news – Page 4 – Pain In The Bud

An Amazon Driver Took A Family’s Cat, And Amazon Has Not Been Helpful

Amazon’s response not only leaves a lot to be desired, it’s also an example of precisely what not to do when an issue goes beyond a simple customer service complaint. The company missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn a family’s gratitude.

An Amazon delivery driver took a Washington family’s cat and drove away with her on July 21.

Since then, Amazon has admitted its driver has the cat, but has offered little more than carefully-worded customer service responses mixed with boilerplate language about valuing the family’s business and feedback.

Ray and Karin Ishak have video of the driver petting and playing with 13-year-old Feefee in the family’s driveway during the delivery. The motion-activated camera timed out, according to a report by Seattle ABC affiliate KING5-TV, but when the camera began recording again, triggered by the driver pulling away, Feefee was gone.

“The driver [was] driving away and there’s not a cat in sight. It’s pretty obvious the cat disappeared in those seconds,” Ray Ishak told the station, adding he filed a report with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

feefeecamera — An Amazon driver playing with Feefee in the Ishak family’s driveway before driving away with the cat. Credit: Ray Ishak

Amazon has chosen to deal with the incident via email, as if it’s a dispute over a returned item rather than a living being who is valued as a family member by her people.

A company customer service representative told the Ishaks that the driver said she contacted the police to return Feefee, but the family called the sheriff’s office and the police in Everett, Washington, where they live, and both agencies told them they hadn’t heard from the driver or from Amazon.

The Ishaks asked Amazon if the company could at least tell them the town or city where the driver lives, figuring the driver may have contacted police there instead of the departments that have jurisdiction over their hometown. Amazon declined to provide that information.

When the Ishaks followed up with Amazon again, a customer service representative said she’d be happy to help — if the police approach Amazon. She provided an email address for law enforcement use only, said Amazon will cooperate if the police contact them, and ended the reply with a request to “vote about your experience today.”

This is an awful response by Amazon, and the company deserves any bad PR it gets as a result. The very first thing the company should have done was escalate the ticket to a manager empowered to take care of the case directly, and that manager should have picked up the phone, called the family and promised to get their cat back immediately.

If the company doesn’t have anyone in its customer care hierarchy who understands why it’s important to make that kind of judgment call, then it’s done a poor job of hiring and training its employees.

Alternately, Amazon’s known for keeping its employees on an extremely short leash — the company is notorious for watching its employees via cameras, has been fined tens of millions of dollars for “excessive surveillance” of its own workers, has forced employees to “justify” things like bathroom breaks, and operates on founder Jeff Bezos’ belief that employees are “inherently lazy” — so if the email-only response was due to strict company policy, that’s another negative that can be chalked up to a toxic corporate culture.

Treating this like a routine complaint only exacerbated the Ishak family’s stress and uncertainty regarding the fate of their beloved cat. Putting the onus on the family and the police to sort out of the problem makes things worse, and you’d think any halfway competent customer service rep would skip the “rate your service” pitch, at least until after the problem is solved and Feefee is back with her family.

Feefee with granddaughter — Ray Ishak said Feefee’s disappearance has been especially hard on his grandchildren, who love the gentle feline. Credit: Ray Ishak

It doesn’t matter how massive and successful the company is, there has to be a better way to handle issues like this without requiring even the police to approach Amazon like customers dialing a service line, or supplicants petitioning a king to turn his gaze toward a situation that normally falls beneath his notice. There’s also no recognition of the impact on Feefee, who is almost certainly confused and stressed at being separated from the only home and family she’s known for her entire life.

Lastly, Amazon missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn the gratitude of a family whose members are obviously very concerned about their cat. A PR win like that is worth a thousand commercials, and can earn enormous good will with customers. Instead, people will hear about how the company treats a problem like this as if a customer is returning a shirt that’s too small.

As for the Ishak family, they say they’re giving the driver the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she thought Feefee was a stray. But, as Ray Isha told KING5, it’s been made abundantly clear that Feefee is a beloved member of the family, and she needs to be returned.

“Maybe you did this out of the kindness of your heart,” Ray Ishak said. “I appreciate it, but bring me my cat back.”

Top image of Feefee as a kitten with one of Ray Ishak’s grandchildren courtesy of Ray Ishak, via KING5.

For The First Time, American Vets Can Prescribe FIP Meds For Cats

People whose cats are infected with FIP can now get a legal prescription and buy it from a US pharmacy. A full course of treatment will cost a few hundred dollars instead of the thousands charged on the illegal market.

Starting on June 1, people whose cats are infected with deadly Feline Infectious Peritonitis won’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to shady middlemen importing the cure from China.

