PACT Act – Pain In The Bud

Note, 5/3/2025: We’ve heard from two readers who say the MyNorthWest report contains inaccuracies. We’ve reached out to the police and will follow up with police and courts on Monday to verify the facts and correct potential misinformation. Apologies for the confusion.

Every couple of months, at least in the last year or two, I’ve slowed down on posting, and almost always for the same reason: my cat-related news alerts are seemingly endless streams of depressing stories about people shooting, strangling or dismembering cats.

It never ends, and sometimes it’s so overwhelming that I’m put off from writing for days. At the same time, I am not a believer in the idea that all animal blogs should be saccharine feel-good fests about fluffy kittens and TikTok videos of cats doing silly things.

There’s always a place for celebrating cats, but if they’re in danger, and if the stories point to wider trends that cat lovers should know about, then I think it’s our responsibility to remain educated. Not only so we can guard against threats to our little friends, but also so we can add our voices to the chorus calling for tougher laws and greater accountability.

That’s ultimately what this is about: accountability.

Stories about two cat serial killers in about a week have made it clear that even the strengthened animal protection law — the Preventing Animal Cruelty, or PACT Act — passed in 2019, during the first Trump administration, raising animal cruelty and murder to the level of a felony, are still not enough. They’re not a deterrent, especially when the convicted abusers and killers end up serving a year or less because prisons are overcrowded and the wider law enforcement community still doesn’t take animal-related crime as seriously as other violence.

Antoine Leander Runner Jr. is a serial murderer of cats. The Seattle man was recently released from prison after serving just a year for a felony animal cruelty conviction.

The 43-year-old’s modus operandi was setting up crude, homemade snares and traps to capture and harm felines. He was also known in cat rescue circles, where he posed as a cat lover and took advantage of programs to get free supplies, including “cat food, kennels, collars, leashes, and treats to lure cats and kill them,” according to MyNorthWest, a Seattle news site.

When locals discovered new homemade traps in Runner Jr.’s old haunts and trail cameras picked up images of the man himself stalking wooded areas, neighbors called police and area shelters. The evidence showed Runner Jr. was allegedly visiting cat colonies at night and had picked up right where he left off. One colony cat’s body was discovered on March 31, “disemboweled and publicly displayed.”

“Animal Control confirmed the injuries to the cats were human-caused,” MyNorthWest reported, adding that it appears Runner Jr. was visiting colonies “every night” to hunt cats.

Above images by u/picardhasyourback, posted to the SeattleWA subreddit. Click on the images to see full-size versions.

Runner Jr. was picked up by Seattle police this weekend after a neighbor spotted him in a wooded area and phoned authorities. The convicted cat killer, who had a new bench warrant out for his arrest, was charged with a misdemeanor, but more charges are likely as police investigate his latest alleged attacks on Seattle-area cats.

The Seattle man was originally arrested for killing cats in 2023, but was released early. The Seattle area was also terrorized by a serial cat killer who stalked the area in 2018, mutilating cats so badly that I won’t repeat the details on this blog out of respect for readers.

It should be made clear that Runner Jr. was not connected to the 2018 killings, but police should reconsider those cases as well because if it turns out Runner Jr. is guilty of these latest cat murders, it will be abundantly clear that he is a high recidivist offender who cannot be trusted to leave the animals alone. He should serve a long, unabridged prison sentence and be subject to constant monitoring when he’s released.

Antoine Leander Runner Jr. was arrested this weekend by Seattle police. Credit: Sarah Seiler/Facebook Georgetown Community Discussion Group

What’s the solution here? Increasingly tough criminal penalties for animal abuse and murder? Expensive monitoring equipment to watch over every cat colony? Education and training for law enforcement so violence toward animals is taken as seriously as it should be?

I hate to keep pointing out that people who harm animals are likely to “graduate” to harming humans, as many studies have shown, because it implies that we should only be concerned about animal abuse for its tendency to turn into human abuse. It obscures the fact that animal life is intrinsically valuable, and that cats — and dogs, many bird species, mammals and marine life — are sentient, with their own thoughts and emotions. But if that’s what it takes for people to take this sort of thing seriously, then it’s worth repeating the point.

Although the story is more about her gradual acceptance that her boyfriend was inconsiderate — and didn’t put as much effort as she did into their relationship — Business Insider’s Anne Jarret writes about how his carelessness with her cat led her to end a two-year relationship.

Jarret describes how her boyfriend would do things like leave wet towels on her side of the bed, leave dishes around their home and show disregard for her sleep schedule when he knew she had to rise at 6 a.m. every morning as a teacher, but the final straw was his cavalier attitude toward losing her 15-year-old cat, who was on her last legs and needed meds to survive:

“Where’s the cat?” I asked my boyfriend as I walked into the kitchen. The sun had set, and it was time for us to give her a steroid to ease her pain.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. We searched, but we couldn’t find her anywhere. Then I saw the patio door was wide open.

Guerrilla, the dying 15-year-old cat, loved spending time outside on a leash and would beg us to take her exploring.

“I guess when I took the dogs out earlier I forgot to close the door,” he said. “I’m sorry.” My heart broke.

Unfortunately, Jarret never found her cat and didn’t get closure on her fate, which is a horrible thing for anyone who loves their feline, especially after spending 15 years together.

Prosecutors use 2019 federal statute to charge teen with cat abuse

A 17-year-old from Maine has been charged with a felony under 2019’s Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act after a video surfaced on Facebook showing him brutalizing a kitten.

The teenager is accused of picking up a stray cat by his tail and repeatedly slamming him into the ground on Nov. 4. The kitten, named Harlow by the local Humane Society staff, will “likely” lose an eye as a result of the head trauma the teenager inflicted, Humane Society shelter director Katie Lisnik told the Sun-Journal.

Despite that, Harlow doesn’t hate people and seems to crave affection.

“He just loves to cuddle,” Lisnik said. “He just wants to be on you.”

This story is heartbreaking and hard to even think about. How could anyone do such a thing to an innocent animal, much less a kitten less than a year old? And the fact that Harlow is so loving and trusting despite all he endured and suffered just underscored how innocent cats are, as animals who have the intelligence and emotional capacity of three- or four-year-old children.

Usually we don’t note stories like this on PITB because animal abuse is a difficult topic, it’s upsetting and stories like this are so numerous that reading all of them can even make misanthropes out of people who believe the best of humanity. But we’ve written quite a bit about law enforcement taking animal abuse seriously, and the need for animal cruelty laws with more teeth, and this is ultimately a hopeful case because the prosecutors are taking it seriously enough to invoke the bi-partisan PACT Act.

On the other hand, some laws clearly need to be amended. The suspect hasn’t been named in media reports and his identity will likely remained sealed because of youthful offender laws, which allow minors convicted of crimes to strike convictions from their permanent records before they turn 18 if they meet certain conditions set by the court. Usually they’re straightforward: Stay out of trouble, attend psychological counseling, check in regularly with a probation officer and complete community service.

That’s fine for offenses involving drugs, theft and other relatively minor stuff. But when crimes are associated with high recidivism and/or are strong indicators of future violent crime — as animal abuse has proven to be — convicts shouldn’t be allowed to apply for youthful offender status. This kid shouldn’t be allowed to own pets or interact with animals, and this kind of crime shouldn’t be stricken from his record because if, for example, he attacks a woman he’s dating when he’s 19, it shows a pattern of violent behavior that strongly correlates to escalating violence.

At a time when school shootings are common and people commit senseless crimes like pushing strangers off subway platforms into the paths of oncoming trains, law enforcement could use all the help and information it can get in identifying people with violent histories before they do more harm.