animal welfare – Pain In The Bud

Lebowski Cat Named ‘Dude’ Makes Bowling Alley Home, Plus: A Nightmare Vet Visit

A bowling burglar turned out to be a cute tuxedo cat looking for a warm, safe home.

Yianni Mavrakis already has a full plate as the owner-operator of two bowling alleys, so when the alarm at one of the locations kept going off in the middle of the night, he wasn’t a happy camper.

Each tripped alarm resulted in a response by police, and Mavrakis had to physically check the premises for signs of intruders in the Chicago-area business.

Eventually he found the culprit — a stray tuxedo cat he named “Dude,” after the beloved, bowling-obsessed protagonist played by Jeff Bridges in the 1998 crime comedy The Big Lebowski.

After it became clear a huge space with lots of moving machine parts and noisy crowds was no place for a feline, Mavrakis took the little guy home, where he now has a much quieter, more calm territory to call his own.

Like his film counterpart, the Dude abides. Someone get that cat some bowling shoes and a White Russian!

A viral nightmare vet visit

A woman named India, who goes by the TikTok screen name “the_unhinged_queen” says her cat returned terrified and soiling herself after one of those “we have to bring your cat to the back” moments during a trip to the veterinarian’s office.

India related the story on TikTok and says the vet’s staff acted like all was normal despite the distress the kitty was in, except for calling her cat “difficult.”

“She was covered in urine, soaking wet. They plopped her in my lap, and she’s crying,” India said in a video she recorded about the ordeal.

Back at home, the distressed British Shorthair was dragging her back leg and was in pain. India says the veterinarian called later to apologize and conceded maybe the techs had pulled her cat’s leg “farther than what, maybe, was comfortable for her.”

An examination by a second veterinarian, India said, concluded the vet techs had pulled the cat’s leg out of its socket.

This is a one-source story based on a TikTok short, published by an online site that is often credulous, so caution is warranted. Grain of salt and all that.

Still, it reminded me of my own anxiety when two vet techs couldn’t handle Bud during a visit and did the whole “we’ve gotta bring him to the back” bit.

Unlike India, who insisted her cat is sweet and gentle, I gave ample warning to the vet techs.

“Don’t worry, we deal with cats like that all the time,” one of them said.

“I don’t think you do,” I told her, urging them both to be careful.

When he mauled one of them and the tech acted surprised, I gave her an apologetic shrug. I did try to warn her.

Then they announced they needed to bring him “to the back,” which was an examination room where, I presumed, they had equipment to constrain “difficult” cats.

I sat there wincing as I heard the carnage despite the closed door. In true Buddinese fashion, it sounded like an enraged Elmo murdering half the residents of Sesame Street. I imagined dismembered Muppets and humans retreating with deep scratches on their arms as I heard Bud’s kittenish howls of indignation.

When they brought Bud back to me in his carrier he had a look that said “Chumps think they can poke me with needles? Hah!”

But the thing is, it’s a matter of trust because you really don’t know what they’re doing back there. You’re at a veterinary practice, which means you’re dealing with people who chose to work with animals. That should mean they wouldn’t harm anyone’s beloved pet, but sometimes that’s not true.

It’s a good reminder for us to check that our feline overlords are okay after vet visits, even if we’re sure the vet staff is trustworthy. If a cat is in obvious distress it means the pain must be unbearable, but it’s precisely because cats are great at hiding their pain that we should be on the lookout for signs of something wrong.

‘I Just Beat Your Cat Again. She Can’t Walk. We’re Done.’

This Caturday we look at how pets fare in domestic violence situations, plus a study about obesity in meat-eating and “vegan cats.”

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.

Close-up of a curious orange kitten with large, expressive eyes resting on a bed. — Credit: Mayara Caroline Mombelli/Pexels

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.

Google search results showing articles about a study on lower rates of overweight among vegan-fed cats. — Notice the bottom right headline, which misinterprets a statistical analysis for “odds” of being overweight.

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

He Got Virginia’s Harshest-Ever Animal Abuse Penalty. It’s NOT Enough

Some people should not be allowed back into society, for the protection of people and animals.

Rodney Travis Jr. will spend the next 15 years in prison.

