Caturday – Pain In The Bud

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

Tony Gonsolin hasn’t been shy about his love for cats.

The Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher rocked cat shirts and spoke often about cats during his time in the minors, continued the habit when he was promoted to the majors, then last year kicked it up a notch when he wore cat-themed cleats as a starting pitcher.

Now the 28-year-old Gonsolin has the highest profile of his young career as he leads all of major league baseball with an astounding 1.58 ERA, 0.84 WHIP and a 9-0 record, and he’s continued using his platform to spread love for all things feline.

For our readers outside the US, as well as those unfamiliar with the sport, the numbers above mean Gonsolin has been exceptional and virtually unhittable this year. Pitching is often compared to chess, and for good reason. Being a pitcher is paradoxical — a pitcher’s job is to throw the ball across the plate while at the same time making it as difficult as possible for the batter to actually hit the ball. As a result, pitchers use deception, psychological tricks and a wide variety of tiny physical adjustments to make the ball behave in different ways.

Tony Gonsolin, Filthy 3 Pitch Sequence (all Splitters). ✌️ pic.twitter.com/Eupgp4yamb

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 13, 2020

People with a passing knowledge of baseball think these guys just throw as hard as they can to blow the ball past the batter at 100 mph. While some pitchers are capable of that, it’s not a viable strategy. Throw the same pitch again and again, and hitters will know what’s coming. That’s not what you want to do, unless you enjoy getting clobbered by home runs.

Instead, a great pitcher will follow that 100 mph fastball with an 82 mph breaking ball, throwing the hitter’s timing off and baiting him into swinging early. Or he’ll throw a 12-6 curveball, which drops off by several feet as it crosses the plate.

One of Gonsolin’s go-to pitches is a split-finger fastball, also known as a splitter because of the grip pitchers use to throw the pitch. It combines the speed of a fastball with the drop of a curveball and is very difficult to hit when executed by a skilled pitcher.

In addition to wearing cat-themed cleats, getting his teammates and manager to wear cat shirts and using social media to talk about his love for all things feline, Gonsolin celebrates every “Caturday” with posts about cats.

As he climbed the ladder from minor leaguer to pro, Gonsolin was a cat man without a cat because the uncertainty and travel schedule of a minor leaguer doesn’t leave much time or stability for a pet. In addition to the constant possibility of being dealt to another team, minor leaguers can be shuffled between different levels of play (AAA, AA, single-A, fall leagues, etc) and sent up to their MLB team for short stints if big leaguers get hurt and the team needs a temporary replacement.

Now that Gonsolin is an established major leaguer, and the Dodgers value him so much that it’s very unlikely they’ll trade him to another team, Gonsolin adopted an orange tabby named Tigger. It’s safe to say little Tigger is a well-loved cat who is doted on by his adoring human.

gonsolincattigger — Credit: Tony Gonsolin/Instagram

Note: As longtime readers of PITB know, Little Buddy and I are Yankee fans. I was born and raised here in New York, started watching the Yankees as a child when they were lousy in the early 90s, lived through the glorious Joe Torre Era when Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neil, Mariano Rivera (my favorite Yankee), Andy Pettite et al won four (!) World Series in five years from 1996 to 2000, and have been waiting patiently for the Yanks to win it all again for the first time since 2009. This is our year! The Yankees are historically great in 2022. Buddy himself might not fully understand baseball, but he has a mean mid-20s swipe ball and he likes it when the Yankees win and I’m happy. We wish Gonsolin well, but if the Dodgers and Yankees end up in the World Series this year, well, I’ll be rooting against him, cat cad of not. Sorry, Tony!