A Cruel Teenage Drunkard and Dope Addict Who Bound a Cat and a Dog with Tape Before Killing Them Is Let Off Easy by a Calgary Court

Nicolino Camardi

"It's pathetic that our justice system does not see that these animal abuse cases need to have much higher penalties. It's just not right. It's time that something happened and people started speaking out on behalf of the animals."

-- Heather Anderson of the Daisy Foundation

Reduced to its simplest terms, morality can be defined as an abiding respect for the right of animals, Mother Earth, and humans to not only live but also to be free from abuse and exploitation. Since they historically have categorically excluded both the animals and the environment from all moral considerations, it is impossible not to regard the Jews and Christians as being anything other than charlatans.

"There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham...and it won't stand when things come to be turned inside out and put down for what they are," coachman John Manly observed in Anna Sewell's 1877 timeless classic, Black Beauty.

A total lack of both respect and empathy for other living creatures and things is dangerous enough in its own right but whenever it is combined with the excesses of youth, anger, drugs, and alcohol it is truly something monstrous to behold and nineteen-year-old Nicolino Camardi of Calgary is living proof of that. Although there is not any way of knowing precisely how many evil deeds that he has committed, at least one cat and a dog have died from his hands.

The details are sketchy but in January of 2014 a nameless cat of unspecified sex was found dead with some type of tape covering most of its face. A necropsy later revealed that it not only had been strangled but also beaten about its head, tail, and rear legs.

Along about the same time, a chronically malnourished dog also was found with its mouth taped shut. Press reports have not specified if the victims' corpses were discovered together and at the exact same time or separately and at different locations.

Whereas very few animal protection groups ever even bother to investigate cases of animal cruelty, the Calgary Humane Society (CHS) opened an immediate inquiry into the animals' murders and that resulted in Camardi's arrest and immediate jailing in May of last year. Since arrests in such cases are about as rare as hens' teeth, it would be illuminating to know exactly what led the CHS to him but even that has not been divulged by the press.

In December of 2014, he pleaded guilty to "willfully causing pain, suffering or injury to an animal" and on March 27th of this year he was sentenced to twenty-two months in jail by Justice George J. Gaschler of the Provincial Court of Alberta, sitting in Calgary. Since he was given credit for the sixteen months that he already had spent in jail while awaiting trial, he likely was released sometime in September, if not earlier.

He additionally was given a lifetime ban on the owning of pets, placed on probation for three years, and ordered to undergo anger, alcohol, and drug counseling. "I accept that there is (a) rehabilitative requirement in a fit sentence of a very troubled and severely addicted young man," Gaschler opined according to the March 27th account contained in the Globe and Mail of Toronto. (See "Calgary Man Who Abused and Killed Dog and Cat Sentenced to Twenty-Two Months.") "There is also a need for close community supervision of Mr. Camardi who is at risk of relapse and consequent further criminal and violent behavior."

In spite of not only the leniency of the sentence but Gaschler's totally irresponsible decision to turn loose a violent offender upon society, the CHS nonetheless was as pleased as punch with that outcome. "This is an horrific and violent crime that got the attention of the city and beyond in a way that animal cruelty has not before," the organization's Brad Nichols, who led the investigation, told the Globe and Mail. "This was the case that citizens put their foot (sic) down and said we are not going to tolerate animal abuse. This was the most complex animal cruelty case that we have ever investigated."

Crown Prosecutor Gord Haight, who originally had asked for only a thirty-six-month sentence, likewise was pleased with the light tap on the wrists meted out to Camardi. "Perspective is important here. This, to my knowledge, is the highest sentence in Alberta ever received for an animal cruelty case," he crowed to the Globe and Mail. "My submission, quite simply, was the facts demanded it. This was certainly the most serious case of animal cruelty that I had ever prosecuted before."

Sick and tired of humane groups, prosecutors, and judges coddling animal abusers and killers, Heather Anderson of Delegates Against Inhumane Suffering (the Daisy Foundation) of Calgary was not buying one word of either Gaschler's, Nichols,' or Haight's extended exercise in sugar-coating the ugly truth. "It's pathetic that our justice system does not see that these animal abuse cases need to have much higher penalties. It's just not right," she tearfully told the Globe and Mail. "It's time that something happened and people started speaking out on behalf of these animals."

Truer words never have been spoken but any substantial change in how that animals are treated under the law remains far out of reach. Cats, for example, are horribly abused by their owners and killed with impunity by shelters, PETA, and veterinarians.

Motorists run them down for fun, vivisectors torture and kill them at will, and high-strutting, egomaniacal professors at the world's leading universities shanghai them into serving as guinea pigs so that they in turn can use the data collected from them in order to fabricate a rationale for their en masse feline extermination projects, such as the one currently underway in Australia. Even in such supposedly civilized countries as Deutschland and Österreich they are hunted as sport. The overwhelming amount of abuse that is meted out to them is, accordingly, sanctioned by law.

