I try to be so careful, to the point of shuffling like an idiot during bathroom runs at night.
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Two words. Street justice. And vegan cats? Slowly starving to death. I know staunch vegans who would never even think of doing that shit.
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Two words. Street justice. And vegan cats? Slowly starving to death. I know staunch vegans who would never even think of doing that shit.
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Sick bastard that guy, how can he do something so horrible to a cat and still think of himself as a man?
As for vegan cat food, honestly, I think that as humans, being omnivores, we can choose to a certain extent what we eat, but forcing an animal that is inherently carnivorous to do so is absolutely wrong.
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