A former local councilman in Pennsylvania faces animal cruelty charges for allegedly running over a cat earlier this month.
A former councilman in rural Pennsylvia faces two animal abuse charges after trying to run down a group of cats — and hitting at least one — with his truck earlier this month.
Frank Pagani Jr. was charged with aggravated cruelty toward animals, a felony, as well as a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge, according to a story by Beaver County Times reporter Garret Roberts.
Neighbor William Bittner, who helps care for the neighborhood strays, captured the Dec. 1 incident on his home security camera. The clip (embedded below) shows Pagani’s truck speeding up on the residential street and swerving toward cats who were in the road before blowing through a stop sign. Pagani Jr. then made a left turn to a side street and pulled into his driveway a few hundred feet away.
The 31-year-old was behind the wheel of the truck and his father, Frank Pagani Sr., was in the passenger seat during the incident, according to the Times. The Paganis live in New Galilee, a town of 379 people in rural Pennsylvania about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.
In this still from Bittner’s video, Pagani’s white pickup truck aims for a cat, circled, in the road. The cat hasn’t been seen since.
Bittner said last week that Pagani Jr. called him after he realized the incident was caught on video and said he’d resign his council seat.
“He thinks that’s the end of it,” Bittner said at the time. “You just can’t let an act like that go on without someone being charged.”
Bittner and his neighbors have been caring for the stray colony for years. In addition to feeding the strays, they’ve run a trap, neuter and return (TNR) program, fixing 28 cats, and have found homes for kittens who were born to the colony cats.
The Pagani family apparently panicked when they realized Bittner had captured the incident on video and posted it to Facebook. Per the Times:
“The police affidavit also details repeated phone calls were made to the homeowner who caught the incident on camera by Pagani, his father and his mother. Voicemails received by police detail the family asking for the video to be taken down.”
The video shows Pagani’s truck striking at least one of the cats, who immediately ran off with the other strays. It’s not clear how badly the cat was injured, and Bittner said “he’s not showing up” at regular feeding times.
“We’ve been searching and searching and we can’t find him,” he told WKDA, the local CBS affiliate.
Locals who reacted to the video on Facebook were horrified by the footage.
“I adopted one of those kittens,” one woman commented. “This breaks my heart.”
Iranian clerics and lawmakers claim pets are dangerous, but observers say the country’s religious authorities see pets as a threat to conservative Islamic beliefs.
The Prophet Muhammad heard the afternoon call to prayer one day and was about to rise when he realized his favorite cat, Muezza, was sleeping on his sleeve.
Rather than wake the slumbering kitty, Muhammad cut off his sleeve, stroked her fur and headed off to pray.
That story — and accounts of Muezza regularly napping in the lap of Islam’s most sacred prophet as he preached to followers — make Muezza one of the most well-known felines in human history, and form the basis for Islamic teaching regarding cats. Muslims consider cats the cleanest of animals, worthy companions and, thanks to the way the Prophet Muhammad treated Muezza and his other cats during his life, animals worthy of respect and the protection of humans.
Why, then, do hardline Islamic lawmakers in Iran want to ban the keeping of cats as pets, along with other animals?
Animal lovers in the country of 84 million are alarmed after conservative lawmakers introduced a bill, titled “Protection of the Public’s Rights Against Animals,” that would ban people from “importing, raising, assisting in the breeding of, breeding, buying or selling, transporting, driving or walking, and keeping in the home wild, exotic, harmful and dangerous animals.”
The list of “dangerous animals” includes creatures domestic and wild including “crocodiles, turtles, snakes, lizards, cats, mice, rabbits, dogs and other unclean animals as well as monkeys,” according to Agence France Presse.
A cat loafs in Saudi Arabia’s Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, just a few hundred feet from the Kabah, the most sacred site in Islam. The fact that cats are allowed in such close proximity to the site reflects the Prophet Muhammad’s devotion to felines. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Penalties for violating the ban would be steep:
“Offenders would risk a fine equivalent to 10 to 30 times the ‘minimum monthly working wage’ of about $98 or 87 euros and the ‘confiscation’ of the animal,” the report says. If passed, the law would also require landlords to ban pets on their properties.
The proposal has caused an outcry in Iran, where keeping pets has become more popular in recent years, especially because it’s not just one or two politicians introducing a long-shot piece of legislation: At least 75 of Iran’s 290 legislative representatives have already signaled support for the bill.