Even when a case of feline cruelty falls within the narrow confines of existing law, just about all humane groups and police departments categorically refuse to even open an investigation into the matter. On those still even rarer occasions when an arrest has been made, most prosecutors go after the accused with all the ferocity of a paper tiger.

Adding insult to injury, judges and juries seldom vote to convict no matter how overwhelming the evidence may be against the accused and even when they do the former always can be counted upon to hand down absurdly lenient sentences. Jail time therefore is either inconsequential or totally out of the question altogether.

It thus is painfully clear that judicial systems all around the world place little or no value on either the abuse or the killing of animals. Judges, in particular, care only about the abusers and that can be clearly seen in Gaschler's sentencing remarks. If press reports are to be believed, he never expressed so much as a syllable of remorse over the deaths of the cat and dog.

"I just want to say I understand what I did. It was horrible," Camardi told the court earlier in the proceedings according to the Globe and Mail. "I know that I can do it (change) and (I) am really sorry for the things I've done. The public and everyone has a right to feel the way they do."

If he, against all odds, is sincere, that is a positive step forward even though it is highly debatable if anyone as cruel and morally bankrupt as him can be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. That is especially the case given that character usually is formed during adolescence. Even more worrisome, some psychologists and sociologists believe that cruelty toward animals is a harbinger of future violent crimes against humans.

Whether or not such aberrant behavior continues into adulthood, there can be no denying that young individuals, especially males, are some of the worst and most prolific abusers of cats. (See Cat Defender posts of September 1, 2005, September 22, 2005, September 23, 2005, October 5, 2006, October 31, 2009, March 24, 2010, and July 18, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Danbury Teens Poison and Club to Death with Baseball Bats Twenty Cats; Another One Is Snared in a Leghold Trap," "College Students in South Africa Cook a Cat to Death in a Microwave Oven," "Two New Zealand Teens Douse Three Caged Cats with Glue and Burn Them to Death," "New Jersey Teens' Idea of Fun: Beat Up a Defenseless Kitten and Then Burn In to Death," "Stefan W., Who Publicly Boasted of Scalding Kitty to Death in a Washing Machine, Is Let Off by a Berlin Court with a Measly Fine," "Seven-Month-Old Bailey Is Fed to a Lurcher by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland," and "Blackpudlian Thrill Seeker Who Sicced Her Pit Bull on Regi and Then Laughed Off Her Fat Ass as He Tore Him Apart Receives a Customary Clean Bill of Health from the Courts.")

Drug addicts likewise are bad news for cats. (See Cat Defender posts of January 28, 2010, December 15, 2008, May 10, 2010, and September 27, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, Trio Taunted Tatiana Prior to Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by the Police," "Vicious Attack on Sid Leads to the Creation of a Fund to Aid Four-Legged Victims of Domestic Violence," "Lunatic Rulings in Cats with No Name Cruelty Cases Prove Once Again That Pennsylvania Is a Safe Haven for Cat Killers and Junkies," and "Caged, Shot Thirty Times with an Air Gun, and Then Tossed into a Bay to Drown, Lovey Is Rescued in the Middle of the Night by a Good Samaritan.")

An even more compelling case can be made against those who abuse and kill cats while under the influence of alcohol. (See Cat Defender posts of September 18, 2008, November 10, 2008, August 17, 2009, December 18, 2009, October 30, 2010, and January 22, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Drunken Brute Beats, Stabs, and Then Hurls Fifi to Her Death Against the Side of a House in Limerick," "London Teenager, Convicted of Killing the HMS Belfast's Kilo, Also Is Unmasked as a Remorseless Liar and Drunkard," "America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets Off with Time on the Water Wagon," "Teenage Wino Who Gunned Down Her Neighbor's Cat, Trouble, with a Crossbow from Her Bedroom Window Cheats Justice," "Drunken Bum Is Foiled in a Macabre Plot to Make a Meal Out of Kittens, Nirvana and Karma, That He Allegedly Ran Down Earlier with His Truck," and "Colin Sherlock, an Admitted Boozer and Dope Addict, Pulls Out All the Stops in His Unsuccessful Attempt to Torture Roxy to Death.")

Long before drunken motorists became acceptable, albeit deadly, fixtures of modern-day life, it was boozed-up coachmen who were the scourge of the civilized world. "I only wish all the drunkards could be put in a lunatic asylum instead of being allowed to run foul (sic) of sober people. If they would break their own bones, and smash their own carts, and lame their own horses, that would be their own affair, and we might let them alone, but it seems to me that the innocent always suffer...," Jeremy Barker complained after a drunk irreparably injured his horse, Champion, on the streets of London in Black Beauty. "If there's one devil that I should like to see in the bottomless pit more than another, it's the drink devil."

