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The Man With The Russian Bride: One Of The Most Bizarre Interviews I’ve Ever Conducted

He pitched his story to me as a scam men needed to be aware of, avoiding the words “mail order bride.”

I’m not quite sure how it came up in a Google News alert for cat-related stories, but I just found this article from Marie Claire, an excerpt from a book called Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter that details the way an American woman found out her mom was a Russian mail-order bride.

The woman’s response toward her mother is lacking in compassion, but I don’t know her family dynamics and the title of her book indicates she is at least aware of how she comes off. The one thing I do recognize is the longing to feel normal as the child of an immigrant in an America where normal is a form of social currency. Having the “weird parent” who talks funny, has a “strange” name and unfamiliar customs exposes you to all sorts of torture from other kids, who can be inventively cruel.

The story also reminds me of one of the most bizarre interviews I’d ever conducted during my time as a newspaper reporter.

The guy on the other end of the line pitched it to me as a story about how he was scammed by a foreign temptress, as something other American men should watch out for. I agreed to meet him and hear his story.

He was a mid-level bureaucrat in state government who invited me into a conference room during his lunch break. He was hygienically challenged with visible dandruff, heavy acne, a rumpled button-down shirt and the kind of tie worn by men who view professional sartorial standards as an unavoidable nuisance.

At one point during our conversation he dug a finger into his nose and retrieved a gummy piece of snot. I looked away, embarrassed, but it didn’t even seem to register in his mind.

I’m not sure exactly when I realized he was describing his experience with a mail-order bride, but I will never forget his heavy sigh as he reached into a pocket and retrieved a worn catalog featuring Russian women in their 30s and 40s.

I’d never seen anything like it. The best way I can describe it is somewhere between the print version of a dating site and a grocery store’s weekly circular, with photos of Ukrainian and Russian women dressed to the nines and wearing heavy makeup above their listed stats, requirements for a husband and parody-worthy relationship tropes: enjoying long walks on the beach, sunsets, that sort of thing.

A collage of photos featuring various women, each with a short description including their name, location, age, and personal interests or characteristics.

Collage of women from various locations, each with a brief description including name, age, and interests.

(Above: Not the actual catalog, but it was similar to this.)

“Here,” the man said, pushing the catalog across the table. “You can keep this for your story.”

He paused, took the catalog back, turned to the page featuring his ex-wife, then tore it out carefully before folding it reverently and slipping it into the front breast pocket of his shirt.

I didn’t know what to say as he sat there with a single tear running down his cheek and sniffled. The catalog sat there in front of me and I hesitated to touch it, remembering where this man’s finger had had been a few minutes earlier.

He explained how he had traveled to Moscow with a cohort of American men, then spent the first night on speed dates in a hotel ballroom with women who were desperate to get out of the country, chatting with them under the watchful eyes of burly men with names like Yuri and Artyom.

The second night was spent with a smaller group of women after each of the American men had narrowed down their choices, again chaperoned by taciturn Russian men. The third night was a date with each man’s final pick before agreements were made, contracts signed and the men returned home with a future delivery date for their new wives, as if they’d ordered them off Amazon.

It quickly became clear that the man I was speaking to did not view women as human beings and had little experience with them. He complained about infrequent sex, how much it was costing him to feed and clothe his new bride and her daughter, feeling disrespected, and the many ways in which his fantasy was demolished by reality.

It didn’t take long for his new Russian bride to split. A few months, if I recall. The man went to work one day, came home and found his wife and her daughter gone.

When I got back to the newsroom, my editor stopped me.

“How’d it go with the scam story?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him the depressing truth and said it just wasn’t particularly compelling or newsworthy. I spiked the potential story from my calendar, tossed the mail order bride catalog in a bin far from my desk when no one was looking, and made a beeline for the bathroom to scrub the hell out of my hands.

A New Species Of Cat Has Been Identified For The First Time In A Century

With its kitten-like features and striking rosettes, the Tilcayo tiger cat managed to evade scientists thanks in part to its remote range.

Say hello to Leopardus tilcayo, also known as the Tilcayo tiger cat.

The small, slender feline is the first new species of cat discovered in 103 years following the Uruguayan pampas cat in 1923. Found in Bolivia’s Yungas forest, also known as the cloud forest for its high elevation and lush vegetation, the Tilcayo tiger cat is smaller than domestic felines, weighing in at about six pounds on average.