FIP is a virtual death sentence for cats, but there’s a drug — GS-441524 — that has a cure rate somewhere around 90 percent, a Godsend for people whose beloved felines are afflicted with the virus.

Previously the only way to get it was through predatory online middlemen who charged exorbitant sums, but thanks to a partnership between UK pharmaceutical company Bova Group and New Jersey-based compounding pharmacy Stokes, the FIP cure will be available legally in the US.

The legal version of the drug will come in a tuna-flavored tablet format and customers can expect to pay a few hundred dollars for a full treatment instead of between $5,000 and $15,000 some paid for the FIP treatment from importers.

A US company invented the drug and held the rights, so it seemed like bringing it to market for cat caretakers would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, GS-441524 is similar to COVID drug Remdesivir so the company was worried if they submitted the FIP cure to the FDA for approval and the FDA did not grant it, the denial could lead the agency to revoke its approval of Remdesivir due to its molecular similarity.

As a result, innumerable people whose cats were suffering with FIP turned to groups like Facebook’s FIP Warriors to help them obtain GS-441524 illegally. The drug was manufactured by facilities in China, sold to middlemen in the US and Europe, then marked up by eye-watering amounts for sale to people with sick cats.

jupiterpitbtopimg — Jupiter, a British shorthair, was diagnosed with FIP. His human, a young professional from London, paid almost $10,000 for FIP treatment obtained through middlemen.

Last year the feds announced they’d exposed a GS-441524 smuggling ring, alleging a woman from Texas and another from Oregon had made almost $10 million from selling the FIP treatment to panicked cat lovers.

GS-441524 importers knew their customers were desperate to save their beloved feline friends so they’d be willing to pay the extraordinary mark-up — and pay they did.

Here at PITB we’ve interviewed and written about several people whose cats were diagnosed with FIP. One of them, a student, spent her entire savings on GS-441524 obtained through the Facebook group and relied on help from generous donors to raise the rest. Another, a young professional in London, paid even more, spending £7,500 (about $9,400 at the time) on the medication alone, not including vet visits.

A Texas woman whose cat, Seth, was diagnosed with FIP said the middlemen — and women — said the sellers “saw our desperate situation and took advantage of us.”

“It was a very stressful time for us, and every time we needed to refill, they charged us more,” she told PITB. “They knew we couldn’t say no.”

For readers interested in more details about GS-441524, Stokes pharmacy has a resource page that breaks down pricing, shipment times, availability and more.

Parsnip, the cat pictured at the top, and Jupiter, the British shorthair pictured within the story, were both cured after taking full courses of GS-441524.

Cat Mom Lupita Nyong’o Takes A Furry Friend To The Red Carpet

Lupita Nyong’o not only shares the screen with a feline co-star in the new film A Quiet Place: Day One, she’s also a devoted cat mom to a ginger tabby named Yoyo.

Although I haven’t seen most of Lupita Nyongo’s movies — I really liked her performance in Us and her voice work in Disney’s Jungle Book remake — I’m a big fan now that I know she’s a cat lover.

Nyong’o took to the red carpet for the premiere of her newest film, A Quiet Place: Day One in London on Wednesday, and her plus-one was a cat named Schnitzel, who also stars in the movie. Photos show Nyong’o posing along co-star Joseph Quinn, smiling as she cradles Schnitzel in her arms.

Lupita Nyong'o with her cat Yoyo — Lupita Nyong’o with her cat, Yoyo. In addition to posing with a cat on the red carpet premiere of her new film, Nyong’o proudly dotes on Yoyo and mentions him often. Credit: Lupita Nyong’o/Instagram

A Quiet Place is a 2018 film about a family that lives a completely silent life on a farm after the civilization has fallen to monstrous creatures that can’t see but are exceptionally sensitive to sound.

The film received nearly universal positive reviews for its use of sound — and the complete absence of it for long stretches — as a tension-building device, and a 2020 sequel continued the story.

Day One, which hits theaters on June 28, promises audiences a look at how the creatures appeared and civilization collapsed.

Schnitzel’s role isn’t entirely clear, but if it’s anything like 2022’s Prey, cats will fill their usual niche as predators, highlighting the difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial hunters.

Caring for a cat in a world like A Quiet Place could be a double edged-sword: a super vocal cat like my Buddy wouldn’t last very long unless he quickly learned to keep a lid on his constant commentary, but cats are also incredibly sensitive to things that pass beneath the notice of us humans.

Thanks to their incredible hearing, exceptional sense of smell, the advantage of an extra olfactory organ and whiskers that pick up even the slightest stirring, felines are keenly aware of their surroundings.

As for Nyong’o, while Schnitzel is not her cat, she’s the proud cat mom of Yoyo, an orange tabby she fostered in late 2023. It only took her three days of fostering the little guy before she realized “I could not give him up,” she said last year shortly after the adoption was made official.