Despite all the vituperation directed against adolescence, drugs, and alcohol, it is far from clear that they, taken either singularly or altogether, are to blame for acts of cruelty perpetrated against cats and other animals. They could be, for instance, merely the masks that certain individuals hide behind in order to excuse the wickedness that lurks in the bottoms of their black souls. Such an analysis would in turn reduce alcohol and drugs to being merely the catalysts that bring their anti-social tendencies to the surface.

In the final analysis such questions should not even be taken into consideration by the courts. In Camardi's case, for example, his age and whether or not drugs and alcohol were involved are irrelevant because his victims are still just as dead and their suffering was not in any way alleviated by his impairment.

Au contraire, the courts should focus solely upon the conduct of defendants and leave the psychoanalysis to the experts. Above all, their sympathies need to be redirected away from the abusers and toward their victims.

Far from being singular occurrences, Camardi's crimes form part of a pattern of feline abuse that has been unfolding all across Canada for the past few years. Specifically, cats are known to have been bound with tape in the provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia as well as Alberta.

Nellie and Jennifer Paloposki

For example, in March of this year a handsome three-year-old black and white polydactyl named Bruce Almighty was discovered with all four of his limbs trussed up with electrical tape in Regina. Without the last-minute dramatic intervention of an unidentified couple in the northwest section of town he, too, surely would have joined Camardi's victims in the great void. (See Cat Defender post of November 18, 2005 entitled "Bruce Almighty Weathers an Abominable Act of Cruelty and the Intrigues of the Regina Humane Society in Order to Hopefully Be Able to Pick Up the Pieces of His Shattered Life.")

Over the course of a six-week period in September and October of 2012 no less than three cats were found bound with tape in four separate incidents in the city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. The abuse began on September 6th when a sixteen-year-old tom named Sam from Poplar Street was found with his paws tightly wrapped in blue duct tape and his tail fastened to his neck.

His assailant had done such a thorough job that his owner, Dianne Gordon, was forced to rush him to Island Veterinary Hospital where the tape had to be removed with scissors. Sam, fortunately, was not seriously injured and soon recovered from the frightening ordeal.

When advised by the BC SPCA to lock him up indoors, Gordon took umbrage at its insinuation that he had been to blame for the incident. "The cat is sixteen years old. I can't keep it in," she groused to the Nanaimo Daily News on October 24, 2012. (See "Nanaimo Royal Canadian Mounted Police Investigating after Cat Duct-Taped a Second Time.") "That would just be cruel. The cat has been an outdoor cat all his life."

On the same day that Sam was trussed up, a cat named Zuma belonging to Liberty Harakas likewise was found bound with blue duct tape. Unlike Gordon, however, she and her friends were able to remove the adhesive from Zuma's paws and tail without veterinary intervention.

Considering that Zuma lives only two doors down from Sam and that blue duct tape was used in both instances , it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that both of them were assaulted by the same group of individuals. Nevertheless, no arrest ever was made in either case and both incidents soon were forgotten.

That constituted a terrible dereliction of duty on the part of the authorities because on October 1st the taping spree resumed less than one-thousand feet away on the five-hundred block of Chestnut Street when a brown female with black markings named Nellie was found with green painter's tape covering her body. Her owner, Jennifer Paloposki, was able to successfully remove the tape and Nellie was otherwise unharmed.

Unfortunately for her that was merely the beginning of her travails because on October 22nd she was found with her feet tightly bound with brown duct tape and her tail taped to her body. Paloposki's initial reaction was not all that different from the one which, doubtlessly, greeted Bruce's rescuers.

"I went out first thing in the morning and that's when I heard her screaming," she later told the Nanaimo Daily News in the article cited supra. "When I first saw her I thought her feet were cut off."

Thankfully, that was not the case but Paloposki was unable to get the tape off this time around and as a result was forced to take Nellie to the Island Veterinary Hospital where she had to be sedated before it could be removed. "When we take it off, we're having to pull just like taking off a Band-Aid®, where you're pulling off hair," attending veterinarian Ken Langelier later disclosed to The News Bulletin of Nanaimo on October 25, 2012. (See "Police Investigating Cruelty to Cat.")

Nellie had attempted to gnaw off the tape but that endeavor had proven to be unsuccessful. In fact, the tape was bound so tightly that Langelier was barely able to even get it off with scissors.