A woman inside a wildlife enclosure gazes at a small, spotted cat perched on a platform, surrounded by greenery and a chain-link fence. — Paola Nogales Ascarrunz, a scientist and National Geographic explorer, co-authored the study that announced the discovery of Leopardus tilcayo. Her team used genetic analysis to confirm the Tilcayo tiger cat is a separate species. Credit: National Geographic

Although it’s part of the genus leopardus and it’s colloquially known as a tiger cat, its coat pattern features rosettes that more closely resemble those of jaguars with the latter felid’s broken patterns and spots inside the rosettes. By contrast, leopard rosettes do not have randomly placed spots.

A comparison of jaguar and leopard fur patterns, showing distinct differences in the shape and arrangement of spots. The top section labeled 'Jaguar' features interspersed rosettes and spots, while the bottom section labeled 'Leopard' displays more solid rosettes.

The new feline is closely related to the other “tiger cats” of the Americas, including the ocelot, oncilla, kodkod, pampas cat and margay.

Notably, it is not a subspecies split from another cat, but an entirely new species to scientists. DNA tests confirmed its status as a separate species. It eluded discovery for so long in part because of its remote location in forests at high elevation.

Paola Nogales Ascarrunz, co-author of the study in the journal Current Biology, said a discovery like this is extremely unusual. The discovery of Leopardus tilcayo was formally announced to the world on Thursday when the paper was published. The same paper noted a new subspecies of tiger cat, the Leopardus tigrinus antisuyo, but the Tilcayo tiger cat is the big news.

“This time, it’s a cat. That’s really novel. And it hasn’t happened in 100 years,” Ascarrunz said. “No one else had named it. No one else had described it.”

The first time Ascarrunz saw the Tilcayo tiger cat while volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center in Bolivia, she “thought it was a kitten,” she said.

A small, spotted wildcat perched on a branch surrounded by green foliage. — Credit: National Geographic

Biologists are still learning about the Tilcayo tiger cat. They’ve only closely examined two members of the species and have camera trail footage of several others. They don’t yet have an estimate of how many individuals live in the Yungas forest.

Unfortunately, study co-author Tadeu de Oliveira noted, all of South America’s tiger cats “are in habitats that are vanishing fast.”

Diagram illustrating the analysis of 38 genomes from Leopardus spp. including museum and modern samples, highlighting bioinformatic methods, phylogenetic relationships, and geographic distribution. — Maps show the current habitats of tiger cats in South America. Leopardus tilcayo’s range can be seen in the darker blue sections of the map on the right. Credit: Current Biology

Eduardo Eizirik, an evolutionary biologist at Brazil’s Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, said the new discovery emphasizes the importance of preserving the Earth’s remaining wild places as humanity encroaches from every angle.

“Showing the general public that even in a flagship group such as cats … there are still new species to be discovered may transmit an important message,” Eizirik said. “There are many undiscovered species out there in the world, and they are at risk of disappearing before we even discover them.”

Beloved Brooklyn Bodega Cat Brought Back By ‘Borrower’ After Community Rallies

“I went to jail! They locked me up for this s–t! I did not steal the f—ing cat,” said the woman accused of stealing a kitten from a Park Slope bodega.

Someone had stolen Jabal and Park Slope wasn’t having it.

The three-month-old kitten went missing on Sept. 10 and when his human, 8th St. Mini Mart owner Imad “Jimmy” Innab, checked the store’s surveillance cameras, he saw a man and a woman grab the white-and-cream moggie from the sidewalk in front of the store as he was opening up. The last images of Jabal showed the kitten struggling in the man’s grip as the couple walked away with him.

Customers, including one who called the kitten “the patron saint of Jimmy’s store,” were incensed and immediately sprang into action. On a Park Slope subreddit, neighbors shared information and identified the couple, while customers plastered the neighborhood with missing flyers featuring Jabal’s image.

As for Innab, he offered a $500 reward and said he’d take the kitten back “no questions asked” as well as decline to press charges if the couple brought him back.

For a few days it looked like Jabal wouldn’t be seen again. Locals online feared the worst, that Jabal may have been sold to people who operate dog fighting rings (where cats are used as “practice” for the aggressively trained mutts) or abandoned someplace dangerous.