Officially, Iranian lawmakers who support the pet ban say they’re obligated to act because pets are “dangerous.” Mohammad-Taghi Naghdali, an Iranian MP, told Persian-language news site Didban-e Iran that dogs in particular can “cause nuisance and harm” to people, citing a recent incident in which a dog killed a child in a Tehran public park.
But observers say the real reasons have to do with the Iranian government’s interpretation of Islamic teaching, as well as fear that keeping pets is a western, liberal (in the classic sense) behavior that poses a danger to the Islamic theocracy.
In 2019, dog walking was officially banned in Tehran, and authorities warned residents to keep their pets out of public spaces.
“Police have received permission from the judiciary branch to crack down on people walking dogs in Tehran,” Tehran Police Chief Hossein Rahimi said in late 2019. “Carrying dogs in cars is also banned and if a dog is seen inside the car, police will confront the owner of the dog.”
In 2016, media reports said “officials were showing up at the homes of pet dog owners claiming that they were from a veterinary unit and these dogs needed vaccinations. The dogs were taken away, ostensibly for the purpose of vaccination and were never seen again.”
Dogs are considered “ritually unclean” according to Islamic hadiths, and some majority-Muslim countries, especially theocracies like Saudi Arabia, ban dog ownership completely with very few exceptions, such as seeing eye dogs for the blind.
By contrast, cats are widely tolerated and even welcomed into holy sites in most Islamic countries. In Saudi Arabia it’s not uncommon to see cats lounging on the grounds of mosques, while Turkey is famously hospitable to felines, with Istanbul earning an international reputation for its well-treated and ubiquitous street cats. In Turkey, cats are welcome in mosques, shops and homes, and tiny shelters for strays can be found almost everywhere.
The late Gli, the most famous feline resident of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
The proposed law has not gone over well with the people of Iran, who are often at odds with the country’s theocratic leaders on almost every aspect of social life.
“I have renamed my cat ‘Criminal’ since I heard this proposed law,” one Iranian wrote on Twitter, while journalist Yeganeh Khodami tweeted: “How many times have cats sought to devour you so that you consider them wild, harmful and dangerous?”
A common refrain among animal lovers is that the country’s leadership is once again focusing on something ultimately unimportant and harmful to Iranians instead of working to fix real problems like a depressed economy, widespread droughts and nationwide belt-tightening caused by international sanctions.
“Why should I imprison him at home?” a Tehran woman walking a dog told Agence France-Presse. “The MPs probably assume that young couples today don’t have children because they have a pet dog, but that’s stupid. It’s not the dogs but the economic conditions that don’t allow us to have children.”
Buddy, a close friend of Queen Elizabeth II, is now known as Sir Buddington, KBE.
LONDON – Call him sir!
Buddy the Cat was officially knighted on Friday during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, granting him the title Knight of the British Empire and making him the most-honored cat in the Anglosphere since Able Seaman Simon, the decorated ship’s cat who was injured aboard the HMS Amethyst in 1949.
It’s unusual for an American to be knighted and unprecedented for a cat to be elevated to knighthood, but Buddy was honored “for his innumerable contributions to human-feline understanding, unprecedented innovations in the art of napping, and status as tastemaker supreme in the world of delicious snacks,” according to the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood at St James’s Palace.
Buddy has become a trusted confidante of Queen Elizabeth II, royal insiders noted, and the two speak by telephone for at least 15 minutes each week.
“Her Majesty grew to appreciate Sir Buddy’s counsel in trying times,” a palace insider said. “In return, she advised Sir Buddy to keep a stiff upper lip during the Great Turkey Shortage of early 2021.”
Palace sources say the queen refers to her feline friend as “my dearest Buddington,” and often addresses him by the familiar “Bud-Bud.” Sir Buddy is also said to be close with Prince William.
Official portrait of Sir Buddy, KBE. Credit: Royal portraitist Eldar Zakirov.
In addition to the knighthood, which entitles the American cat to refer to himself as Sir Buddy, KBE, the Crown gifted holdings including a cat-size palace on Buckingham grounds, as well as a country estate in Oxfordshire.
The estate’s central manor, Budsworth House, has 32 rooms, 86 couches, a dozen fireplaces and at least 16 antique litter boxes. The grounds are home to sprawling gardens featuring feline-centric statuary and boxes made of stone, as well as guest cottages for human and feline visitors.