"If you know cats at all, they certainly don't like having things on their feet, they don't like having restrictions to their ability to move and their tail is like a rudder," he added to The News Bulletin. "In this case the cat's tail was taped to its body, the feet were taped fairly tightly, and with no air breathing through the tape they'd gotten quite moist."

Nellie recovered in time but the incident left her guardian badly shaken. "It freaked me out," Paloposki said of the second incident in an interview with the Nanaimo Daily News. "It was like someone just knew she was out there."

The injustice of the attacks also rankles her. "What they did was wrong," she complained to The News Bulletin. "My cats don't attack anybody, they're not aggressive."

As for the motive behind the tapings, the experts are divided. "It's the sign of a sick mind, and sick minds often ramp up what they do as they feel more comfortable with what they're doing," Langelier theorized to the Nanaimo Daily News. "Any time there's animal cruelty I always suspect there's underlying psychological issues."

Because of the way in which the victims' tails were taped, that prompted Brian Ferris, a clinical psychologist practicing in North Vancouver, to speculate to the Nanaimo Daily News on October 25th that the perpetrator might be a young male between the ages of eleven and fourteen with a strange sexual fetish. (See "Police Have 'Several Persons of Interest' to Talk with after Series of Cats Duct-Taped.")

It was however Lyne Piche, who practices psychology in both Vancouver and Abbotsford, who likely came the closest to the truth when she suggested that the culprits were either cat-haters or juveniles. "It could be a neighbor who is really upset with the cats," she speculated to the Nanaimo Daily News on October 25th. "Instead of putting out poison, they decided to do it this way. I'm not sure."

In that respect, Paloposki, Gordon, and Harakas are extremely lucky that the individuals who assaulted their cats chose not to employ any of the lethal methods commonly associated with such inveterate ailurophobes as ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and gardeners. For instance, one of their more common tactics is to illegally trap their neighbors' cats and subsequently hand them over to shelters to kill. (See Cat Defender posts of October 30, 2006, March 9, 2007, and August 19, 2010 entitled, respectively, "A Collar Saves a Cat Named Turbo from Extermination After He Is Illegally Trapped by Bird-Loving Psychopaths," "Long Island Serial Cat Killer Guilty of Only Disorderly Conduct, Corrupt Court Rules," and "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw.")

Another favorite tactic of those individuals and groups who hate cats is to trap them and then dump them at undisclosed locations. (See Cat Defender posts of November 16, 2007 and December 24, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Fletcher, One of the Cats Abducted from Bramley Crescent, Is Killed by a Motorist in Corhampton" and "Prominent New Zealand Physician Who Ludicrously Claims to Be an Ailurophile Gets Away with Stealing and Dumping His Neighbor's Cat.")

Regardless of whether the perpetrators are motivated by either pure hatred of the species or simply youthful mischief, the means that they have at their disposal for carrying out their wicked designs are almost endless. In addition to that, they can rest assured that in most instances the authorities will not be coming after them.

In Nanaimo, for instance, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the BC SPCA knew from the outset that there were more than one individual involved in the attacks and that they were neighbors of the victims. "It's virtually impossible to control a cat and do something like that," Constable Gary O'Brien told The News Bulletin. "I'm sure the persons would receive considerable scratches, would have to be heavily clothed and have gloves on. We're sure it's someone living in the area that's taken an exception to this (Nellie) particular cat."

On top of all of that, the RCMP received a tip from an employee of a hardware store concerning a customer who had purchased brown duct tape of the type that was used in order to truss up Nellie. It also handed out flyers on Chestnut Street, established a citizens' watch group, and compiled a list of suspects but, as far as it is known, no arrests ever were made.

It accordingly is difficult to say if there is a discernible link between the failure of the authorities in Nanaimo to make an arrest in these four cases and the more recent copycat crimes that have been committed against cats in Calgary and Regina. The only thing that is known for certain is that all crimes committed against cats, regardless of the modus operandi improvised, need to be taken seriously by the authorities and that no stone should be left unturned until those individuals responsible have been apprehended and jailed.

Deplorably, that has not happened in either Nanaimo or Regina and Gaschler bent over backwards in order to shortchange Camardi's victims in Calgary. It therefore is an open question as to whether it is worthless sods like Camardi or those derelicts within the political and legal establishment who refuse to strenuously enforce the anti-cruelty statutes that are the greatest threat to the safety and well-being of cats and dogs.

Photos: Facebook (Camardi) and Niomi Pearson of The News Bulletin (Nellie and Paloposki).

Bruce Almighty Weathers an Abominable Act of Cruelty Coupled with the Intrigues of the Regina Humane Society in Order to Hopefully Be Able to Pick Up the Pieces of His Shattered Life

Bruce Almighty

"The cat, who had no identification, collapsed into the arms of officers late Wednesday evening and purred as they began the delicate process of removing the bands which had destroyed his limbs."
-- the Regina Humane Society

The most readily available means that owners have at their disposal for getting rid of unwanted cats is to fob them off on either shelters or veterinarians. That is because both of them operate on mandates issued by the state that allow them to commit en masse murders with impunity.