“I never understood people whose phones were full of photos and videos of their pets — now I am one of those people,” she wrote when she adopted the tabby. “It may look like I saved Yoyo, but really, Yoyo is saving me.”

Nyong'o and Yoyo the cat — Lupita Nyong’o with Yoyo. Credit: Lupita Nyong’o/Instagram

Cartel Prison Cat Gets A Real Home In Texas, Another Feline Found In Airport Luggage

Drug cartel members are infamous for keeping animals as status pets.

Buddy is now on Facebook! Follow him to receive automatic updates, learn exciting new turkey recipes and view exclusive photos of Bud flexing his impressive meowscles!

A cat who until recently belonged to a notorious cartel boss now has a perfectly normal home in Texas after spending the first three years of his life in the notorious CERESO 3 prison in Juarez, Mexico.

The unnamed feline is a hairless Egyptian who was the personal pet of Ernesto Alfredo Piñon de la Cruz, aka “El Nato,” the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel-aligned Los Mexicles gang. Cruz, who lived in a “luxury cell” at CERESO like other drug lords incarcerated there, had the kitty tattooed with a skull flag and the phrase “Hecho en Mexico,” or “Made in Mexico,” a slogan of Los Mexicles.

Cruz and dozens of fellow inmates instigated a riot at CERESO 3 on Jan. 1, leading to the death of 10 prison guards and seven inmates, and the escape of 30 more. He died along with several others in a shoot-out with Mexican authorities three days later and the rest were apprehended.

When Juarez’s governor ordered a thorough sweep of the prison — in which the inmates had become the de facto wardens and guards had lost control of the cell blocks — armed police squads found the forgotten feline, along with thousands of illegal amenities like couches, plasma TVs, video game consoles, air conditioners, heaters, personal laundry machines and even a mechanical bull.

A council of authorities and animal welfare officials from Juarez whittled applications to adopt the cat down to 10 finalists and decided to go with an American adopter in Texas who already has one Egyptian, is well versed in their care, and can offer the tattooed cat a stable environment.

They haven’t identified the adopter, which is probably for the best in a situation where even the police often wear masks to conceal their identities when conducting operations against cartel targets, for fear of retribution if they’re identified.

sicariomonkey — A so-called “sicario monkey” was incidentally shot in a shoot-out with his cartel member “owner” in June of 2022. Credit: Texcaltitlan police

As the Washington Post notes, stories of “status” animals are common with cartels. In Colombia, hippos acquired decades ago by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar for his private zoo were allowed to roam free, multiplying to more than 130 today and causing problems in the areas they frequent. And in the summer of 2022, police in a shootout with gangsters killed a member of the notorious La Familia Michoacana cartel along with his pet spider monkey, who wore a tactical vest and a custom camouflage jacket. A Bengal tiger, also illegally acquired by the cartel, was unintentionally set loose in the chaos during the same raid, but was not killed.

Cat in the bag

TSA found another pet cat in the luggage of a traveler, this time at Norfolk Airport in Virginia on the morning of Friday, March 3.

This time the cat’s caretaker did intend to travel with their pet but forgot to take the little one out before putting luggage through an X-ray machine. TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein, who regularly works puns into her announcements about cats found in luggage, had fun with the discovery while also reminding people it’s not a good idea to send pets through X-ray scanners.

“Attention pet owners: Please do not send your pet through the X-ray unit. Cat-astrophic mistake!” Farbstein tweeted Friday.

FqUgceQXgAYU3lC — An image of the cat as it passed through a security scan at Norfolk Airport in Virginia on March 3, 2023. Credit: TSA

Although the cat seems unharmed and the TSA said there’s likely no damage caused by a single trip through the machine, Farbstein said passengers should still be careful.

“The passenger needs to remove the pet from a carry case and carry it through the walk-through metal detector or walk the pet through the metal detector on a leash,” she told CNN. “This is typical of how people travel with small dogs. In the case of a cat, if there is no leash, we strongly recommend that the passenger requests screening in a private screening room” to prevent the cat from freaking out and getting loose in the airport.

What’s your favorite thing about your cat(s)?

Buddy has free reign when it comes to 95 percent of the home and the only times I stop him from doing something are when he might hurt himself, such as trying to steal a piece of food that’ll make him sick or chewing electrical wires.

Thankfully he gives himself away when he’s about to do something he knows he shouldn’t do, making a hilarious vocalization — a trill that sounds like “Hmmm I know I’m not supposed to be doing this, but…” He’s done it since he was a kitten, when he still didn’t get the concept of a litter box and would crap under my bed. (It took almost two weeks, an adjustment in the placement of the litter box, and finally a switch to Dr. Elsey’s Kitten Attract litter before the lightbulb went off in his little head and he got it.)

