Category: animal welfare

The Era of Tiger Pets Is Over, Plus: Influencer Defends Hitting Cat, Says People Are Upset Over ‘Nothing’

Big Cat Rescue will pivot to conservation efforts across the world. Meanwhile, TikTok “influencer” Hasbulla says people are attacking him for “nothing” over a video showing him abusing his cat.

We start with some great news: Big Cat Rescue is shutting down because its services will no longer be needed.

Of course there are still plenty of tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards, pumas, lynx and cheetahs in the non-profit sanctuary’s care, but the passing of the Big Cat Public Safety Act has finally put an end to the cruel, abusive and absurd practice of keeping big cats as pets.

The animals will be moved to Turpentine Creek, an accredited animal sanctuary in Arkansas. Big Cat Rescue will continue to fund their care and will sell its existing land in Florida as it transitions to programs to prevent the extinction of big cat species, almost all of whom are critically endangered.

“We have always said that our goal was to ‘put ourselves out of business,’ meaning that there would be no big cats in need of rescue and no need for the sanctuary to exist,” Big Cat Rescue wrote in a memo released this week. “Supporting our cats in larger enclosures at Turpentine Creek, at much lower cost per cat than we incur by continuing to operate Big Cat Rescue, will free up resources to let us do much more to save big cats in the wild.”

photo of tiger and cub lying down on grass
Credit: Waldemar/Pexels

The Big Cat Public Safety Act has not only made it illegal to own tigers and other wild cats as pets, it also puts an end to the cub-petting business used by roadside zoos, in which cubs are taken from their mothers as infants so the roadside zoos can charge customers to pet the cubs and pose for photographs with them. While big cat “pet owners” are grandfathered in, many have been rescued and there will be no more pets after the current group dies out.

Influencer Hasbulla says people “are attacking me for nothing” over video in which he abuses cat

Hasbulla, the Russian influencer whose videos have been viewed more than 10 billion times on TikTok, says people are making a big deal over “nothing” in response to a video showing him abusing his cat.

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Hasbulla is 20 years old but has a child-like appearance due to a genetic condition.

The 3’4″ social media “star” is known for frequently talking about “acting like a man” and in addition to being an enthusiastic supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine (he’s called Putin “a lion” on several occasions), he holds typical Russian views on the way men are “supposed” to act.

Hasbulla said he was merely disciplining his cat for “misbehaving.”

“Those brothers who think that I was beating the cat, pulled the ear, this and that. I pulled the ear gently,” Hasbulla said in a video accompanying a Twitter post. “I know that people are waiting for the moment, if I write something wrong, to just attack me like this. Like, ‘you do this, you do that’. She was misbehaving and I just pulled the ear and that’s it. I love my cat more than you. If I didn’t love the cat, I wouldn’t have it at home. My most lovely animal is a cat. And when she disobeyed, I scolded her a little. And you are attacking me for nothing.”

Of course anyone with common sense knows cats are not capable of “misbehaving” because they have no concept of what behaving means by human standards, and Hasbulla is being dishonest when he claims he was “gently” disciplining the cat.

In the video, which the Russian voluntarily uploaded, he’s seen grabbing the terrified cat by her ear and yanking violently. The cat runs from him and retreats to a cardboard box where she tries to soothe herself, but Hasbulla follows, scolding her in his native language and hitting her several times on her head and body.

Unfortunately there is little concern for animal rights in Hasbulla’s country, so it’s very unlikely he’ll run afoul of any Russian laws, and even less likely that an animal welfare organization will confiscate the abused feline.

So Many People Are Abandoning Cats Due To Inflation, Shelters Have Surrender Waiting Lists

More people are abandoning their pets, saying they can no longer afford to care for and feed them amid historic inflation.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve experienced sticker shock in the last six or seven months, especially in grocery stores.

Staples like milk and bread cost two or three times what they did pre-inflation, some retailers are taking the opportunity to arbitrarily hike prices even higher, and a perfect storm of economic uncertainty and a rampaging bird flu caused the price of eggs and poultry to skyrocket.

