Tag: crime

Golden Retriever Decides Burglar’s A Friend, Tries To Play With Him (VIDEO)

Guard dog? That wasn’t in the job description!

No one will ever accuse Nash of being a great guard dog.

The golden retriever made headlines this week after security cameras showed the friendly pup responded to a home intruder by grabbing a chew toy and, tail wagging excitedly, trying to make friends with the man.

Dante Rowley was on a trip when he received an alert from his home security system in San Diego that someone had entered his home. As he tapped into the secure feed, he and his fiance watched from Chicago as Nash cautiously observed the intruder ingress through a second-floor window, then decided the man was there to play with him.

The man quickly made himself at home, taking off his shirt and shoes before opening the fridge and helping himself to its contents. He even belched in satisfaction before sitting down to eat another snack, apparently a small carton of yogurt.

Rowley alerted police and San Diego officers arrived within minutes, but the footage shows that even as the intruder began to take nervous glances through the front windows, Nash kept trying to play with him, bringing him a variety of toys.

Nash wasn’t done making friends. When the police entered through the front door, the amicable pooch greeted them enthusiastically as well, and tried to enlist the officers in some fun and games.

“Nash,” Rowley admitted, “is the worst guard dog.”

“Usually, when he sees new people, he runs over and jumps all over them and is just on them 24-7,” he told the New York Times.

Dogs like Nash don’t “do a background check” before deciding to play with people, Cornell veterinary professor Katherine Houpt told the newspaper.

“The dog wanted someone to play with, and the burglar is as good as anyone,” she said. “It’s a breed that’s often friendly and, apparently, the owners made sure he was socialized with people. So he doesn’t think something awful is going to come in the door, but something fun, a playmate.”

Buddy the Cat reviewed the footage after he was asked to share his expert opinion and sniffed derisively as he watched Nash attempting to make friends with the intruder.

“Useless mutt!” the imperious gray tabby said. “Look at him! I’d be like ‘Listen, burglar man, I’m a tiger and I’m gonna, like, maul you and stuff if you don’t get outta my domicile immediately!’ Then obviously he would be really scared and would run because I’m intimidating and meowscular.”

The suspect, John Cline, 57, was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary, a felony. It wasn’t immediately clear if he’d retained an attorney.

A golden retriever dog with a happy expression, standing on grass.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Header image credit: Pexels

Beloved Brooklyn Bodega Cat Brought Back By ‘Borrower’ After Community Rallies

“I went to jail! They locked me up for this s–t! I did not steal the f—ing cat,” said the woman accused of stealing a kitten from a Park Slope bodega.

Someone had stolen Jabal and Park Slope wasn’t having it.

The three-month-old kitten went missing on Sept. 10 and when his human, 8th St. Mini Mart owner Imad “Jimmy” Innab, checked the store’s surveillance cameras, he saw a man and a woman grab the white-and-cream moggie from the sidewalk in front of the store as he was opening up. The last images of Jabal showed the kitten struggling in the man’s grip as the couple walked away with him.

Customers, including one who called the kitten “the patron saint of Jimmy’s store,” were incensed and immediately sprang into action. On a Park Slope subreddit, neighbors shared information and identified the couple, while customers plastered the neighborhood with missing flyers featuring Jabal’s image.

As for Innab, he offered a $500 reward and said he’d take the kitten back “no questions asked” as well as decline to press charges if the couple brought him back.

For a few days it looked like Jabal wouldn’t be seen again. Locals online feared the worst, that Jabal may have been sold to people who operate dog fighting rings (where cats are used as “practice” for the aggressively trained mutts) or abandoned someplace dangerous.

But neighbors recognized the woman, who has since been identified as 58-year-old Mary Sierra, and urged her to bring the cat back. On Monday Innab received a call from Sierra, who claimed she thought Jabal was a stray and promised to return him.

A man and a woman are walking on a sidewalk. The man is holding a small white dog, while the woman smiles beside him. They are dressed casually and surrounded by a suburban street environment.
A still from a surveillance camera showing the sidewalk in front of 8th St. Mini Mart. Credit: Jimmy Innab

Sierra’s son-in-law brought the kitten to the local precinct. Later that morning an NYPD officer came to the store holding Jabal and returned him to Innab.

“I cried,” Innab told The Gothamist, explaining that Jabal was a gift from a friend after his previous mouser and pet, Victoria, died at 17 years old. “ I put him down, and he started to sniff his bed, and his chair, and all of his toys.”

As for Sierra, she was arrested and charged with petty larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and companion animal stealing, the New York Post reported. The first two are misdemeanors under New York penal law, while the latter is a violation under the state’s Agriculture and Markets Law, which is a throwback to the days when most animal-related disputes concerned farmers and disagreements over ownership of livestock. Most US states have not updated those laws in more than a century despite drastic changes to the culture around companion animals and the ways Americans value their pets.

It’s not clear why Sierra’s companion, the man seen holding the cat in the surveillance footage, was not charged.

A man smiling while holding a white cat with grey markings in his arms.
Jabal reunited with Innab. Credit: New York Post

Sierra, who spoke to the Post after she was released pending a later court date, said she was going to “sue them for accusing me of stealing,” although it wasn’t clear if she meant she would sue the police, Innab or locals who identified her online from the surveillance video.

“I’m an animal lover. I got three rescue dogs,” she said. “I went to jail yesterday for this s—t. I went to jail! They locked me up, they locked me up for this s—t. I did not steal the f—ing cat.”