Whenever those two expedients are not, for whatever reason, desirable owners can always fall back upon such time-honored disposal techniques as either nonchalantly tossing them out in the trash, dumping them in the middle of busy highways, or poisoning them. In the end it really does not matter all that much which modus operandi is selected because all of them are pretty much foolproof.

There are some owners, however, who hate their cats so much that merely snuffing out their lives is insufficient; au contraire, they feel compelled to either torture them to death or to consign them to circumstances whereby their demises are prolonged and excruciatingly painful. The latter was the means selected back in March in order to put a permanent end to a handsome, longhaired, black and white polydactyl subsequently dubbed Bruce Almighty from Regina in Saskatchewan.

In particular, his diabolical owner tightly wrapped each of his four legs in electrical tape before casting him out in the street in order to fend for himself where temperatures that time of the year normally average between 14.2° and 32.7° Fahrenheit. What offense, if any, he possibly could have committed in order to have provoked such animus remains a mystery to this very day.

It is difficult to determine from press reports if his legs were bound together or separately but even if they were taped individually that made it nearly impossible for him to walk because the adhesive was wrapped so tightly that it had cut off the circulation causing the tissue below it to die and become infected. Under such dire circumstances procuring food, water, and shelter from the bitter cold became herculean tasks.

Moreover, he no longer had any way of eluding human and animal predators due to his inability to either take to his heels or to scale heights. Most frightening of all, he would have been a dead duck if a motorist ever had gotten a bead on him.

If neither predators, the elements, nor starvation had finished him off, the total lack of blood flowing through his constricted limbs soon would have done the trick. It accordingly is not any exaggeration to say that the clock of doom was fast winding down and Bruce's cruel fate was all but sealed.

Despite the excruciating pain and the hopelessness of his predicament he, like so many cats, somehow was able to summon the will power in order to persevere. In doing so he took full advantage of a rather mild day on March 18th when, according to Friendly Forecast, the temperature soared to 42.08° Fahrenheit to somehow either hobble or crawl into the yard of a house located in the northwest section of town. Once there, his desperate plight attracted the attention of the compassionate homeowners who immediately telephoned the Regina Humane Society (RHS) which came and collected him.

"The cat, who had no identification, collapsed into the arms of officers late Wednesday evening and purred as they began the delicate process of removing the bands which had destroyed his limbs," the RHS later told the CBC on March 22nd. (See "More Than C$11K Raised for Hurt Regina Cat 'Bruce Almighty'.")

In addition to the extensive damage that was done to all four of the approximately three-year-old tom's limbs plus his front paws, it has not been revealed if he also was suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, and frostbite. It likewise has not been disclosed if evidence of other forms of abuse were detected by the veterinarians who examined him.

They were able to conclude however that the adhesive had been on for a "significant amount of time." What exactly that means is unclear but based solely upon the extensive damage done to Bruce's legs it more than likely had been in situ for several weeks, if not indeed longer.

It furthermore is not known how many callous residents of Regina turned blind eyes to his interminable suffering. A similar sorry spectacle took place in the Ichenheim section of Neuried in Ortenaukreis, Baden Württemberg, during the early days of January in 2011 when equally uncaring residents allowed a forever nameless brown and white female with green eyes to wander the streets for days after she had been deliberately doused with petrol and set on fire.

A citizen finally telephoned Tierschutzvereins Offenburg-Zell on January 10th but by then it was way too late and the cat died three days later. No one came forward to claim her remains and that lent credibility to the strong suspicion that her assailant, as was the case with Bruce, had been her owner. (See Cat Defender post of June 27, 2011 entitled "Citizens of Ichenheim Callously Allow a Torched Cat to Walk the Streets for Days Before Summoning Veterinary Help That Arrived Too Late.")

Bruce on the Operating Table

As it seemingly always turns out to be the case whenever a cat's life is hanging in the balance, Bruce's deliverance from the street initially succeeded in only placing his fragile life in even greater jeopardy. That is because the first idea that popped into the diseased gourd of the RHS's head honcho, Lisa Koch, was not to treat him but rather to finish the job that had been begun earlier by his owner.

"There's a lot of dead tissue. We've seen some improvement, but we're thinking that amputation may be necessary," she declared to the Leader-Post of Regina on March 20th. (See "Almighty Battle for Bruce the Cat after Legs Bound by Tape.") "If both of his front legs are requiring amputation, then it would be very difficult for him to survive."

