Cat news seems to come in threes: here are this week’s Caturday news items, with an extra photo for lagniappe:
Remember Bart the Zombie cat, who was supposedly hit by a car, and then, supposedly showing no sign of life, was buried by his owner? Bart then supposedly revived, clawed his way out of his grave, and was returned to that owner.
I became a bit suspicious about it all when I found out that the cat’s owner (Ellis Hutson) and the woman who found Bart had jointly set up an online GoFundMe account asking for money for Bart’s vet bills, but that the Florida Humane Society taking care of Bart hadn’t received any money (Bart’s care is free, anyway). That smelled like a scam. (The account is now up to $6,614.)
Sure enough, an executive of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay pronounced that Bart had probably been buried alive while still moving. And now I wonder whether his injuries, too, were inflicted by his owner (he had a broken jaw, severe facial lacerations, and lost an eye). Here he is getting treatment:
KY3 reports:
Sherry Silk of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay told the The Huffington Post she thinks those who buried the cat knew Bart was breathing.
The cat’s owner, Ellis Wayne Hutson, told news outlets last month that Bart rose from the grave. Hutson said he had neighbors bury the cat after Bart was hit by a car and appeared dead. The cat showed up five days later covered in dirt and seriously injured, according to reports.
According to HuffPo, Silk is suspicious because of a YouTube video in which a woman’s voice can be heard saying that the cat might not have been dead. She also said the chronology of when Hutson sought care for Bart after his Lazarus act keeps changing.
CNN reports that the Humane Society will not return Bart to his owner:
Since the attention Bart received after he allegedly “rose from the dead,” more information has surfaced about Bart’s “home environment and the circumstances leading up to his burial,” Sherry Silk, executive director of the Tampa Humane Society said in a release.
According to Polk County, Florida, court documents, Hutson was arrested in 1998 and charged with cruelty to animals. The nature of the charges is unclear, and the charges were later thrown out.
Silk says that though the video was the first red flag, she has other reasons for not wanting to return Bart.
One point of contention is the length of time that Hutson took to seek care for Bart — whose injuries included severe head trauma, a broken jaw and a dead eye — after Bart came home. She says the owner’s timeline regarding when he found the cat and when he brought the cat in for care keeps changing.
Hutson, however, told HuffPost his story has remained the same from the get-go. He says as soon as he found Bart, he called the Humane Society, and the staff member who answered the phone told him that he should bring Bart in the next morning “if he was still alive.” Hutson says he then attempted to treat the cat’s injuries himself, and brought Bart in the next day as instructed.
Silk says there is no way that a Humane Society staffer would say this without urging Hutson to seek emergency care for Bart immediately.
She also expressed concern about Hutson’s ability to provide a home environment suited to Bart’s needs. Silk said Hutson seemed unwilling to keep Bart inside if he goes back home, which would be necessary for an animal recovering from such severe injuries. Hutson, however, told HuffPost that “Bart will be an indoor cat for the rest of his life,” and added that he has been telling Silk this from the start.
We don’t know all the details here, and perhaps never will, but this is sufficiently suspicious that I think Bart should be removed from his owner and given to a loving home. (I don’t know what can be legally done about this.) And that, I hope, is what will happen, though Hutson vows to go to court. If he doesn’t, you’ll know that there was foul play afoot.
In the meanwhile, Bart took his first bites of food four days ago, an event recorded by the Humane Society, which notes: “he will still need the feeding tube and feedings every 4 hours for the next few weeks as he is unable to eat enough on his own to sustain him.”
Good luck, Bart!
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The Humane Society saved Bart’s life, and here is Ceiling Cat’s reciprocation: a cat saved the life of a baby. Or so The Dodo reports:
A baby found abandoned in a box on a cold winter day in Russia is alive and well today — all thanks to one cat’s life-saving cuddles.
As Russian news outlet Pravda reports, the two-month-old baby boy was discovered near the dumpsters of an apartment complex in the city of Obinsk, after resident Nadezhda Makhovikova heard the desperate meowing of the building’s communal cat, Murka.
