Star-Crossed Hercules Goes from the Frying Pan into the Fire Before Finally Being Thrust into a Rather Dubious New Beginning That Has Not Been of His Own Choosing

Hercules Lived with His Owner and Sixty Other Cats in This Car

 "He was so near death that I wondered if it would be more humane to euthanize him" but when he lifted his head and looked right at me "I got the impression he really wanted to fight."

-- veterinarian Nicole Perreault

Part One: Where and How It All Began.

With the thermometer hovering at between 94° and 95° Fahrenheit, Tuesday, June 14, 2022 was an especially warm Flag Day in southern Minnesota. If the air conditioning was not working, it could have been even hotter for the forty-seven cats and kittens and their unidentified owner who were living  in a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) in the parking lot of the Goose Creek Rest Area at milepost 154 of Interstate 35 (I-35), 2.41 kilometers north of tiny Harris and roughly seventy-five kilometers north of St. Paul.

None of the details have been spelled out other than that the man had been evicted from his place of residence and, being unwilling to have cruelly abandoned his cats, he had taken to the road with them. Whether his loss of his domicile was due to financial constraints or to having too many cats is not known.

Even though the politicians and their buddies within the capitalistic media steadfastly refuse to even acknowledge the reality, America has had precious little in the way of affordable housing of any sort for nigh on to fifty years. As a consequence, members of the newly dispossessed who have been fortunate enough to have hung on to their wheels have taken up residence with their cats at rest stops. Still others have opted for motoring back and forth from the spacious parking lots afforded by retail outlets and strip malls.

Considering that they offer such amenities as free parking, restrooms, running water, and vending machines, the former are not without their advantages. That certainly was the case with Goose Creek and there doubtlessly were other rest areas and stores up and down I-35 where the man could have purchased food and other essentials for his cats as well as for himself.

The obvious disadvantage of such an arrangement is that rest areas not only have staffers but they also attract large numbers of nosy-Parkers and other assorted troublemakers. Consequently, the man should have realized that he and his cats were living on borrowed time and that he should have either kept on the move or took up residence with them in a tent in the woods at some remote location.

Most importantly of all, sooner or later he would have needed to have gotten them sterilized. Otherwise, their number would have become too unwieldy for him to have properly handled.    

The ax fell on him and his cats on Flag Day when an unidentified busybody ratted them out to the Chisago County Sheriff's Office in Center City, thirty kilometers south of Harris, and to the Minnesota State Patrol, headquartered in St. Paul.

Hercules Near Death on a Stoop

The individual who did so could not possibly have cared so much as one whit if either his or her actions had  ended up costing the cats their precious lives; on the contrary, that individual simply wanted to punish the man who, sans doute, was doing the very best that he could for both his cats and himself under extremely trying circumstances. Most Americans do not see things that way, however, and more often than not they are only too willing to put the screws to their fellow citizens, the animals, and Mother Earth by sucking up to authority and money at every available opportunity.

On the other hand, if such mean-spirited individuals were ever to tumble upon a cat all alone and in extremis, they most assuredly would think absolutely nothing of ignoring its desperate plight. In this case, however, since the cats' owner was down and damn near out the tattletale unilaterally decided that he had to be punished even if doing so cost every one of his totally innocent cats its life.

By contrast, anyone who truly had cared about the cats would have either rescued them himself or offered to have purchased them from the man. Until there is an ironclad national law without any loopholes that guarantees the right of all cats to live and to be free from all forms of abuse and exploitation, cops, rescue groups, practitioners of veterinary medicine, and bureaucrats never should be allowed to get their already blood-drenched hands on them under any circumstances.

On this particular occasion, the county sheriff's department and the state patrol wasted little time in handing off the ball to the Animal Humane Society (AHS) which has offices, presumably shelters and veterinary clinics, in Coon Rapids, seventy-five kilometers south of Harris, in Woodbury, eighty-five kilometers south of Harris, and in Golden Valley, eighty-six kilometers south of Harris, as well as in St. Paul. At that juncture, things certainly did not look promising for the cats.

Although the rescue group boasts on its web site that it adopts out ninety per cent of the animals that it takes in, it is far from being a no-kill operation. In particular, it candidly admits on its web site to snuffing out the lives of sickly animals as well as those that it -- and it alone -- subjectively deems to have behavioral issues.

