New videos show the entire sequence of events when a woman stole a family’s cat right off their front porch on Sunday morning.
We’re putting out a call to our readers and all cat lovers to help identify a woman who brazenly snatched a family’s cat off their front porch in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.
The woman was wearing a pink jacket with a white scarf, black jogging pants, white sneakers and green socks.
The thief was caught snatching KiKi off his family’s front porch on Feb. 20.
Home security footage shows that at 7 a.m. on Feb. 20, the woman approached the Autar family’s home and tried to get their cat, KiKi, to approach her. KiKi wasn’t having it and turned toward the front door several times, refusing to approach the woman, but she slowly made her way onto the porch and snatched the well-loved kitty.
It’s clear from the way she holds KiKi that she’s not familiar with cats: Footage shows her holding him by the scruff of the neck, which is extremely painful for adult cats. Here’s a video of the entire sequence courtesy of Karina Autar:
And here’s a video from a second camera overlooking the driveway. The thief is clearly holding poor KiKi by the scruff with one hand as she briskly walks off:
The woman leaves in what looks like a black or dark blue Chevy suburban, quickly fleeing the neighborhood with the trunk still open. The SUV did not have a front license plate:
Earlier footage shows the same woman on a bicycle stopping in front of cars on the block and checking their doors. It appears she tossed the bike in the back of the SUV and drove off quickly, perhaps after someone spotted her.
Anyone who recognizes the woman or has information about the theft can call the Portland Police Department’s non-emergency number at 503-823-3333 or email Karina Autar directly.
The thief was caught snatching KiKi off his family’s front porch on Feb. 20.
The thief was caught snatching KiKi off his family’s front porch on Feb. 20.
The soccer pro was slapped with a hefty fine and lost sponsors after widespread outrage over a video that shows him kicking, slapping and throwing shoes at his cat as he and his brother laugh.
Kurt Zouma’s cat is getting the last laugh.
Zouma and his brother thought they were being clever and funny when they uploaded a video showing the professional soccer player drop-kicking the poor kitty, throwing a shoe at it and slapping it in the face while Zouma’s child held the terrified pet.
The UK Sun ran a story about the video, which the Zouma brothers uploaded to Snapchat. The story went viral this week and Zouma has taken an enormous hit to his wallet and reputation.
Zouma’s club, West Ham United, fined the footballer £250,000, which works out to about $338,00, or 20 percent of his yearly salary. In a statement the club said it was the maximum amount it could fine one of its players.
Zouma’s primary sponsor, Adidas, has dropped him, while insurance company Vitality dropped its sponsorship of the entire club and other sponsors may follow.
And on Tuesday night in his first game since the scandal, Zouma was roasted by fans who showed up to watch West Ham play Watford at London Stadium. The rowdy crowd jeered every time Zouma touched the ball.
“Kurt Zouma, he plays at centre-back, he kicks his f—ing cat!” the fans chanted.
Finally, in a scene that played out like a divine condemnation of Zouma’s treatment of his kitty, a confused stray cat bolted onto the field and interrupted play during Tuesday night’s match between English League teams Wigan and Sheffield. Fans cheered as Wigan’s Jason Kerr carefully picked up the freaked-out feline and carried her off the field, risking a penalty for leaving the playing area during the game.
The British press didn’t miss the opportunity to contrast how the two football pros treated felines.
Scotsman Jason Kerr of Wigan gently scoops up Topsey, a house cat who interrupted play on Tuesday night.
Team staff brought the tortoiseshell to a veterinarian who treated her for injuries, scanned for a microchip, and found she belonged to a family in Wirral, a town in northwest England.
The cat’s name is Topsey and she’d been missing for eight months. Alison Jubb, Topsey’s human, said she was going on vacation and was bringing Topsey to a cattery when the cat got scared and bolted out of her carrier. That was the last she heard of Topsey until late Tuesday night.
“My daughter-in-law rang me last night as they were watching the match and said there was a cat on the football pitch” who resembled Topsey, Jubb told the BBC. “I sort of laughed it off.”
But Jubb said she was no longer laughing when she received a call from a veterinarian telling her Topsey had been brought in by Wigan Athletic staff. Topsey was given pain medication and is under treatment for bite wounds, possibly from a dog, to her neck, per the BBC.
Topsey was reunited with her humans, while Zouma voluntarily surrendered his abused cat and his second kitty to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A still from the Snapchat video showing Zouma just before he drop-kicked the kitty while his other cat cowers on the floor.
The sequence of events restored some hope to animal lovers in the UK, who were dismayed when police said they would not charge Zouma for lack of evidence, despite the video clips and Zouma’s admission that he abused his cat.
However, Zouma’s legal troubles aren’t over. The 27-year-old is a French national and could face charges in his home country, where the public was outraged by his behavior and embarrassed that a high-profile Frenchman would harm an animal.
Zouma has been condemned by French politicians and there are calls to remove him from the French national team.
In the meantime, the RSPCA is conducting its own inquiry into the abuse incidents.