By late 2022, almost 50 million chickens and turkeys had been killed by avian flu or culled because of it, and almost 10 million more were lost to the virus in the first 12 weeks of 2023, according to the CDC. That breaks the record for most birds lost to avian flu, which was set in 2015 when 51 million died or were culled.

Pet food prices are up too, mirroring grocery inflation, as are veterinary costs and medicine for cats and dogs.

Inflation has squeezed so many people that shelters in the US and UK are reporting unprecedented surrenders from people who believe they can’t afford their pets anymore. In some areas it’s so bad that local shelters have waiting lists — or surrender queues, as they’re called in the UK — for people parting with their pets.

“We get between 10 and 12 surrenders per week, so we’re looking at anywhere between 30 and 50 a month,” Ashley Burling of Montana-based Help For Homeless Pets said. “When you’re talking about inflation, you’re talking about vet bills, pet food, pet supplies and pet rent. I think inflation, I think people going back to work after the pandemic, there’s other reasons that they’re surrendered.”

More than 70 percent of adoptable pets at the Nevada SPCA previous had homes, executive director Lori Heeren told the local NBC affiliate. Her organization is on pace for 2,500 surrenders in 2023.

Free cute european shorthair cat

News outlets tell the same story in local markets across the country, and the Humane Society is seeing the same trend nationally, CEO Kitty Block told CNN. While pet-related costs increased sharply in 2022 — with food and supplies increasing by as much as 30 percent, according to NielsenIQ — statistics show they haven’t relented yet this year. In fact, prices are still edging up, albeit at a slower rate than the previous year.

To cope, more people are leaning on pet food pantries. In Iowa, for example, the Animal Rescue League gave away more than 40,000 pounds of pet food in 2020 and 2021, and a whopping 146,000 pounds in 2022.

Shelter operators say they want people to know there are options so they don’t feel they have to part with cats and dogs who have become family.

“This is bigger than dogs or cats in shelters,” Block said. “It’s about the people who love them.”

PITB readers are the kind of people who dote on their cats and most of us couldn’t imagine abandoning them even in hard times, but chances are we all know someone who’s thought about parting with their fluffy overlords.

a gray cat eating from the ceramic bowl
Credit: Angelina Zhang on Pexels.com

They don’t have to give their beloved cats and dogs up. There are resources to help them meet their animal’s needs to prevent them from surrendering:

– Many local chapters of the Humane Society and SPCA, as well as private shelters, offer free spay/neuter clinics and free or low-cost veterinary exams. A guide from the Humane Society notes PetFinder allows users to search for pet-specific food pantries and low cost veterinary services

– There are programs that provide pet food to people who can no longer afford it

– Some shelters will place pets in temporary foster homes to help relieve the burden until their owners can take them back

– Buying food and medicine online is significantly cheaper than in grocery stores. Some offer deep discounts on meds to existing customers and prices from online retailers have remained relatively stable, especially when buying in quantity

– Social services programs may include provisions for pets

It’s in the best interests of shelters and animal welfare programs for cats and dogs to stay with their people, and not only because they don’t have the resources to house hundreds of abandoned pets on top of their usual intake.

Keeping people and pets together benefits both. Cats and dogs obviously don’t understand that their people are tearfully, reluctantly giving them up. All they know is they’ve been abandoned by the people who made them feel safe and loved. For the mental health and overall well-being of humans and their furry companions, they should stay together.

For some people, like Patricia Kelvin of Poland, Ohio, that means scrounging up whatever she can and cutting back on her own expenses before she will allow her cat to go without.

“There’s just no question in my mind. If my diet was going to be more beans than something else, I wouldn’t hesitate,” Kelvin told CNN. “If I had to sell my sterling silver, which I’ve had for 60 years, that would go before my little ‘Whiskers’ would be deprived.”

The Bizarre Effort To Brand Cats And Dogs According To Political Ideology

“Things are just a little more progressive here in San Francisco.”

In one of my favorite South Park episodes, Kyle’s father Gerald uproots his family and moves to San Francisco because, he explains, he can no longer stand the narrow minded, gas-guzzler-driving, gun owning people of South Park.

He throws a party in his San Fran townhouse, inviting his new neighbors who all have multi-hyphenate last names and a habit of speaking with their eyes closed, settling into deeply self-satisfied reverie as they literally savor the smell of their own farts.

