Pennsylvania Pet Groomer Is Caught Piercing the Ears, Necks, and Tails of Cats and Dogs and Then Illegally Peddling Them on eBay

"This is a first. It's unbelievable anybody would do this to kittens."
-- Carol Morrison, SPCA of Luzerne County

Make no mistake about it, there is good money to be made from the exploitation, abuse, and slaughter of cats. Most notably, tens of thousands of Animal Control officers and employees of shelters earn their daily bread precisely through the roundup and systematic slaughter of tens of millions of them each year. (See Cat Defender post of September 14, 2006 entitled, "Cat Killing Season Is in Full Swing All Across America as Shelters Ramp Up Their Mass Extermination Pogroms.")

In the course of their fraudulent research, vivisectors maim, torture, and kill tens of thousands of them each year as a means of lining their pockets with huge sums of welfare money. (See Cat Defender posts of February 1, 2008 and October 20, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Cats Are Destined to Be Treated as Horribly as Lab Mice Now That Vivisectors Are Able to Clone Them with Altered Genes" and "Swedish Academy Bestows Its 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Yet Another Trio of Vivisectors Whose Discoveries Are Maiming and Killing Cats.")

Besides supplying vivisectors with the cats that they torture, breeders also make a pretty penny peddling purebreds to owners who in turn exploit them by turning them into beauty show contestants. Still other breeders scour the world and native forests for exotic cats that they then mate with domestic cats in order to create hybrids. (See Cat Defender posts of December 19, 2008 and February 19, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Regardless of Whether He Is a Pixie-Bob or a Bobcat, It Is Going to Be a Blue Christmas for Benny after He Inadvertently Bites Santa Claus" and "Asheras Are the Designer Chats du Jour Despite the Cruelties Inflicted During Their Hybridization.")

Other shekel chasers clean up by cloning cats and creating allergy-free breeds. (See Cat Defender posts of November 17, 2008 and October 10, 2006 entitled, respectively, "Mr. Green Genes' Coming Out Party Ushers in a New Era of Unspeakable Atrocities to Be Committed Against Cats by Cloners and Vivisectors" and "Dodgy Allerca and Dishonest CBS Join Forces to Market an Allergy-Free Cat Named Joshua to a Gullible Public.")

Not to be forgotten are the connoisseurs of feline flesh, especially the Chinese and Australians. (See Cat Defender posts of February 8, 2006 and September 7, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Stray Cats Rounded Up in Shanghai, Butchered, and Sold as Mutton in Restaurants and on the Street" and "Australians Renounce Civilization and Revert to Savages with the Introduction of a Grotesque Plan to Get Rid of Cats by Eating Them.")

Perhaps less well known but certainly no less egregious, the Swiss, Danes, Peruvians, and Costa Ricans also stuff their ravenous maws with feline flesh. (See Cat Defender posts of August 25, 2008 and December 1, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Danish Journalism Students Procure the Corpse of a Murdered Cat and Then Skin, Cook, and Eat It in Order to Promote Their Careers" and "Peruvians Ludicrously Claim That as the Descendants of Slaves They Are Entitled to Massacre and Eat Cats with Impunity.")

The Chinese, Australians, Swiss, and others also do a bustling business trafficking in feline fur. (See Cat Defender posts of July 14, 2008 and December 15, 2005 entitled, respectively, "Australian Park Ranger and a Seamstress Team Up to Go into Business as Cat-Killers and Fur Traffickers" and "Heather Mills Asks EU to Ban Sale of Cat and Dog Fur; Paul McCartney Calls for Boycott of Chinese Goods and Olympics.")

When they are not hard at work taking the law into their own hands by either killing or abducting and dumping cats, bird advocates amuse themselves by demonizing the species so as to increase the flow of contributions to their multimillion-dollar bird-watching industry. (See Cat Defender posts of May 6, 2008 and August 7, 2008 entitled, respectively, "National Audubon Society Wins the Right for Invasive Species of Shorebirds to Prey Upon Unborn Horseshoe Crabs" and "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank.")

Wildlife biologists, both inside and out of government, are every bit as ailurophobic as birders. Their forte, however, is in getting their sticky fingers on tons of welfare money that they use to finance their cat-killing frenzies on San Nicolas Island, Big Pine Key, Cape May, and elsewhere. (See Cat Defender posts of May 24, 2007 and June 27, 2008 entitled, respectively, "USDA and Fish and Wildlife Service Commence Trapping and Killing Cats on Florida's Big Pine Key" and "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

Like their comrades in arms at shelters and in Animal Control, veterinarians also administer, for a price, their share of deadly jabs of sodium pentobarbital. That is in addition to cleaning up by performing such patently cruel and inhumane surgical procedures as onychectomies and tail dockings. If all of that were not remunerative enough, they further cash in by performing unwarranted sterilizations, which sometimes result in death, and unnecessary vaccinations that occasionally lead to the development of vaccine associated sarcomas (VAS).

