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    Sentient Portrait of Leonid BrezhnevJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 5:04pm

    This certainly is a conundrum. There was a cat in my neighborhood that everyone loved, and hugged everyone who passed him. But he was outside without a collar in an urban setting. I thought whether I should catnap this car for his own safety, but decided against it, because I would feel bad for taking away an owner’s presumably beloved pet.

    One day this beloved cat went missing. The owner put up posters around the neighborhood pleading for is return. I would certainly have felt bad if I was the cause of this, but now this cat’s fate is unknown. Maybe it’s dead, maybe someone else had my idea and carried it out. I hope they took on this heavy moral burden.

    The lesson is, as Captain Picard once said “sometimes what is moral and what is ethical are different things”. Should we do a morally bad thing for the safety of a cat? Only in your heart do you know the answer. I myself must live with my inaction. That is the path of the cat liker.

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      KK4BamaSentient Portrait of Leonid Brezhnev
      6/22/16 5:14pm

      At my old apartment we had an apartment cat. She lived happily outside, everyone took turns feeding her, we all had different names for her (I called her Little Kitty) and she was given tons of attention. A local rescue ended up finding her a good home and while everyone was sad to see her go, we were all happy that she had a permanent home.

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      1llamarampage will write againSentient Portrait of Leonid Brezhnev
      6/22/16 5:17pm

      This is why I just can’t with people who let their cats roam outside unsupervised. You’re basically saying that you don’t care enough to keep your cat from getting injured, and you don’t want to know when it dies. Even in the suburbs or rural areas, there’s a ton of other animals that would like to fight with a cat. That’s not even getting into the issue of the havoc cats wreak on the smaller wildlife themselves.

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    toscatiosiJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 5:09pm

    Good. I actually hate the idea of “celebrity” animals. The owners often start reveling in the attention and ignoring the actual well-being of their pet. I never liked what happened to Grumpy Cat. They were dragging that poor thing all around, sticking her on movie sets and even brought her onto the set of the Bachelor in front of a loud audience. Ridiculous. Pets aren’t a punchline or an accessory.

    I hope this woman keeps the cat.

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      Bellucatoscatiosi
      6/22/16 5:16pm

      The woman who is keeping the cat doesn’t seem much better, TBH. She seems to be reveling in the attention that this is bringing her, and it’s elevating her own “celebrity”.

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      Umeboshayytoscatiosi
      6/22/16 5:16pm

      Jiff Pom is a straight up dancing monkey dog slave, that little dude is always working.

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    Joanna RothkopfJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 5:01pm

    I do feel really sad for Sir Sorbet, fwiw

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      Rando CalrissianJoanna Rothkopf
      6/22/16 5:29pm

      I do too. But... the whole thing is a kind of deliciously silly as well.

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      theartistformerlyknownasotiseagleRando Calrissian
      6/22/16 11:19pm

      I am now very confident in my assessment of the Mallampati score of the lady with short blond hair. She has excellent jaw mobility.

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    BleuCheeesefanJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 4:56pm

    I’m part of the COI community, and have followed Ruth for a long time. And while I don’t agree that a cat should be taken away from its owner, I 100% believe that Ruth would not do it without reason. That lady has a heart of gold and you can tell it through everything she writes and posts, especially when it comes to cats.

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      PhyllisNeflerBleuCheeesefan
      6/22/16 5:09pm

      What does COI stand for?

      ETA: Cats Of Instagram?

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      BleuCheeesefanPhyllisNefler
      6/22/16 5:16pm

      Yep! Woops maybe should have clarified that :)

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    Miss MoxieJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 6:54pm

    Gonna weigh in as someone with multiple degrees in the animal field/currently in vet school:

    Regardless of your intentions you can’t just go around taking people’s cats. First you talk to them - they might not be as educated about the species as you or even realize theres an issue and will happily follow suggestions/contact a professional once they realize what is wrong. If theres a serious issue (not just a difference of opinion - the ACO wont care whether the cat is fed organic-lowfat-grainfree-quailmeat-sorbet or kibbles n bits from a 7/11) and the person isn’t listening/refuses to care for the animal that’s when you get Animal Control and the law involved. If proper protocols aren’t followed: 1. you’re a thief, 2. you’re a douchbag, 3. theres a good chance the law will step in and put the animal right back in the place you took it from.