“Can you believe those morons in Texas just executed another prisoner?” one of Gerald’s new neighbors says, tooting into an empty wine glass before raising it to his nose like an aromatic vintage and taking a deep, enthusiastic huff. “Things are just so much more progressive in San Francisco.”

While reading this article about the Portland metro area boasting the highest percentage of single cat-owning men in the country (more than twice the percentage here in New York, and almost three times more than Miami), I couldn’t help but picture some of the men in the story as crudely drawn South Park characters, inhaling air biscuits as they associate an animal with their politics.

“I think it makes sense because it’s a more progressive part of the country,” one of the men told the Seattle Times as he tried to explain Portland’s high percentage of single “cat daddies.” “I think there’s more freedom to not be ‘toxically masculine’ in this part of the country.”

Because we can’t help but ruin everything with politics in this country, the effort to drag cats and dogs into the left-right divide has been picking up steam in recent years, aided by click-seeking media.

“Republicans Are Dog People, While Democrats Prefer Cats,” reads a Business Insider headline. “What our cats and dogs say about our politics,” reads another from the Washington Post. Time magazine quizzed 220,192 readers on their politics and pet preferences, concluding: “It’s True, Liberals Like Cats More Than Conservatives Do.”

The alleged political divide over companion animals has been the subject of research papers in psychology and veterinary journals, and pets are now routinely included in the ideologically-motivated invective that saturates social media. Conservatives are portrayed as poor, shotgun-toting rednecks driving beat-up pickups covered in Gadsden flags while their faithful but stupid dogs hang their heads out of the windows, trailing globs of drool.

Liberals, meanwhile, are portrayed as unmarried middle age women who spend their Saturday nights on their couches with pints of Ben & Jerry’s and their feminine, useless cats, bemoaning their lack of relationships.

The incels and pick-up game “artists” have even gotten in on it.

“Only a cat-owning bitch would complain to the police about a f—ing joke,” manosphere influencer Andrew Tate raged in a 2022 video after one of his intentionally inflammatory social media posts provoked a stronger response than he anticipated. “Who calls the police on a f—ing joke? Cat owners. Cat owners are liberals. Cat owners believe in hate speech. Cat owners are Democrats. Cat owners are dickheads!”

Tate, by the way, has been rotting in a Romanian prison since December after he was arrested and accused of running a human trafficking ring that exploited young women. Tate, his brother and their associates lured the victims with declarations of love and promises to get married. Once the young women arrived in Romania, the country’s authorities said, Tate and his crew would confiscate their passports, imprison them in Tate’s mansion near Bucharest, and force them to perform sex acts on live streams for the financial benefit of the defendants.

Tate was arrested after unsuccessfully trying to troll Greta Thunberg on Twitter by showing off his expensive, gas-guzzling hypercars and bragging that he likes to eat pizza without recycling the boxes. Romanian police, who were already looking at Tate in a wider human trafficking probe, noticed the pizza boxes seen in his videos were from a local chain and moved quickly to arrest him.

Tate has lost three appeals to toss the case, which is ongoing. But the alleged human trafficker still boasts a massive and loyal online following, and as far as his fans are concerned, his words are law. If Andrew Tate says cats are the preferred pets of “liberal bitches,” then it’s true in the eyes of his fans, many of whom pay hundreds of dollars a month for an online “school” where Tate purports to teach them the finer points of masculinity.

Aside from ruining yet another one of life’s joys by dragging politics into it, I’m worried that pets will pay the price for the misguided effort to associate them with ideology.

Cats in particular are already extremely vulnerable and tend to get the brunt of abuse by proxy. That is to say, studies show men who are abusive toward women often target cats belonging to women as proxies for their anger. They associate felines with the feminine. Women target cats to harm their exes and significant others as well, but there’s a lack of statistics since men don’t usually seek help in domestic violence situations.

Likewise, sitting on porches while drinking beer and shooting at critters who happen by is practically an official sport in some parts of the country. As someone who has Google News alerts set up for cat-related stories, I see the same depressing stories every day: cats who die a few feet from their front doors or who make it home with BB wounds, arrows sticking out of their chests or actual gunshot wounds.