Besides being both utterly disgraceful and totally morally repugnant, Koch's asinine reasoning simultaneously demonstrated her abysmal ignorance of the resilience of handicapped cats. For example, the reaction from Geoffrey Weech of the Monmouth Small Animal Hospital in Wyatt Earp's hometown of Monmouth, Illinois, was entirely different when in late September of 2010 an impecunious local resident brought in a fourteen-week-old black and white kitten named Trace whose rear legs had been badly mangled in a car's engine.

"Didn't have any blood flow in them; the bones were broken in the legs," he later revealed. Unlike Koch's reaction to Bruce, he was not about however to reach for the sodium pentobarbital. "We felt that if a cat can be that normal with three legs, I think that they can adapt to two legs," he correctly deduced.

His compassion did not end with saving her life, however, but rather it extended to securing a good home for her. "It's going (to) have to be somebody that is dedicated to a special needs kitten but I think they're going to be surprised," he predicted. "I think she's really going to come around."

His only error in judgment was to limit his reasoning to cats with two limbs. For instance, a tortoiseshell named Callie Mae from Theodore, Alabama, does not have any legs at all.

Back in 2008, she was chased up a tree by a pack of vicious dogs where she subsequently became entangled in electrical wires and was electrocuted. Her subsequent fall to the ground cost her all of her appendages.

Someone has to scratch, groom, and brush her and she uses Wee-Wee Pads as opposed to a litter box but other than that she is doing remarkably well all things considered. "She's a good kitty," Sandy Tomlin of the Theodore Veterinary Clinic, where she lived until finally being adopted, said back in 2010. "She even caught a mouse one time." (See Cat Defender post of November 17, 2010 entitled "Penniless and Suffering from Two Broken Legs, It Looked Like It Was Curtains for Trace Until Geoffrey Weech Rode to Her Rescue on His White Horse.")

Cats who have lost limbs also can be fitted with wheelchairs, prosthetics, and bionic implants. (See Cat Defender post of November 20, 2010 entitled "Celebrated as the World's First Bionic Cat, Oscar Now Has Been Turned into a Guinea Pig with a Very Uncertain Future.")

Almost immediately after threatening to whack Bruce, Koch did an about-face. "We're committed to Bruce. He's Bruce Almighty and he has incredible determination and perseverance," she added to the Leader-Post for reasons that were soon to become abundantly clear. "He deserves an opportunity to feel safe and love after the tremendous amount of pain and suffering that he's endured because of this purposeful act of animal cruelty."

The petit fait that a fundraising appeal launched on his behalf in order to raise C$5,000 for his treatment took in more than C$20,000 from Canadian, American, Polish, Spanish, and Greenlandic donors between March 22nd and March 25th sans doute played a significant role in her abrupt change of heart. Even though she may not have given so much as a whit as to whether he lived or died, she most assuredly had enough bon sens in order to recognize that in him she had a proverbial gold mine on her hands.

"We had no idea the response we were going to get, or really, Bruce was going to get, around the world," she gushed to Global News of Toronto on March 25th. (See "Overwhelming International Response to Cat in Need.") "He has a wonderful personality. He fought hard and we figured it was our turn to fight hard for him."

The donations, which eventually added up to almost C$25,000, spared Bruce from having to face the hangman but they contributed very little toward shortening his convalescence. "He has a long road of recovery ahead of him," Koch added to Global News. "A lot of rehabilitation will come and when he's ready for adoption, there'll be some special circumstances around what his needs are going to be."

Bruce in an Elizabethan Collar Following Surgery on His Toes

The long haul to once again becoming a functioning cat began on March 23rd when veterinarians amputated eight of his front toes and thus leaving him with only two on each paw. That was followed by hydrotherapy and unspecified treatment of his badly damaged legs.

He tentatively was scheduled to have undergone paw pad grafts at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, two-hundred-fifty-nine kilometers north of Regina, in May but it is far from clear if those procedures ever took place. (See the CBC, March 27, 2015, "Hurt Regina Cat Bruce Almighty Makes Encouraging Recovery" plus untitled articles dated March 31, 2015 and May 1, 2015 on the RHS's Facebook page.)

Perhaps those additional surgeries were not needed in that less than a month after knocking on death's door Bruce had made an astounding recovery. "The healing of his wounds on his front paws is going incredibly well and his newly unwrapped back leg is looking near normal," the RHS confided to The Chatham News of Chatham in Ontario on April 18th. (See "Bruce Almighty the Saskatchewan Cat Recovering after Electrical Tape Ordeal.") "Bruce Almighty is feeling much stronger and is happiest when he is near people. He is able to walk short distances with his front bandages and now spends his weekdays in staff offices and the weekends at home with his foster family."