But neighbors recognized the woman, who has since been identified as 58-year-old Mary Sierra, and urged her to bring the cat back. On Monday Innab received a call from Sierra, who claimed she thought Jabal was a stray and promised to return him.

A man and a woman are walking on a sidewalk. The man is holding a small white dog, while the woman smiles beside him. They are dressed casually and surrounded by a suburban street environment. — A still from a surveillance camera showing the sidewalk in front of 8th St. Mini Mart. Credit: Jimmy Innab

Sierra’s son-in-law brought the kitten to the local precinct. Later that morning an NYPD officer came to the store holding Jabal and returned him to Innab.

“I cried,” Innab told The Gothamist, explaining that Jabal was a gift from a friend after his previous mouser and pet, Victoria, died at 17 years old. “ I put him down, and he started to sniff his bed, and his chair, and all of his toys.”

As for Sierra, she was arrested and charged with petty larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and companion animal stealing, the New York Post reported. The first two are misdemeanors under New York penal law, while the latter is a violation under the state’s Agriculture and Markets Law, which is a throwback to the days when most animal-related disputes concerned farmers and disagreements over ownership of livestock. Most US states have not updated those laws in more than a century despite drastic changes to the culture around companion animals and the ways Americans value their pets.

It’s not clear why Sierra’s companion, the man seen holding the cat in the surveillance footage, was not charged.

A man smiling while holding a white cat with grey markings in his arms. — Jabal reunited with Innab. Credit: New York Post

Sierra, who spoke to the Post after she was released pending a later court date, said she was going to “sue them for accusing me of stealing,” although it wasn’t clear if she meant she would sue the police, Innab or locals who identified her online from the surveillance video.

“I’m an animal lover. I got three rescue dogs,” she said. “I went to jail yesterday for this s—t. I went to jail! They locked me up, they locked me up for this s—t. I did not steal the f—ing cat.”

It wasn’t immediately clear when Sierra is due back in court.

Innab said he will no longer allow Jabal, which means “mountain” in Arabic, to roam outside the bodega and plans to get him a new collar and microchip.

Innab, 60, has operated the store for 40 years and is well known in the community. He was distraught when Jabal was taken, and credits his neighbors and friends for making sure the kitten was returned to him. The community’s reaction underscores the relationship neighbors have with local bodega owners and their cats, many of whom have become famous thanks to popular social media accounts documenting the friendly mousers.

“Clearly he’s become symbolic of something much larger,” one neighbor told the New York City ABC affiliate, WABC. “And the community did rally because it seemed such an unnecessary event.”

Poacher Trampled By Elephants While Trying To Shoot Rhino, South African Parks Officials Say

“Elephants are extremely intelligent and, as people say, they never forget,” a parks spokesman said.

A poacher looking to kill a rhinoceros for its horn was trampled by elephants, whose fury was so great that they reduced him to “a very large bloodstain around the clothing he was in,” South African parks officials said.

Two men illegally entered Kruger National Park on Sept. 11 and walked six kilometers into the Pafuri area, a section on the far north end of the park that features diverse wildlife between two major water sources, the Limpopo and Luvuvhu rivers.

The men were tracking rhinos and were carrying high-powered rifles and an axe, SANParks spokesman JP Louw said. They did not realize that a herd of elephants was moving parallel to the rhinos toward the same water source, and when one of the poachers raised his rifle to line up a shot, the infuriated elephants charged him.

The surviving poacher ran in another direction. When he made it home and reported his partner was missing, he told police he heard the man screaming. He’s been arrested and faces charges of attempted poaching and illegally entering the park.

Rangers found the tracks left by the men and followed them to the site where the elephants charged. They had trampled the poacher so thoroughly that there was little left besides his pulped body and the remains of his clothes, authorities said.

A group of elephants walking towards the camera near a water source in a dry landscape. — Credit: Wayne Lubbe/Pexels

Rangers also found a dead buffalo, which they believe the men killed before their fatal encounter with the elephants.

Rhinoceros horns can fetch about $13,500 from middlemen in South Africa, who then smuggle them into China where they can command as much as 20 times that amount. The demand comes from the traditional Chinese “medicine” market, where animal parts like horns and big cat bones are used in folk elixirs. People believe the elixirs can grant a range of supernatural powers, from immortality to restored “chi energy,” and some elixirs are sold as remedies for everything from common colds to viruses, gastrointestinal issues and baldness.