    In terms of the cat’s welfare and these supposed claims: This is a persian cat, a brachiocephalic breed. They are prone to health issues like weepy eyes and upper respiratory infections (a.k.a. - severe sniffles) because of the fucked up way their skulls, sinuses, and respiratory passages are shaped.

    Cat’s appetites for food are largely based on their sense of smell (which is why cat food is made so stinky compared to dog food) - so if they’re stuffed up there’s a good chance they’ll go anorexic and eat less/stop eating. The cat may have had a low grade infection for a while that wasn’t making him visibly goopy yet, and cats are notoriously stoic. Any stress like, I dunno, his owner having schedule changes/being upset due to the death of a family member could have pushed him over the edge. It sounds like Karen had someone else checking in on the cats before Ruth stepped in - they may not have noticed that he wasn’t eating the same(due to multiple cats), or realized that the sniffles were serious. Cats can go downhill very fast. If he wasn’t feeling well theres a good chance he stopped self-grooming -> mats accumulate faster (even though they can appear in like 2 days on a fluffy cat like that).

    I’m not justifying neglect or abuse, all I’m saying is that we shouldn’t judge since we don’t know what happened/how fast it happened/ or who was watching the cats leading up to Ruth taking them. We don’t have pics of the cat in poor condition or good condition, all we have is the vet report in question - which isn’t really that bad. The cat has a damn cold, once he rests up, cleans up, and they get him to eat he’ll be fine. Anyone can catch a cold, it’s nobodys fault. If Ruth is seriously concerned for the cat then she can either talk to Karen about what he needs and work out a plan for him and offer assistance as a friend, or get animal control involved so they can make the owner comply with his health needs- but you can’t just go around stealing pets from people who trusted them with you.

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      MoosMomMiss Moxie
      6/23/16 1:15am

      This wasn’t the first time Karen has had issues with neglecting her pets. She carries Bagel in a purse and sleeps in airports and city parks when she travels. She’s frequently traveling with Bagel, and isn’t around to take care of her other cats. Ruth and others in the COI have tried to get her help before.

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      Miss MoxieMoosMom
      6/23/16 9:47am

      Lots of people travel frequently and get pet sitters. I’ve got no idea if this is the case here, and am not familiar with the whole long previous history - just the facts about this particular incident. And if that’s the case and she’s unwilling to accept help from the other COI people then it’s a job for ACO to handle legally, or time to contact the rescue she got the cats from and tip them off that she may be violating adoption contracts by not getting them certain care. All I’m trying to get at is that we don’t know the cats/people in question personally and all this is a lot of he-said-she-said nonsense. If Ruth had real concerns for the animals, she should have contacted the authorities and/or asked the attending veterinarian to contact them because thats how you handle neglect/abuse in the real world outside of instagram popularity wars.

      I wish the cat a speedy recovery and hope that the animals don’t suffer through all this owner bullshit.

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    thecaptainspantsJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 4:56pm

    I have no idea what’s going on here nor am I familiar with Sir Sorbet. But I have experience working as a feral cat community manager and I will say this: I’ve met a lot of people who are very passionate about caring for animals. But some of them also have personality issues — inlcuding narcissism — that wind up being expressed through that passion. As a result, people who should be working together to support each other in caring for the animals wind up working against each other in a fight for control. It’s sad and heartbreaking.

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      MEtheBarbarianthecaptainspants
      6/22/16 6:06pm

      THIS IS SO TRUE. My ex-friend was the kind who had an insane amount of pets. Like a dog, 5 cats, 4 ferrets, and iguana, and various other stuff. She was the first to tell you how much she loved animals, and she really did.

      She kept trying to help the wildlife center rehabilitate animals like squirrels and they’d all die. Likely because they were massively stressed and exposed to a lot. She never got it though. She never got that her hoarding was hurting the animals vs helping.