When Makhovikova arrived to investigate, she found the long-haired tabby cat cuddled alongside the helpless infant, sheltering him from the sub-freezing temperatures like she would her own kitten.
“One side [of the baby] was already hot — [the] cat warmed [him] in the few hours he spent in her box,” Makhovikova says, as translated by Google.
Murka remained close by, reportedly licking the baby until paramedics arrived to take him to the hospital. Fortunately, the child is said to be “completely healthy,” no doubt because of Murka’s help.
Here’s a video of Murka, and you can see that he must have had substantial warming abilities. But a “communal cat”? Is this still Soviet Russia?
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Reader Taskin sent a video of a cat trying to find the Door Into Summer, but discovers only more snow. He seems to have dug himself though that large drift, but gets affronted when he gets outside and finds—more snow!
The video was apparently filmed in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, and has the caption “rudiger only kind of loves the snow”, with the ancillary information, “battle cat trying to deal with the four foot snow drift.” Battle cat, indeed! Taskin added that New Brunswick got 140 cm (55 inches, or 4.5 feet) of snow in a week! And the video has garnered over 1.25 million views since it was posted four days ago.
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Finally, as lagniappe, Matthew Cobb reports that his new kitten, Harry, despite some initial bumps as he entered a house with two adult male cats, is finally getting comfortable with them. Here’s Harry snuggled up with one of the residents, Ollie:
Nauseating, just nauseating. Poor Bart. I hope the guy is charged with animal cruelty.
So glad Harry is being accepted by the other cats.
Loved the snow cat! He was doing a cat sculpture. You can see the ears being formed.
Do you have heard of “Atchoum le chat”? Another ‘web star’ mostly because of his very peculiar face.
Desnes
Terrible about Bart. I hope the owner is charged if he harmed him. Recently, a woman in Canada, who was a “dog walker”, left a bunch of dogs in a vehicle in the summer and they died. She then tried to say they were stolen. She was sentenced to 6 months in jail among other retributions.
I like the cat baby warmer. The cat seems very independent.
Six months seems like just a slap on the hand!
Yeah but it is better than the usual, which is a stern talking to and a ban on owning animals.
Was the punishment because they were someone else’s dogs (as she was a “dog walker”)? If so, then that would explain why it was dealt with – but then, would destruction of another’s “property” of equivalent monetary value result in a more or less harsh punishment than six months and the “other retributions”?
I think it was because she harmed the animals. I agree that the punishments are not harsh enough for harming animals and while many will argue that they should be harsher because hurting animals usually leads to hurting people, I think that hurting animals is just as bad.
I have seen a growing movement to increase retribution for such crimes and that’s why I saw this sentence as a big step in the right direction.
This case was one of neglect and stupidity, not purposeful harm and she is still going to jail for it. I hope that for crimes where animals are deliberately and sadistically harmed, the perpetrators face even tougher sanctions.
I can’t go for retributive punishment under any circumstances, but I’m fully on board with animals needing the full protection of the law against cruelty.
b&
When I say retribution – I mean to use it in the sense of an input to stop her from doing it again, and potentially stop others from harming animals.
I see aspects of her sentence as hopefully protecting animals and if it meant locking people up for life then I would be for it if it meant they couldn’t harm animals.
🐾🐾
Pravda probably should have said “neighborhood” cat. The nice lady on the corner of my street has set up a feeding station for street cats. My three are well fed and mostly keep the riff-raff away.
“But a “communal cat”? Is this still Soviet Russia?”
Yes, they simply mean a cat that does not belong to anybody particular but to the entire apartment house. The “commune” is the community of residents.
Good Luck with Harry. Looks like he is fitting right in. Wish my two cats could get along.
Forgot to also mention, regarding Bart. We could also only speculate as to what kind of person or mind would do such things to an animal. Recently a woman in this region had claimed her child had cancer and was collecting money and also putting drugs in the child to treat this cancer which was later found to be a total made up story.
Munchausens by Proxy for the woman with the fake cancer daughter. Psychopathy for the animal abusers.
From the description, I imagine Rudiger’s adventure in the snow went something like this.