Those stories are so common, it’s difficult not to despair for the poor cats and for whatever diseased way of thinking prompts people to hurt and kill innocent animals.

Do we really want to give people more incentive to kill cats?

Do we want gun owners regaling each other with stories about how many “liberal cats” they’ve shot?

Do we want potential caretakers passing on adopting cats because they’re worried their choice of pet indicates they belong to a certain ideological tribe? After all, everything from the cars we drive and the stores we shop, to observing basic hygienic practices during a pandemic, allegedly says something about our political beliefs.

Buddy the Handsome Cat
Buddy the Cat: Not wimpy!

As for men who love cats, we already deal with absurd stereotypes. (We’re invariably described as gay, feminine and somehow not as manly as dog owners, even those of us who have hulking, muscular house tigers like Buddy!) We don’t need to encourage even more stereotypes, and in general I think we could all do with less box-checking. Life is not a Myers-Briggs test.

I know one thing for certain: cats are masters of living in the moment, and they have no patience for human nonsense like politics. They are innocent and pure. Sullying them with political associations is a disservice to these regal, wonderful animals.

Disabled Young Mountain Lion Gets A New Home

Nicholas requires regular veterinary care after his mother was killed and he almost lost his life when a driver struck them on a California highway.

Nicholas was just a cub and was following his mother across a busy toll road in Orange County, Calif., in 2020 when a driver hit them, killing his mother and leaving him with life-long disabilities.

Along with the trauma of watching his mother die, the little puma endured months of surgeries to repair his body. Since then, young Nicholas had been living in a sanctuary in northern California, but was about to find himself homeless when the sanctuary’s operators went bankrupt.

With just hours to go before that facility was closed, a sanctuary called Lions, Tigers & Bears of San Diego County swooped in and agreed to take the special-needs puma, who requires regular veterinary care.

“Nicholas has a head tilt and neurological issues, both conditions require ongoing veterinary care,” Lions Tigers & Bears founder Bobbi Brink told KTLA. “We’ve had a few animals with these issues, so our veterinary team is well-versed in providing the specialized care required for Nicholas, and we’re relieved to give him a permanent home with a den, a healthy diet, medical care and enrichment and toys.”

The handsome young puma is currently in quarantine, Brink said, and will be moved into his permanent habitat after 30 days.

Although California is part of their native range and home to a relatively stable population of mountain lions, the species is seriously threatened by habitat destruction, habitat fracturing and vehicle traffic. Some 70 pumas are killed each year on California’s highways, and experts say the survivors are stranded on isolated “islands” of habitat, separated from potential mates by deadly highways. Indeed, scientists who track native wildlife in California have noted signs of inbreeding among pumas, as the animals are cut off from other populations of their species.

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Nicholas in quarantine. Credit: Lions Tigers & Bears sanctuary

The life of the much-celebrated, recently deceased mountain lion P-22 illustrates the problems faced by the unique cats.

P-22 became famous when he migrated from southern California to Los Angeles, crossing the state’s busiest and most dangerous highways to get there. He settled in LA’s Griffith Park, which straddles the hills with the famous Hollywood sign and the outdoor Greek Theatre.

Although he became a local icon, frequently making cameos on the doorbell camera systems of people living nearby and making his rounds through the park and surrounding neighborhoods, P-22’s range was only nine square miles — the smallest range ever recorded for an adult male mountain lion — and he did not have opportunities to mate and produce cubs, as his kingdom was cut off from areas where he might encounter female pumas.

One solution to the problem is to build land bridges connecting areas where mountain lions and other wildlife make their homes. In April of 2022, officials broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, which when complete will connect Agoura Hills to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains.

But such projects are wildly expensive and take years to complete. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing has a $90 million price tag and won’t be finished until 2025. On the bright side, about two thirds of the cost has been covered by private donations, proving Californians and other wildlife lovers are invested in the survival of mountain lions, coyotes, deer and other fauna expected to make use of the bridge.

It’s also an encouraging sign indicating efforts to educate the public about local wildlife have been successful. Along with the other problems they face, pumas — also known as catamounts, cougars and dozens of other names — are often confused with African lions.