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      Stephanie Wernerthecaptainspants
      6/22/16 6:55pm

      I work with rescue, and you are 100% right. I see a lot of people going back to breeders because of the insane hoops they have to jump through to adopt from some rescues. The people running some of these agencies are control freaks with no sense of reality.

      One local group refused adoptions to people with children. Not young children, any children. Another refused to adopt to households in which all adults worked—they insisted that there had to be someone home all day with the animal. My neighbors were blacklisted because their cat died when their home caught fire during a weekday when no one was home. (Were they supposed to magically sense the cat’s suffering?)

      Many more animals would have homes if these ivory tower adoption groups would come down and join the real world.

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    ariesdragon123Joanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 4:54pm

    From the discharge statement though, it sounds like the cat’s symptoms are a sign of some medical condition rather than neglect? I know when my dog before last got sick, despite lots of care and attention, he lost a lot of weight and fur. We switched vets and got him the proper medication, and he was recovered within a couple of weeks. IT wasn’t that he was neglected, it as that he was very ill. He went on to live for 5 more years, and never looked that bad again. He died a very happy and friendly dog. So, the diagnosis is making me question the story, but I’m not that familar with cats. Can someone with some more expertise chime in on the diagnosis, based on the client instructions?

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      Selfie-consciousariesdragon123
      6/22/16 5:06pm

      There was an underlying problem. He had an upper respiratory infection. The fact that the body score was so low means that either the cat was sick for a very long time and went unnoticed or she was not feeding him enough but probably both. The owner sounds to me that she wants the cat for the attention she receives on instagram and does’t really give a shit about caring for it.

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      turtlepearSelfie-conscious
      6/22/16 6:35pm

      That could be true — I don’t have difficulty believing the owner is neglectful at all — but it’s also possible that the symptoms had been noticed and the underlying cause just not diagnosed.

      I think if someone had come upon my best friend’s cat at one point they’d have called animal welfare because she was so thin and clearly unwell. But she’d been to the vet at least a dozen times without them diagnosing the underlying cause for all her symptoms — lymphatic cancer. I think it was more than a year between when she first started to exhibit symptoms and correct diagnosis. The feline oncologist told us that’s actually really common.

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    bagoflettersJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 5:02pm

    If she is responding to people saying “you have no idea what’s going on” maybe she could actually tell them? Like if one person provides a photo of the condition of the cat according to a vet discharge paper, and the other goes “YOU DONT KNOW” but doesn’t explain... who is more likely to be believed?

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      1llamarampage will write againbagofletters
      6/22/16 5:50pm

      Right. On the one hand, I don’t believe that every discussion on the internet has to be framed and predicated by every detail of a person’s life, but on the other... the woman has a letter from the vet indicating that that cat was very, very sick. The kind of sick that has nothing to do with a sudden family upheaval. It’s the kind of thing that looks a lot like proof, and is going to need something more convincing than some cliches about how you don’t know me to answer.

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      bella bachelorbagofletters
      6/22/16 5:57pm

      I was still a little skeptical of Ruth’s account up until Karen said:

      Also, I wouldn’t consider him being left alone when I have someone checking in on him!

      Yeah Karen I call that corroborating evidence.

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    AlannaofTrebondJoanna Rothkopf
    6/22/16 5:09pm

    Unless those discharge papers turn out to be forgeries I'm #teamcatthief all the way. If the animal is suffering in your care you don't get to keep it.

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      OtherhandJoanna Rothkopf
      6/22/16 4:55pm
      “I HAVE BEEN STOLEN BY A PERSON WHO WAS SUPPOSEDLY HELPING MY MOM OUT BECAUSE HER DAD DIED!”

      If you can’t be dissuaded from pretending to speak as your cat and/or referring to yourself as your cat’s “mom”, then just look at the carnage it wreaks on your Instagram posts. I mean what is this

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        ariesdragon123Otherhand
        6/22/16 4:59pm

        Yes, that was a little purrculiar

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