animal hospital – Pain In The Bud

For a nightmarish 34-hour stretch, Palash Pandey thought he’d never see his cat again.

On Saturday afternoon the Austin man took a Lyft to an animal hospital in his city, got out of the car and was walking around to get his cat, Tux, out from under the passenger seat on the other side when the driver pulled away. Pandey ran after the car, yelling for the driver to stop.

“I like ran behind him, screaming like ‘wait, wait, wait,’ I banged on his windows hoping that he would notice me and just stop. But instead of that he just like, peeled off, he drove away,” Pandey told Austin NBC affiliate KXAN. “I don’t know how else you would perceive somebody who you just dropped off running behind you and banging on your windows and doors. I don’t know if there’s a charitable explanation for that.”

He sent a series of frantic messages to the driver through the Lyft app, offering to pay him to return Tux and begging for information, but didn’t hear back until several hours later when the driver texted: “she isn’t there, sorry”.

You're right. The initial response was awful. Since then, we've done a lot behind the scenes, but I know we haven't communicated enough. We're very focused on this and will keep the community up to date.

— David Risher (@davidrisher) October 1, 2023

The driver said he didn’t see the carrier or the cat in the car, and said several riders he’d picked up later didn’t mention a cat either.

After Lyft’s live customer service wasn’t helpful, Pandey turned to Twitter and Reddit, explaining the situation in detail, providing information and asking people in Austin to share a missing cat flyer with Tux’s photo and information.

In the meantime Lyft’s CEO got involved, apologized for the poor initial response and devoted significant resources to the incident. The company sent alerts to all of its drivers and riders in the Austin area, notified police and dispatched its own staff to help find Tux.

Canvassing the area around the animal hospital and following tips from the public, Lyft’s team eventually tracked her down at about 1:30 a.m. Monday morning, spotting her in the rear of an office building a little more than a mile from the animal hospital. Tux was frightened and climbed a flight of stairs when the Lyft staffers approached, but they were able to wrap her in a t-shirt and get her into a carrier they’d brought with them.

Pandey was overjoyed to be reunited with Tux and thanked everyone who helped looked for her, but in an update said she was scared, “covered in fleas and dehydrated.” He said she was eating, which was a good sign, and he planned to bring her to the veterinarian on Monday.

However, the fact that Tux was found alone without her carrier, dirty and wandering near a busy road indicates someone intentionally took her, then dumped her like a hot potato after realizing thousands of people, the police and a corporate response team were looking for her.

The Lyft driver isn’t suspected of anything but perhaps poor customer service. He told his employers that he didn’t stop when Pandey began banging on his windows because he didn’t realize there was a cat in the car and thought Pandey had become belligerent for some reason.

Pandey believes the person who took Tux will be caught.

“F—ing coward saw what was coming for him and left her on the side of the road,” Pandey wrote on Reddit in an update. “There’s plenty of cameras around, he’s not going to get away with this.”

Photos of Tux/Credit: Palash Pandey

Ever since a leaked video showed him punching and choking a cat at his practice, Richard Timothy Logan has tried to hang on to his veterinary career.

The Ozark, Alabama-based vet came to the attention of animal welfare advocates and cat lovers in early April 2021, when a former employee at Andrews Avenue Animal Hospital posted a video showing a man identified as Logan in a veterinary examination room, punching, choking and dangling a 21-year-old cat by her collar.

Logan was investigated by police and arrested on animal abuse charges. That case is still pending. In addition, he faces a civil suit related to the video and the state’s veterinary board is investigating his conduct after the video sparked a series of complaints and requests to revoke his license to practice veterinary medicine.

Now, more than eight months after the video’s leak and his arrest, Logan announced he will “no longer be associated with” Andrews Animal Hospital. A letter posted on the animal hospital’s doors says Logan left the on Jan. 10 and the practice is looking for a new veterinarian. If they can’t find one by Jan. 31, they’ll call it quits.

From our original post about the video:

A man identified as Logan was examining a calico cat in November, in an exam room at the animal hospital when he grabbed the cat by the scruff of her neck and punched her on the top of her head with a closed fist, video of the exam shows. Still holding the cat by her scruff, he slammed her down onto the exam table, then did it again more forcefully.

Logan then swiped the cat off the exam table, causing her to fall to the floor.

Logan steps out of the frame for several seconds, then the video cuts forward, showing Logan again with his hands on the cat as a veterinary assistant holds the terrified, screaming feline down.

He punches the cat a second time, makes an annoyed gesture, then picks the cat up by her collar and dangles her as she struggles.

The cat was traumatized by the incident but survived and didn’t suffer any permanent physical damage.

Logan pleaded not guilty to two subsequent counts of animal abuse and hired an outspoken lawyer who has denied Logan did anything wrong, said his client has been the target of outlandish threats, and even tried to undermine the former employee who posted the video by claiming she brought her own dog to the veterinarian for treatment and “trusted him with her precious pet.”

David Harrison, Logan’s attorney, said his client was going to sue online commenters who condemned the accused veterinarian, and says Logan will be vindicated in court. He did not dispute that the video shows Logan mishandling the cat, but said it lacks context.

The video, Harrison claims, merely “shows Logan appearing to abuse a cat, though contributing circumstances, if any, are not known.”

Richard Timothy Logan — In this still from the leaked video, Logan throws the 21-year-old cat onto the exam table in his veterinary practice.

It’s worth noting there are no circumstances in which it’s appropriate for anyone, much less a veterinarian, to abuse a cat. Even frustration’s not an excuse: Handling animals is part of the job in veterinary work, and vets are trained to calm cats they have to examine, as well as techniques to hold and restrain cats if they won’t tolerate routine things like having blood drawn for lab work.

Harrison even invoked America’s war dead in Logan’s defense when the abused cat’s owners filed a civil suit.

“We have the best defense there is—not guilty,” Harrison told WTVY, a local news station. “One point five million Americans have died on foreign soil for us to have the right to be innocent until proven guilty.”

The number Harrison cites is untrue: There have been 666,411 total combat deaths in all US wars, and some 451,000 combat deaths on foreign soil.

Logan or his staff has also been involved in a protracted war of words with his online critics and former clients, even going so far as to pull the charts of two former clients and describing them in detail in an attempt to refute complaints they’ve made on Google reviews. While Andrews Avenue Animal Hospital has 4+ stars on Google reviews thanks to an abundance of five-star reviews counteracting the negative reviews, its rating on Yelp is considerably worse.

“There’s no [NAME REDACTED] in the aaah computer system except a [NAME REDACTED] in collections from 2014 for a bad/unpaid debt ! Her dog has not been to aaah for any surgery and has not been on the appointment book for anything & is flat out lying !,” an account that defended Logan posted. (The retaliatory review included the name of the client. We redacted the name for this post.)