Traditional Chinese “medicine” is based on concepts invented in deep antiquity and targets a system of “meridians,” pathways said to exist in the body that practitioners claim are the conduits for chi energy.

Chi energy and meridians are both inventions of the human imagination, but what is real is the impact on animals. Poaching has had dramatic impacts on animals like elephants, rhinos, tigers, leopards, lions and pangolins. More recently, because authorities in Africa and India have gone to greater lengths to protect their surviving wild animal populations, Chinese poachers have turned their efforts toward South America and the Amazon jungle. In recent years jaguar poaching has skyrocketed to fulfill demand from China.

In a dramatic example from October of 2025, fishermen in Brazil rescued a severely wounded jaguar who had been shot by poachers and had made a desperate escape into the Amazon river. The fisherman found the wounded big cat bleeding and barely clinging to a piece of debris.

That jaguar’s story had a happy ending: veterinarians were able to save him despite 30 lead fragments embedded in his head and neck among other injuries, and he was released back into the wild after he recovered. Sadly, most jaguars who are targeted by poachers do not survive.

Instances of poachers killed by elephants aren’t novel either. In another incident in Kruger National Park, a poacher was trampled by an elephant, then eaten by a pride of lions.

“Elephants are extremely intelligent and, as people say, they never forget,” Louw said. The elephants knew what a man raising a rifle means “and may well have witnessed poachers before sneaking up on rhinos and went to protect them.”

This Is What Happens When People Demonize Cats

Cats were poisoned, shot with a handgun and killed with blow darts in separate incidents this week.

It’s been a while since we touched on the topic of thinly-veiled cat hatred masquerading as academic rigor in studies blaming cats for killing improbable numbers of birds and small mammals in countries like the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Unfortunately those “studies,” which have little relationship with reality, have serious consequences. In places like New Zealand, it’s the widespread government-sanctioned slaughter of felines and the rise of vigilantism by creepy people who clearly enjoy killing cats.

Now that sort of thing is happening with greater frequency in the US.

In Brooklyn someone poisoned a group of at least seven community cats. A man who cares for the colony of strays found the felines dead under his deck, where they usually sleep. The cats were all bleeding from nose and mouth, and authorities believe someone put rat poison in their food.

Lab tests and necropsy results are pending. St. Vincent Feline Rescue and state Sen. Steve Chan, a former police officer, are offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person or people responsible. Cats from two other nearby colonies have gone missing and authorities believe they may have met the same fate.

The deaths have taken a toll on Albert Vincent Berto, a Brooklyn man who has been caring for and feeding the strays for years.

“ It gave me purpose. It gave me something to get up in the morning for,” he told The Gothamist. “ I’m just bewildered. I’m just, I feel lost. I’m so lost right now.”

Two cats eating on the ground, one white with brown patches and one grey and white. — Credit: Pexels

Meanwhile a man in West Palm Beach, Fl., has been shooting cats.

A local rescue managed to get footage of the man during his latest attack. The video shows the man riding up to the exterior of a closed flea market at night and taking shots at cats with a hand gun.

A cat named Zoe survived a gunshot wound, but the bullet shattered a front leg, which had to be amputated.

Staff at a local rescue stressed that the flea market shooting isn’t the first of its kind. They believe the same person may be responsible for shooting other cats in the West Palm Beach area.

“This is not an isolated incident from what we know,” Gabby Gluck of Furry Friends told WPBF, a local ABC affiliate. “This is just the incident that we have footage of.”

Furry Friends has announced a $5,000 reward for anyone who can help police identify the man in the video footage. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office is handling the investigation.

Those weren’t the only similar incidents this week. In Tennessee, three people were arrested after killing several cats and severely injuring a kitten with blow darts. In Hawaii, two men face murder and assault charges after allegedly attacking a man and his sister, who were feeding stray cats in Maui. Alfred Kailihiwa, 71, who was well known as a caretaker of local strays, was rushed to the hospital after the attack but died of his injuries a short time later. And in Rochester, NY, a local shelter’s outdoor cat homes were smashed by cat-hating vandals the week prior, and not for the first time.