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Nicholas enjoys a nap. Credit: Lions Tigers & Bears sanctuary

Because they’re large cats, they’re called lions and they resemble their African counterparts, many people assume mountain lions are dangerous. But not only are mountain lions (puma concolor) an entirely different species than African lions (panthera leo), they are not in the same category of felid.

Pumas are actually felines, meaning they’re more closely related to domestic cats, and like smaller cats they can purr but cannot roar. True big cats, like tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards, are members of the genus panthera and are capable of roaring, but not purring or meowing.

Perhaps most importantly, pumas are not aggressive toward humans. There are only 27 recorded deaths from encounters with mountain lions over the past century compared to more than 50,000 deaths from dogs, for example, and in almost every one of those cases the pumas were either cornered or their cubs were threatened.

Nicholas is not only a reminder that animal life is valuable, his circumstances also remind us that we’re going to have to find creative ways to ensure the survival of many species as humanity expands. The global population is expected to level off at about 11 billion and then slowly contract as third-world countries undergo the same lifestyle changes common to nations that have already made the transition to first world. But until then, it will take a massive and coordinated effort to ensure we don’t end up on a very lonely planet and likely endanger our own survival with the cascade failures that arise from extirpating entire species.

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Cat With Gang Tattoos Rescued From Mexican Prison, Up For Adoption

Authorities found the cat in a sweep after a New Years Day riot resulted in 17 deaths and the escape of thirty inmates.

On Jan. 1, the inmates in one of Mexico’s most notorious prisons celebrated the New Year by starting a riot.

Ten prison guards and seven inmates lost their lives in the violent chaos, and thirty inmates escaped the CERESO 3 prison, according to press reports from Mexico.

When authorities finally regained control — an effort that required the military, national guard and local cops — they conducted a sweep of the facility for contraband and weapons, and that’s when a police K9 unit found a cat wandering the dangerous grounds by himself.

Dubbed “the gangster gato” by the local press — he doesn’t yet have a real name — the feline was taken into the care of Juarez’s Department of Animal Welfare for the Rescue and Adoption of Pets while police complete their investigation.

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The cat, who reportedly belonged to the late Los Mexicles gang leader, is in good health. Credit: Juarez Animal Control

He’s an Egyptian, a breed that commands up to $2,000, and reportedly belonged to Ernesto Alfredo Piñon de la Cruz, aka “El Nato,” the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel-aligned Los Mexicles gang. Cruz was the alleged “mastermind” of the escape who died on Jan. 5 when police caught up to him. He didn’t go quietly and died in the resulting shootout.

Although it may be difficult for Americans and others to imagine how prisoners could keep pets, stories about the subsequent raid and sweep say authorities found “VIP cells” stocked with amenities like space heaters, air conditioners, personal washing machines and various other electronics. The Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission and other NGOs had previously warned that the inmates were “practically running the prison,” and that guards there didn’t have the manpower or will to crack down on illegal activity in the cell blocks.

Gang leaders and others who had power were able to set up their cells like lounges, with couches, plasma TVs, video game consoles, stereos and card tables. One had a pet snake in a terrarium, and several kept safes full of cash they’d use to pay for items smuggled in through a secret entrance. There was even a mechanical bull to amuse the inmates and help them kill time.

In all, authorities seized more than 2,800 pieces of contraband, according to reports.

“The privileges are over,” Chihuahua Gov. Maru Campos said earlier this month as authorities showed some of the contraband and weapons they’d seized to reporters.

The cat is in good health, staff at the Juarez Department of Animal Welfare say. He’ll always carry scars from his time in CERESO 3, unfortunately, because the Mexicles tattooed him with the gang’s logo and an associated slogan, “Hecho en Mexico,” or “Made in Mexico.”

Despite living in such chaotic and dangerous conditions, “the cat is very sociable, and is in great shape, with no infections,” said Cesar Rene Diaz, a Juarez official.

The city is taking applications for adoption and a committee of Juarez officials will make the final decision on who gets to give the kitty a forever home. Government officials and their relatives are barred from applying to adopt the cat.

Credit: Mexican state police
Credit: Mexican state police