“We’re investigating and the cats are safe and in our care,” the group said in a statement. “We have been dealing with this since before the clip went viral online and we need to follow the proper legal process and not discuss due to UK GDPR laws.”
Criminal charges are still pending, and Logan faces a civil suit and a state veterinary board investigation for allegedly abusing a cat.
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.
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.”
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.)
A former local councilman in Pennsylvania faces animal cruelty charges for allegedly running over a cat earlier this month.
A former councilman in rural Pennsylvia faces two animal abuse charges after trying to run down a group of cats — and hitting at least one — with his truck earlier this month.
Frank Pagani Jr. was charged with aggravated cruelty toward animals, a felony, as well as a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge, according to a story by Beaver County Times reporter Garret Roberts.
Neighbor William Bittner, who helps care for the neighborhood strays, captured the Dec. 1 incident on his home security camera. The clip (embedded below) shows Pagani’s truck speeding up on the residential street and swerving toward cats who were in the road before blowing through a stop sign. Pagani Jr. then made a left turn to a side street and pulled into his driveway a few hundred feet away.
The 31-year-old was behind the wheel of the truck and his father, Frank Pagani Sr., was in the passenger seat during the incident, according to the Times. The Paganis live in New Galilee, a town of 379 people in rural Pennsylvania about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.
In this still from Bittner’s video, Pagani’s white pickup truck aims for a cat, circled, in the road. The cat hasn’t been seen since.
Bittner said last week that Pagani Jr. called him after he realized the incident was caught on video and said he’d resign his council seat.
“He thinks that’s the end of it,” Bittner said at the time. “You just can’t let an act like that go on without someone being charged.”
Bittner and his neighbors have been caring for the stray colony for years. In addition to feeding the strays, they’ve run a trap, neuter and return (TNR) program, fixing 28 cats, and have found homes for kittens who were born to the colony cats.
The Pagani family apparently panicked when they realized Bittner had captured the incident on video and posted it to Facebook. Per the Times:
“The police affidavit also details repeated phone calls were made to the homeowner who caught the incident on camera by Pagani, his father and his mother. Voicemails received by police detail the family asking for the video to be taken down.”
The video shows Pagani’s truck striking at least one of the cats, who immediately ran off with the other strays. It’s not clear how badly the cat was injured, and Bittner said “he’s not showing up” at regular feeding times.
“We’ve been searching and searching and we can’t find him,” he told WKDA, the local CBS affiliate.
Locals who reacted to the video on Facebook were horrified by the footage.
“I adopted one of those kittens,” one woman commented. “This breaks my heart.”
“We don’t need his idea of animal control,” says one neighbor, who has been caring for the local cat colony for years.
Neighbors who live on a quiet street in rural Pennsylvania were horrified when a man in a white pickup truck intentionally tried to run over stray cats last week, hitting at least one.
Now, thanks to one neighbor who captured part of the attack on video, they’ve identified the man at the wheel, and he’s a local politician.
Frank Pagani Jr. resigned from his seat on the municipal council of Galilee, a rural Pennsylvania town with a population of 379. Video shows Pagani Jr. speeding up and swerving to hit one of two cats who were in the road at the time. He was going so fast he blew through the stop sign at the end of the street.
The brazen politician then made a left turn and casually pulled into his own driveway on a side street.
William Bittner, who captured part of the Dec. 1 hit-and-run on video, said Pagani called him afterward, admitted what he’d done, and said he would resign his council seat.
“He thinks that’s the end of it,” said Bittner, who takes care of the cats along with other neighbors on the street. “You just can’t let an act like that go on without someone being charged.”
The Beaver County Humane Society said its humane officers were investigating the incident, but Pagani Jr. hadn’t been charged as of Dec. 6. Neighbors told the Beaver County Times that police officers were going door to door on Dec. 3 to speak to witnesses. Pagani has not returned calls from at least two local media outlets.
Pagani works with his father in their family business, Pagani and Son Trucking LLC, which contracts with the United States Postal Service to shuttle mail in bulk to and from a processing facility to individual post offices in the area. The company has had three USDOT violations in 2020 and 2021, records show.
As for the cats, their fate remains unknown. The video appears to show Pagani’s truck hitting or running over the tail of one cat, who immediately bolted along with the other cat who was in the street at the time. Those two cats took off with a larger group that was on the nearby sidewalk. The injured cat hasn’t been seen since.
“He could have hit the undercarriage of the front, he could have had his tail run over, he could have been bruised,” Bittner told KDKA, the local CBS affiliate. “We’ve been searching and searching and we can’t find him.”
”And when I feed him in the morning and night, he’s not showing up. So we don’t know whether [he] ran off to die or…” Bittner said, trailing off.
In a follow-up post on Facebook, Bittner explained that the strays are part of a managed TNR colony, with neighbors pitching in to help feed the cats and adopt out kittens. So far, 28 cats have been trapped and fixed.
People in the neighborhood believe Pagani was taking matters into his own hands, which follows a disturbing trend of vigilantism toward cats by people who either hate them or think they’re protecting local wildlife by killing cats.
“We don’t need his idea of animal control,” Bittner wrote.
Pain In The Bud 