Years later he still makes the same sound, but when I move to intervene, he immediately flops onto his side and splays his limbs out, a move that says “Hah! I wasn’t gonna do what you thought I was gonna do, and you can’t pick me up!”

He did it to me three times last night and my attempt to dissuade him in a Serious Voice failed spectacularly when I saw Bud flash his “I’m Just An Innocent Widdle Kitty” face at me and broke down laughing.

One of my favorite things about Bud is how he makes me laugh with his antics. The little dude is clever.

What are your favorite things about your cats?

buddy_layingdownclose — “I’m just a widdle kitty. Totally innocent. Totally didn’t knock a bag of chips all over the floor and pretend I had nothing to do with it.”

Sunday Cats: A Lost Cat Story With A Happy Ending, UK Takes Cat Abuse Seriously

The UK demonstrated it doesn’t tolerate animal abuse with severe punishments for a star soccer player who abused his cat.

A North Carolina woman suffered a roller coaster of emotions after she lost her cat, then found out the local SPCA had taken her cat in, only for the shelter’s staff to tell her a family had already adopted the cute tuxedo.

Chevelle Griffin of Asheville says her cat, Sally, went missing on Oct. 18. She didn’t know what happened until a few days later when she saw a Facebook post indicating a neighbor had taken Sally to the local SPCA. Sally was wearing a flea collar, but not an ID collar and was not microchipped.

Griffin blamed herself.

“That was my fault,” Griffin said. “That was my mistake. I should have had her chipped, but I didn’t and she’s mine and I want her back.”

She wasn’t happy when staff at the shelter “very bluntly” told her Sally had already been adopted out.

Sally the Cat — Sally was taken to the SPCA by a neighbor.

Lisa Johns, chief operating officer for the local SPCA, told local ABC affiliate WLOS that the shelter takes in as many as 35 cats a day and holds new animals for 72 hours. After that, if they have no health issues they’re put up for adoption.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. After Griffin lobbied the SPCA and WLOS began looking into the incident, SPCA staff contacted the family that had adopted Sally and asked if they would be willing to return her. They agreed, and Griffin said she’s relieved and has learned from the experience.

“I’ve kicked myself so much,” Griffin said. “If I’ve learned anything from this, get your pets chipped.”

It’s a tough balance for shelter operators dealing with overcrowding and the need to constantly free up spaces for new strays, but should the hold period be extended beyond 72 hours?

Zouma apologizes again

zoumabengals — Zouma, left, and his Bengal cats, right. Both cats were confiscated and remain in the care of the RSPCA. As part of the sentencing agreement for his animal abuse plea, Zouma will not be permitted to own a pet for at least five years.

Kurt Zouma — the West Ham player who ignited a firestorm earlier this year when his brother uploaded video of Zouma slapping, kicking and harassing one of his own cats — said he learned his lesson and again expressed remorse after he was sentenced by a magistrate’s court.

Zouma, a French national, faced consequences that would be unheard of in the US as a result of the abuse: He lost all his sponsorship contracts, was fined the maximum amount by his club team (£250,000, equal to about $338,00 at the time, a full one fifth of his salary), paid court fines of £9,000, is prohibited from owning pets for at least five years, and was ordered to complete 140 hours of community service. West Ham donated Zouma’s fined salary to animal charities in the UK.

He was persona non grata in the UK football world, subject to hearty boos and chants from crowds any time he touched the ball, and his cats were taken from him and placed in the care of the RSPCA. In addition, he was not selected for the French national team, meaning he won’t compete in the World Cup.

Following his sentencing this week in his first public comments about the controversy — aside from a terse apology in the form of a written statement issued months ago — Zouma said he acknowledges the video was “very tough for people to watch” and admitted he’d “done something very bad.”

Zouma’s brother Yoan was also convicted of animal abuse, receiving court fines and 140 hours of community service for participating in the abuse and filming it in front of his brother’s young son. Our readers might recall the brothers were turned in by a woman who was courted by the younger Zouma and was disgusted when she saw the video.

The woman had initially agreed to meet Yoan Zouma for an informal date, but told him to keep his distance after she saw the abuse clip, then reported the brothers to authorities.

“I don’t think hitting a cat like that is OK – don’t bother coming today,” she wrote in a message to Yoan Zouma at the time. “I do not want to associate with people who find that funny, in front of a child as well.”

Although what Zouma did was terrible, it feels like justice was served and the UK did right by the cats by taking the abuse seriously, both criminally and professionally. Instead of “canceling” Zouma, as would have likely been the response here in the US, the authorities in government and the Premier League made sure the footballer understood the gravity of his actions and took responsibility for them. Hopefully it served as an example to others who would think of harming their pets.