As unbelievable as it may sound, the naked exploitation of cats does not end even in death because shelters and other entrepreneurs do a thriving business peddling their corpses to dissectors in the public schools and medical colleges. It almost goes without saying that few cats ever receive anything remotely approximating a proper burial let alone a grave marker.

Considering the extent of those abuses, one could be forgiven for being lulled into believing that human ingenuity had sucked the last drop of blood out of the feline species. The greed and evil that lurks in the hearts of men never can be underestimated, however, and there is always someone else out there with an even more diabolical money-making scheme up either his or her sleeve.

That was the grim reality that officers of the SPCA of Luzerne County and Pennsylvania State Police came face to face with on December 17th when they raided the premises of a pet groomer in Sweet Valley, twenty-two kilometers west of Wilkes-Barre. What they found inside were three kittens, an adult cat, and a dog with ear, neck, and tail piercings.

The unidentified female proprietor of Pawside Parlor at 71 Dobson Road was mutilating the animals and, in particular, offering the kittens for sale on both e-Bay and in classified ads posted elsewhere on the World Wide Web. Marketed under the heading "Pure-black, tailless, pierced, Gothic kittens" was a three-month-old kitten cruelly dubbed "Snarley Monster."

The kitten had fourteen-gauge rings in its floppy ears, a submission ring in its back, and its tail had been cut off. (See photos above.)

"This is a first," Carol Morrison, an officer with the SPCA of Luzerne County, told the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre on December 17th. (See "Pierced Kittens Removed from Home.") "It's unbelievable anybody would do this to kittens."

In addition to the pain and suffering that body piercings engender, infections and even possibly cancerous growths are likely side effects. Submission rings inserted in their tails restrict blood flow and sooner or later cause them to rot and fall off.

Included in the $400 price tag was a leash to be threaded through the submission ring in each kitten's neck. The excruciating pain, not to mention the attendant neck and skin damage, that being jerked around in this manner was certain to cause is almost too horrifying to contemplate.

Much of the same logic is applicable to cats, such as Snarley Monster, who are forced to wear pierced earrings. In addition to infections, such weighty and cumbersome trinkets over time are sure to damage the delicate cartilage in their ears and perhaps even harm their hearing as well. Furthermore, they interfere with the cats' ability to train their ears so as to better pinpoint the origination point of sounds.

Although an inordinate love of money was sans doute the principal motivation behind the mutilations, the abuser also appears to have derived a good deal of devilish delight out of inflicting such abominable cruelty upon defenseless animals. "She thought it was a great idea (to pierce kittens)," Morrison told the Times Leader in the article cited supra.

That quite naturally brings up the thought provoking questions of precisely what types of individuals would purchase mutilated cats and dogs in the first place and for what diabolical purposes? It is conceivable that these so-called Gothic kittens were intended to be sacrificed in either sadomasochistic rituals or porno films. After all, it is well known that pornographers traffic in films that feature naked women in stiletto heels stomping to death helpless kittens.

Another possibility is that the cats were intended to be abused by celebrants of the occult and black arts. Other than that, an intellect as twisted as that of the traffickers would be required in order to divine their motives. Regardless of the ultimate objectives of both buyers and sellers, there can be no denying that pain, abuse, ridicule, and death were all that awaited these unfortunate cats and dogs.

The fate of the four cats and lone dog is unknown at this time. They were scheduled to have been examined by a veterinarian with a decision on their future expected soon thereafter.

The rings placed in their ears, necks, and tails should be promptly removed and their wounds treated with antibiotics and monitored for infections and the onset of cancerous growths. The good news is that their injuries should heal in time and thus allow them to get on with their lives.

Consequently, there is not any valid reason why they should not be put up for adoption. If homes cannot be found for them they should be sent to a sanctuary. After all that they have been through they deserve a second chance at life and should not be killed under any circumstances.

Although the abuser is expected to be charged with animal cruelty, for some unknown reason no charges have been laid to date. Worst still, her pet grooming business presumably is still open for business.

Since, according to Morrison, it is illegal to peddle live animals on eBay, the web site also is culpable in the crimes of Pawside Parlor. It is therefore imperative that it do a far better job of policing what is sold on its auction site otherwise it could be held liable in both civil and criminal courts.

Finally, a hearty word of gratitude is in order for the unidentified good Samaritan who saw the ads on the Internet and traveled at his own expense from out of state to Sweet Valley in order to investigate. Without his concern and the telephone call that he placed to the SPCA countless cats and dogs still would be at the mercy of the "Sweet Valley Mutilator."

All cat and dog lovers owe this kindly gentleman a gigantic "Thank You!"

Photos: Sky News.