One of 14 statues of Sir Buddy that decorate the grounds and gardens of Budsworth House.
Rumors that Sir Buddy would be created Buddy, Earl of Buddington, did not come to fruition, although royal experts say an earldom is not off the table for the Queen’s favorite feline.
“Her Majesty is quite fond of Bud-Bud and was delighted when a parcel arrived with a Christmas card and a framed photograph of the two of them together,” a palace sources said. “In fact, Prince George and Princess Charlotte refer to Sir Buddy as ‘Uncle Bud-Bud.’ So in a sense, Sir Buddy is already part of the family.”
A real estate agent discovers a terrified, depressed cat left behind in a trashed rental home after the tenant vacated the place.
A real estate agent in Texas was filming video for his TikTok channel, sarcastically providing a voice-over in which he promises a “look at the beauty of rental houses when the tenants move out.”
As the agent, who goes by the name Felix Jaimes on TikTok, showed broken blinds, inexplicably removed wood floor panels, a cracked mirror, dirty bathroom and garbage left everywhere. Then he heard noise coming from another room.
“Honestly I got scared, I thought someone was in there because the house was pretty much empty,” Jaimes explained later in the comments.
But he didn’t find a burglar — just a terrified, depressed-looking cat huddling in the corner of a closet.
“He was obviously scared,” Jaimes wrote. “My heart broke” for him.
“Immediately I thought they left their cat behind. What kind of people do that,” Jaimes asked. “I thought they had just abandoned the place since they destroyed it.”
After calling and sending text messages to the tenant, she called Jaimes back and said she wasn’t finished moving out.
“When I came back, the cat was gone,” Jaimes said.
The video was posted on Dec. 7. It’s not clear from Jaimes’ profile exactly where he is — or where the home is located — in Texas, but perhaps some sharp-eyed Texan will be able to tell from the exterior shots at the beginning of the video.
Regardless, the video is distressing. It seems to me that organizations like county-level SPCAs — which employ animal welfare officers with law enforcement jurisdiction when it comes to animal abuse and welfare investigations — are made to handle cases like this, not just the “saving 50 cats from a hoarding situation” stories we hear all the time.
At the very least, the SPCA’s law enforcement division should locate the owner, interview her, check on the cat and have him brought in for a veterinary exam. If they don’t like what they see, they should confiscate the cat and take extra care to place him with people who know how to treat cats and will give him the love he deserves.
Maybe everything really is on the up-and-up and just looks bad, but someone who really knows cats — and loves them — would never leave their kitty in an empty apartment, cowering in a closet and believing he’s been abandoned. That’s why it should be investigated. Better safe than sorry.
A video of Garner bathing her cat shows she really loves the little guy.
We’re not big on celebrity stuff here on Pain In The Bud, but we’ll make an exception for Jennifer Garner, her cat Moose and The Case of the Relentless Klingon.
The entirely ghastly ordeal unfolds on video (below) as the Alias star takes, uh, matter into her own hands when Moose’s business gets stuck in his fur.
“Something’s gone awry,” Garner says in the beginning of the clip before whispering into the camera. “Moose pooped his pants … He’s befouled!”
Garner proceeds to lift Moose into the kitchen sink, alternately praising him and saying she feels bad giving him a bath because he’s the nicest cat she’s ever had. At first Moose endures it like a champ, seemingly resigned to getting scrubbed and having the offending piece of poop removed from his long coat.
“There’s something caught,” Garner says as she struggles to free the Klingon from a tangle of fur. “I know, Moose. I’m so sorry!”
But it’s all too much for Moose, who doesn’t want to wait for Garner to wash the soap out of his fur and grows increasingly impatient. After Garner tells him to hang in just a little longer and second guesses herself (“What would my mom do?”), Moose has finally had enough and delivers a paw smack to Garner’s cheek, then lets his claws do the talking.
“I don’t blame him,” she says later as she bleeds from claw wounds to her neck.
It’s clear Garner loves the little guy. The actress, a known cat lover, has been photographed walking with Moose in a stroller, and starred in 2016’s Nine Lives, a movie about a cat who was unfortunately voiced by Kevin Spacey less than a year before he became persona non grata in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement.
This video of Jennifer Garner bathing her cat takes up at least 1/4 of my mental real estate. pic.twitter.com/bBK00zR274
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