The 27-year-old Virginia man has received the harshest animal abuse penalty in his state’s history for what prosecutors called “acts of unspeakable evil”: Travis “adopted” dozens of cats from shelters, then checked into hotel rooms and tortured them for an online audience, who paid him for his acts of savagery.

I’m not going to get into exactly what he did. I’ve read about similar cases and I’m still haunted by the horrific things people do to cats for the sick bastards who get some sort of grotesque thrill from the suffering of animals.

What I will say is that 15 years is not enough.

This man needs to be permanently removed from society. I don’t believe the death penalty is consistent with a general respect for life, and it would be the easy way out.

Travis should sit in a prison cell for the rest of his life and think about what he did to animals, innocent creatures who feel pain just as much as we do.

Collage of various cats in different poses and settings, showcasing their distinct features and expressions. — Some of Travis’ victims.

He should remain segregated from human society for the rest of his life, because a person who is capable of planning such acts of barbarity, who used multiple identities to fool shelters and rescues, who taunted suspicious rescuers and inflicted so much pain and suffering, is emphatically not a person who can be released back into society.

Travis was caught thanks to the efforts of an entire network of animal lovers who helped track him down, and by a concerned hotel employee, who informed police when Travis checked into a hotel at 2 a.m. and departed about seven hours later, leaving blood and cat fur behind.

In addition to brutally torturing cats, Travis admitted to making $400,000 by posing as a good guy, uploading images of the injured cats online, and accepting donations he said were for veterinary care. He also claimed some of the cats had been diagnosed with cancer, opening Instagram accounts for each cat and relying on the sympathy of well-intentioned animal lovers.

In addition to proving how intentional and calculating Travis was in his crimes, this should be a reminder to everyone that our charitable dollars are best spent on reputable organizations that are registered as non-profits and have Form 990s filed with the IRS in good standing, with the documentation available on public sites like GuideStar. Too many bad actors, including people who operate rage-bait sites that post animal abuse cases and solicit money for things like running petitions, vacuum up cash from people they deceive.

Do not let him out

Statistics on recidivism, particularly for the kind of crimes Travis committed, do not bode well for anyone unlucky to encounter Travis when he is released – human or animal.

Animal life has intrinsic value, and that’s reason enough to keep Travis imprisoned, but we also know people who harm animals are very likely to move on to human victims as well. The evidence is overwhelming.

People who harm animals are five times as likely to harm humans compared to non-violent criminals. Forty three percent of school shooters had animal abuse incidents in their past. School shooters in Uvalde, Parkland and Buffalo, the authors of some of the worst school massacres in American history, all had records of animal abuse and abuse involving cats specifically.

Of those school shooters with histories of killing and torturing animals, some 90 percent committed “up close and personal” mutilation, bludgeoning, burning or strangling of their non-human victims.

Psychological studies of animal abusers show faulty brain wiring that results in a lack of empathy, extreme callousness, histories of anti-social behavior and lack of impulse control.

Anyone who tortures or kills beautiful, innocent animals should face the same punishments society inflicts on people who torture or kill humans. Credit: Mayara Caroline Mombelli/Pexels

These are not people we should be allowing back into society, no matter how many misguided people argue that their victims are “just” cats, dogs and other animals. Every sign points to recidivism, yet somehow we act as if it’s a ludicrous idea to sentence people to long prison terms for animal abuse crimes.

Equally important is the fact that our politicians, who never met a special interest they wouldn’t take money from, have utterly failed to meaningfully update animal abuse laws or make penalties commensurate with the brutality of the crimes in question.

We accept endemic corruption, naked self-interest and the destruction of our country because we think politician A or B is some crucial vote in ultimately meaningless culture war nonsense, then act as if we’ve been given mana from heaven when one or two deign to listen to the handful of overworked, under-funded animal welfare organizations with vague promises that maybe, at some nebulous time in the future, they might allow a committee hearing on an animal abuse problem that has existed for decades.

That needs to stop. Our “public servants” need to be held accountable at the polls for their inaction.

Travis tortured 26 cats that we know of. Only four survived. He posted the videos to Youtube, Instagram and TikTok, platforms that collectively have an abysmal record of responding to animal abuse reports and seem to have a policy of doing absolutely nothing until law enforcement or an animal rights charity with national reach comes calling.

We, and most especially the animals, deserve better than this.

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.