C'est-à-dire, none of the animals that enter its shelters have any legal protections or guarantee that they ever will walk out again alive. Almost as reprehensibly, it donates the corpses of its victims to the veterinary school at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul so that its morally retarded professors and ambitious students can carve them up to their hearts' content in the unholy name of science.

Afterwards, what little that remains of them is sans doute thrown out with the remainder of the day's trash. That is yet still another shocking example of how precious little respect that both the veterinary medical profession and rescue groups, such as the AHS, have for the dead. 

Hercules Was Broken, Bloodied, and Bruised When Found 

They are, however, by no means the only members of that club. (See Cat Defender post of October 6, 2018 entitled "No Respect for the Dead: A Tierfriedhof Operator Who Desecrated Minki's Grave to the Point That Her Remains Now Lie Partly in an Adjoining Plot Is Given the Stamp of Approval by a German Court.")

Actually, the mentality that prevails in the veterinary schools as well as in the students that they churn out in order to practice veterinary medicine is so perverse that the only thing complimentary that can be said about either group is that they are at least consistent in not having any regard whatsoever for either the living or the dead. Au contraire, the only things that the vast majority of the entire god-rotten lot of them care about are money, sitting on their fat, bone-lazy asses and taking life easy, and thrill of maligning and killing preeminently treatable cats.

Since the slipshod capitalistic media most assuredly do not care about feline lives, it is not known what ultimately became of the man's cats and kittens which ranged in age from a few months to twelve years old.

"Despite the extreme heat and unsanitary conditions inside the vehicle, most of the cats seem to have only minor medical issues," the AHS told WCCO-TV of Minneapolis on June 15, 2022. (See "Forty-Seven Cats Rescued from Car at Rest Stop During Extreme Heat.") "They are currently being cared for, examined, and evaluated by AHS veterinary and animal behavior staff."

Indeed! It is the staffers at the AHS who need to be poked, probed, examined, and evaluated. Maybe then some halfway intelligent individual would be able to finally determine what makes such callous, moneygrubbing scoundrels tick!

Even more outrageously, local authorities had known about the man and his cats for some time in that they previously had seized another fourteen of his cats and given them to an unidentified rescue organization, most likely the AHS. In typically American style, the very idea of providing the man and his cats with a place to live so that they could have gotten on with their lives never so much as once ever entered the thick craniums and calloused souls of any Minnesotan. Rather, they much prefer to squander umpteen billions on poverty pimps, such as social workers, Jews, and Christians, in order to pretend that they are doing something constructive about the problem of homelessness.

In a rapidly deteriorating world where all morality, freedom, and human decency are being inexorably vanquished by technological and governmental encroachments, thankfully there still exists a rather large degree of human incompetence. In this particular case, the AHS botched the job when it came to rounding up the man's cats.

One of them, an intrepid and affable gray and white tom somewhere between the age of four and eight years old (press reports differ), escaped. His name is Hercules and this is where his incredible story of survival and triumph begins.

Nicole Perreault Located Her Moral Compass and Saved Him

Part Two: Hercules and His Life and Death Struggles.

Very little is known about Hercules' early days other than that he had been with his owner ever since birth. The man even has videos of him as a kitten, so he at least has that much left of him in order to hang on to, no matter where he is living now and under what circumstances.

Different individuals react to life's cataclysmic tragedies in various ways so it is conceivable that having his cats taken from him may have freed him to have begun anew. On the other hand, losing them could have robbed him of whatever raison d'être that he had left. 

There can be little doubt, however, that he had a far easier go of it than did Hercules during the days and months that followed the traumatic events of June 14th. The latter's first shock came when he found himself all alone in a frightening and dangerous world.

His second shock came when he realized that the outside world his owner had attempted to shield him from was chock-full of motorists, dogs, wolves, and other ailurophobes who prey upon footloose cats such as himself. Once the sun had disappeared from the sky on that fateful day came the realization that for the first time in his young life he was totally bereft of both shelter for the night and a home and that constituted the third traumatic shock to his system.

The dawning of the following morning and the empty feeling in his stomach that accompanied it drove home to him the disturbing realization that in addition to everything else that had been taken from him, he no longer had any source of either food or water. Under such circumstances, how was he ever going to be able to keep body and soul together? That then became not only his fourth shock but the most pressing one of all.