Bart’s story is horrifying. I’ve just discovered that the GoFundMe campaign is not the first that Dusty (the woman who supposedly found Bart) has started; an administrative note on the site says this:
“Hi Dusty,
Thanks for your patience today.
First, my apologies, the check you requested was from one of your older campaigns….”
This alone is highly suspicious; she seems like a professional GoFundMe user. Taken with the other evidence, it looks really bad for the owner and Dusty.
Who cares about Bart, after all he’s not a Christian/Muslim/anything cat. And don’t they have 9 lives? (BTW, where do those 9 lives that come from? I wish it were true).
“…that the cat’s owner (Ellis Hutson) and the woman who found Bart had jointly set up an online GoFundMe account asking for money for Bart’s vet bills,…” that indeed smells like a can of rotten sardines.
Hope they will be indicted and sentenced (if guilty, which they look prima facie).
A disgusting story.
I hope Bart will find a better, more loving, home.
See my note above–this is not the first GoFundMe campaign started by the woman who supposedly found Bart. And the story she tells about how Bart was injured also makes no sense:
“On 1 /15/ 2015 Markie [bart] we thought was hit by a car and killed , His owners Mr Wayne went and moved him out of the road and later buried him, unfourtantly Markie was dead he was stiff and in a pool of blood,
Mt[“Mt” = “my”? Note added by LJ] Cat on the same day also was killed which I thought also by a car,
Both cats where buried the same day and we went on with our lives, Hoping the cats made thier safe return to rainbow heaven,
well on 1/21/2015 I went out side to fed the stary cats , Thats when a miracle happened right in front of my eyes Markie had came up begging for food. I was in shock because i knew 5 days prior this cat was dead and buried , So i grabbed him up and took him to Mr Wayne we are all in shock ,
Mr Wayne called the ASPCA and took Markie to the docs today 1/22/2015 and was confirmed That markie had been buried [ he was not alive] when he was buried,
Come to find out Markie may have been attacked by a racoon or a pit bull that runs the neighbohood , was confirmed maggots on the brian , he will loose his eye he has a broken jaw and his cheek bone is exposed…”
How did she find this out while still being unsure of the attacking species? Eyewitness testimony from a neighbor wouldn’t have left the attacking species unknown. And the wounds look nothing like animal bites. This is a lie.
This is a bunch of lies!
So sad to think of that poor cat still trusting humans; though at least there are some good humans taking care of him now.
Who needs a snow shovel when you have a cat?
Rudiger is obviously thinking, “Dude! This stuff is everywhere!”
I’ll definitely have to make it a point to introduce Baihu to snow next winter.
b&
“But a “communal cat”? Is this still Soviet Russia?”
That’s ‘communal’, not ‘communist’. Happens all the time. It just means the cat has a lot of staff.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roadtrippers/town-unveils-8000-statue_b_5254478.html
I suspect communism is rather unpopular with all felines. It just doesn’t suit them.
Since cats think everything belongs to them and consider themselves rulers, then, yes, communism does suit cats.
Communism is about sharing. I think cars prefer monarchies.
Cats
Cats are antisocialists.
Caturday felid trifecta: in hockey-ese, a Cat Trick … ?
We’ve gotten a number of pets from rescue organizations over the years (including my daughter’s rats) and the people who organize the rescuing, rehabilitation and placement are really dedicated, kind people. My wife took in a one-eyed Shih Tzu shortly before we met; Missy (the dog) had not been treated as badly as Bart but her eye was severely damaged by an untreated infection when she was brought to the vet by the careless owners. The vet sized up the owners and told them Missy had to be put down, but then removed the bad eye, nursed her back to health and gave her to my wife. I don’t know if that is a strictly ethical thing to do or not, but it definitely worked out for Missy – she lived a pretty luxe life, eating people-quality food because of her bad kidneys, for six years before succumbing to a brain tumor. I think Bart’s vets would have had the most leverage when he was brought in.
If Missy’s rescue was justified, I can only think the same tactic would be even more so in a case with such glaring red flags. I don’t know if going to court will necessarily prove his owner’s story is true, but I hope he goes, that it’s very expensive for him, and that he loses!
Ha ha – cat trick!