Besides enjoying a new crinkle bed and feather toys dropped off for him at RHS by well-wishers, it was the attention lavished on him by staffers that pleased him the most. "He absolutely adores sitting on a warm lap and will stand up on his back legs and ask to be picked up knowing cuddles await him on the lap of his choice," the RHS added to The Chatham Daily News.

In May, the RHS initiated a long-drawn-out process of finding him a new home. In furtherance of that objective, they decreed that his new owner must not only be familiar with his history but also able to spend considerable time with him. It additionally mandated that the individual adopting him must have the financial means in order to pay for his continued veterinary care and to reside in a dwelling with a minimal amount of hardwood flooring and stairs.

The charity received hundreds of inquiries from individuals, including many from Deutschland, expressing a desire to adopt Bruce but on July 3rd it selected Melissa Fiacco who works in public relations for the trade and industry group, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME). "You wanted to champion his recovery. You wanted him to defy his attacker and triumph," she told the Leader-Post on July 3rd. (See "Bruce Almighty Finds a New Home.") "To be honest, it's kind of like Rocky Balboa. It's so silly, but you really wanted him to triumph."

Whereas Fiacco sans doute is loaded, it is highly unlikely that she has very much time to spend with Bruce because she has a rather demanding job at CME. She also, based upon her rather substantial presence on the web, leads a very hectic social life.

It is even far from clear just who it is that is taking care of Bruce. In particular, although she moved into a new condominium just before she adopted him, it appears that it is actually her father who is in charge of his welfare. "It's really adorable, I think he thinks my parents are his parents," she disclosed to the Leader-Post. "Because Bruce has been by (my dad's) side every moment he's been home."

The dad that she is referring to is none other than Pat Fiacco who served as mayor of Regina from 2000 until 2012. That revelation, purposefully hidden from the outside world by the Leader-Post, also lays bare another of the RHS's blatant lies.

Quite obviously Bruce was not given to the younger Fiacco because she was able to devote time to his recuperation and future care, but rather because of her rather substantial economic and political ties to the Regina establishment. By entering into such an arrangement the RHS is attempting to further ingratiate itself to the powers that be and thus to rake in additional funding.

None of that is meant in any way to imply that Fiacco will not be a passably competent guardian of Bruce but it does once again vividly demonstrate that what matters to the RHS is money and not the welfare of cats.

The charity accordingly plans on exploiting him as an advocate for its own interests. "In a way, he belongs to a lot of people," the organization's Karen Mercier proclaimed to the Leader-Post in the July 3rd article cited supra.

Besides the RHS's mendaciousness and perverted agenda, it has miserably failed Bruce by fobbing him off on an individual whom, it would appear, never will be much more than an absentee caretaker. In that light, it would be interesting to know how that this highly sociable cat is adjusting from being the center of attention at the RHS to being left alone for long periods of time in her, apparently empty, condominium.

Bruce Is Attempting to Adjust to His Limited Mobility

Also, since the RHS has stipulated that he, for medical reasons, be confined indoors for the remainder of his days, he thus is being denied the stimulation, freedom, and feline companionship that is customarily afforded by the great outdoors. That may be unavoidable considering his injured legs but it nevertheless underscores the pressing need for him to be provided with tons of human interaction as well as for his indoor environment to be made as interesting as possible to him.

Abandoning him to his own devices for lengthy periods of time also is dangerous considering his acute medical problems. In particular, if either a blood clot or some other medical emergency should unfold while Fiacco is out chasing shekels he easily could die before she returned home.

It therefore is difficult not to conclude that Bruce would have been much happier and safer if the RHS had placed him in a home where he would have enjoyed around-the-clock companionship and supervision. That was not about to happen, however, owing to the RHS's ambitiousness and, above all, insatiable greed.

For instance, it is believed that the care that he received from the RHS cost less than C$5,000 of the nearly C$25,000 that was donated. Accordingly, the RHS certainly had it within its means to have placed him with a far more devoted, even if less financially well-heeled, owner and then applied the remaining balance to his future care.

In its defense, the RHS claims to have made other plans for that money. "Bruce Almighty -- and all the people that helped him -- will be able to help a lot of other animals as well," Koch pledged to the CBC on April 17th. (See "Bruce Almighty, a Cat, Is Healing Well and Walking a Bit after Taped Paws Trauma.")

That is well and good as far as it goes but it deliberately fails to take into account that the donations were explicitly earmarked by the public for Bruce's care and his needs certainly did not come to a screeching halt the moment that he walked out the door of the RHS. Consequently, for the RHS to wash its hands of him and then to divert those funds to other causes is nothing short of outright thievery.