It wasn’t immediately clear when Sierra is due back in court.

Innab said he will no longer allow Jabal, which means “mountain” in Arabic, to roam outside the bodega and plans to get him a new collar and microchip.

Innab, 60, has operated the store for 40 years and is well known in the community. He was distraught when Jabal was taken, and credits his neighbors and friends for making sure the kitten was returned to him. The community’s reaction underscores the relationship neighbors have with local bodega owners and their cats, many of whom have become famous thanks to popular social media accounts documenting the friendly mousers.

“Clearly he’s become symbolic of something much larger,” one neighbor told the New York City ABC affiliate, WABC. “And the community did rally because it seemed such an unnecessary event.”

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.

Cat Caught Smuggling Drugs Into Siberian Prison, Plus: Rapper Xhibitz Celebrates His Feline’s 20th

“Well, first of all, I love my cat. I take care of her,” the rapper says of his Thunder Cat.

Some of you may remember Xzibit (pronounced exhibit), if not from his music then his stint as the host of Pimp My Ride, a show in which X and a custom car garage would take people’s junkers and turn them into extravagant moving art pieces with unique and over-the-top features.

One memorable episode, for example, had the crew transform the interior of one car into an aquarium, with fish tanks built into the backs of seats and door panels, while others featured innovations like trunks that folded out to become fully-functional kitchens.

What people may not know is that Xzibit is also a dedicated cat dad, and we mean dedicated. He keeps Thunder Cat on a diet of healthy food, brings her for regular check-ups and IV infusions at the vet due to previous problems with dehydration-related illnesses, and gives her the attention she deserves as a living being.

“She’s seen it all,” he added. “And everybody’s asking how I’ve kept her alive for this long. Well first of all, I love my cat. I take care of her, and I look out.”

The 51-year-old emcee, real name Alvin Nathaniel Joiner, said he was initially surprised when people expressed so much interest in Thunder Cat. He said he constantly gets correspondence from fans who love his cat. In an Instagram video, he held up a shirt with images of Thunder Cat sent to him by a fan.

“And yes,” he said, “I’ve worn this.”

Los Gatos bungles a delivery

The cat used to smuggle drugs into a maximum-security labor camp prison in Russia. Credit: FSIN/Russian government

A cat has been released and is free to go without charges after inmates tried to use the feline to smuggle drugs into their Russian prison, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN in Russian) said.

The unimaginatively-named Penal Colony No. 17 is in Krasnoyarsk, a city of about 1.2 million, and it’s brutal. It’s a maximum-security labor camp mostly for foreign prisoners in a region of Siberia where the average temperature in winter is below zero.

Not the kind of place you ever want to find yourself, which is certainly one reason why the inmates are trying to dull their existence with drugs. Their courier was a black and white cat who caught the eye of a prison officer because it was wearing two home made collars.

Prison security called for a K9 unit to sniff at the white powder found inside the collars, and you know the rest. There’s no word on whether anyone inside or outside the prison has been hit with charges, but thankfully the cat was unharmed, deemed healthy and set free.

Six Cops Storm Woman’s Home, Break Door Down With An Axe To Seize Cat

Now the cat’s caretaker is suing to get her pet back and says she’s worried the authorities will have the tuxedo shorthair euthanized. The RSPCA says it responded to serious concerns about the cat’s health.

Usually when complaints about UK police hit the headlines, it involves sheepish constables knocking to talk to a “suspect” about a social media post that offended someone.

This seems to be a whole different level of crazy, and neither the police nor prosecutors are denying that six police officers and an official from the RSPCA showed up at the North London home of Katherine Theodotou, chopped up the front door with an axe and charged in.

The 79-year-old Theodotu, through her attorney, said she was recovering from breast cancer surgery and couldn’t make it to the door quickly. The police, she said, came through the door just as she was reaching it and knocked her over.

They also provided images of the door after the May 27 “raid” on Theodotu’s home:

Theodotu says the police searched her entire home and an adjoining Greek school, which she founded.

The RSPCA and Metropolitan police tell a different version of the story, although they do not dispute the urgency and violence with which they entered Theodotu’s home. They say veterinarians who examined and treated Rita the cat had serious concerns about her health. Rita, who had a congenital condition, cannot use her back legs and requires special care. Theodotu’s attorney said the former human rights lawyer turned educator can prove she’s paid significant sums for Rita’s rehabilitation and care, including a recent veterinary surgery.

But veterinarians who examined Rita after the RSPCA took her found her condition “extremely concerning and consistent with a significant deterioration since discharge, alongside evidence suggestive of prolonged inadequate hygiene, nursing care, and monitoring within the home environment,” said Mark Townsend, an attorney for the RSPCA.

Theodotu is suing the RSPCA and the police for taking her cat and asking the court to prevent the RSPCA from potentially euthanizing Rita. Let’s hope the courts are able to sort out if the cat was receiving proper care and rule in the animal’s best interests.

In the meantime, the London Metropolitan Police should probably review whichever policy allows its officers to break into homes as if they’re ending a hostage situation, not collecting a cat. Unless a real life Jason Stathamesque character is barricaded in his home and making violent threats, it feels like one cop just to make sure everything stays civil and the temperature remains low would be the appropriate response. Two is overkill. Four is almost comical. But six? With an axe? Chopping the door down? Nah. You’ve gotta revisit your protocols, gov.