Besides, there is not any reason to believe that they will be spent on other deserving cats and dogs. For example, Koch and her cronies either could appropriate them for their own personal use or apply them toward the purchase of lethal drugs in order to kill injured cats, as they initially planned on doing with Bruce, as opposed to treating them.

Few, if any, shelters and humane organizations operate on the level and as a consequence donors seldom know for certain how their donations are being spent. Furthermore, since just about all of these outfits rely heavily upon the public for their livelihoods, the very least that they should be willing to do is to give donors a detailed, written accounting, right down to the last penny, of exactly what was done with their contributions.

Just as there should exist a sacred and inviolable trust between cats and those individuals and groups that are responsible for their safety and well-being, so too should there exist a similar bond between shelters and humane groups and their benefactors. Under no circumstances should these institutions be allowed to continue to squander funds on policies that are inimical to the wishes of those who donated them.

As things now stand, donors are unwittingly guilty of subsidizing the cold-blooded murders of countless cats, dogs, and other animals. Likewise, shelters that categorically refuse to devote a portion of their donations toward the apprehension and punishment of animal abusers are making it possible for such crimes to continue to be committed in perpetuity.

In Bruce's case, it is almost superfluous to point out that no arrest has been made and none is expected. Based primarily upon the fact that his former owner never came forward in order to reclaim him even after his story and photograph appeared not only in the Leader-Post but also on the world wide web, that makes that individual suspect number one.

Although it is remotely conceivable that his former caretaker could have abandoned him, moved out of town, and then took up residence underneath a rock, that does not seem to be a likely scenario. Even under such an arrangement, it likely would have been necessary for the culprit to have trapped Bruce and then restrained him in some fashion before taping and subsequently abandoning him.

The motive behind the attack seems to have been pure malice directed at either him in particular or all cats in general. Another possible explanation is that he somehow fell into the clutches of juveniles who get their perverted jollies by committing all sorts of atrocities against defenseless cats.

Bruce in His New Home

As best it could be determined, neither the RHS nor the local police ever lifted so much as a finger in order to bring Bruce's abuser to justice. As the very least they should have conducted door-to-door interviews in the area where he was found in an effort to determine if anyone knew anything about him.

Secondly, veterinarians, shelters, pet shops, and groomers, in the city and surrounding areas should have been contacted and shown photographs of him. Thirdly, the entire neighborhood should have been fly-posted. Fourthly, retailers should have been queried concerning any and all recent sales of electrical tape.

Fifthly, although such acts are largely beau geste, the RHS could have offered a monetary reward for information leading to the arrest of Bruce's abuser. Regrettably, it apparently was too cheap to even have done that much for the sake of justice.

As is the case with just about all shelters, the RHS not only expects the public to provide the financial support that enables it to operate but to additionally do its job for it. "We rely on the public to be our eyes and ears for cases involving neglect and abuse," Koch told the Leader-Post in the March 20th article cited supra. "They (the Good Samaritans) did the right thing."

Besides being shameful, such dilatoriness constitutes a blatant dereliction of duty. Specifically, if it really cared about such matters the RHS would not have left any stone unturned until the fiend who abused Bruce was safely locked up behind bars.

The picture that emerges of the RHS throughout its handling of this heartbreaking matter is anything but flattering. Most damning of all, it is guilty of flirting with the idea of killing, as opposed to treating, Bruce.

Secondly, it bungled his adoption. Thirdly, it has misappropriated funds intended for his continued care. Fourthly, it has failed in its mission to safeguard the lives of cats by steadfastly refusing to go after Bruce's abuser. Such perverse thinking and morally inexcusable polices also go a long way toward explaining why shelters, even on their best days, are little more than dressed-up death houses that are operated for a profit.

The coziness that all of them seem to have with the political, economic, and media elites also is disgusting. That is because those individuals, institutions, and groups who not only traffic in but profit from the exploitation of animals are committed only to maintaining the status quo and that never has and never will be a good thing for the animals.

It additionally is important to always bear in mind that Bruce owes his life, not to the RHS and Fiacco, but rather to the unidentified Good Samaritans who found him and the generosity of the worldwide cat-loving community. They are the real heroes in this story.

It is difficult to speculate as to what the future holds in store for Bruce. Assuming that he does not fall prey to any additional mischief, both the quality and quantity of his existence will depend largely upon the success of his recovery and what kind of a home Fiacco provides for him.

"He's still very independent and very vocal when he chooses to be," she told the Leader-Post on July 3rd. "But you want to love him, he makes it so easy."

That is not a bad place to start but much more remains to be done. That is especially the case considering not only all the hell that he has been put through but the difficulties that await him in the days and years ahead.

Photos: Regina Humane Society (Bruce by himself, on the operating table, in an Elizabethan collar, and lying on a rug) and Melissa Fiacco (Bruce in his new home).