Few people realize or even care just how difficult it is for a homeless cat to survive in this cruel world. The millions of owners who routinely abandon their cats each and every year most definitely do not give so much as a rat's ass what becomes of them and that is equally true for the authorities who stubbornly refuse to arrest, prosecute, and jail their owners who run out on them.

Although it has not been disclosed how long that Hercules and his mates had been living with their owner in his SUV, that surely could not have been for all that long. If he had previously lived in a house, it is entirely conceivable that he may have had some measure of access to the great outdoors and therefore had picked up some knowledge on how to avoid predators.

Hercules Was Given Intravenous Fluids

As for hunting, although it is an innate skill, success at it requires practice and it is unlikely that he ever had much of that. Like the quest for a female in estrus, the search for food requires that a cat must roam and that in turn multiplies exponentially the threats to his survival. 

Hercules therefore had only two things going for himself. The first of which was that it was summertime and he therefore had three and one-half months ahead of him before the weather in Minnesota turns brutally cold, snowy and, ultimately, deadly in October.

Summer is therefore, arguably, the greatest of all gifts that Mother Nature bestows upon the animals (man included) and anyone who resides north of the Mason-Dixon Line is acquainted with that petit fait only too well. Sadly, even those cats that are lucky enough in order to live for ten years are destined to only see an equal number of summers.

After that Hercules might have survived for a while if he could have found shelter, perhaps underneath someone's house or in a vacant building of some sort, but sooner or later he surely would have starved to death without human intervention because there is absolutely nothing for a cat to hunt in the snow-covered and frigid far north during the winter months.

The other thing that he had going for himself was a profound ignorance of taking the Roman way out. No matter how dire the circumstances, cats approach life as an unqualified good and therefore they play the great game from baseline to baseline no matter how much pain and suffering that entails.

Even with those two things going for him, Hercules still would have needed a large measure of luck in order to have survived on his own but that was not to be. Sadly, The Fates were not on his side and things therefore quickly turned disastrous for him.

Unable to have procured a sufficient amount of sustenance to have sustained him, he became emaciated and dehydrated. Soon thereafter he was run down and left for dead by a hit-and-run motorist.

Like all such attacks upon cats, the one perpetrated against Hercules was without a doubt premeditated and intentional. All motor vehicles on the road today have sophisticated braking and suspension systems that allow them to be stopped on a dime.

Buttons Were Used in Order to Put Back Together His Face and Jaw

Plus, it is almost impossible for a motorist to accidentally run down a fleeing cat and strike him in the head. Rather, killing cats, opossums, raccoons, skunks, and birds has become a cruel and sadistic sport that is practiced by a fairly large percentage of Americans and constitutes another valid reason why that the age of the automobile has come and gone. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2019 entitled "No Respect for Life: Early Graves and Crippling Injuries Are All That Cats Who Dare to Set Foot in the Street Can Expect from the Bloodthirsty Motoring Public.") 

 

With what little strength that he had left in his fractured body, Hercules eventually made his way to the stoop of a residence where he collapsed in a pool of his own blood and urine. Along with his strength so, too, went his will to live.

Instinctively knowing that he was all but finished, those unheralded killers of cats, the flies, swooped down upon him with a vengeance and attacked his gaping wounds by laying their eggs in them. Their offspring, the maggots, then set about devouring his exposed flesh.

It was all but over for him by this time in that it looked almost for certain that he was destined to die all alone on that deserted stoop. The only thing that was left for him to do was to await the arrival of the Grim Reaper.

Even that last, final chore, which eventually falls upon all mortals, is hardly what it is cracked up to be in the movies. "I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine," Joe Conrad wrote in his 1899 novel, Heart of Darkness. "It takes place in an inpalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without a great desire for victory, without a great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary."

How long that Hercules was forced to have remained in that supine position suspended between life and death is not known. Neither is it known why that the inhabitants of the house had failed to summon emergency help for him.

At some point during the middle of July volunteers from Tuff Start Rescue in Isanti, a small, one horse town, thirty kilometers southwest of Harris, stumbled upon him. None of the specifics have been divulged, but it is possible that the volunteers had been on the lookout for him ever since he had fled the AHS on June 14th.

Conquering the shock and revulsion that they surely must have felt at first glance, they nevertheless magnanimously decided to transport him to the St. Francis Veterinary Clinic, also in Isanti, where he was diagnosed to have sustained multiple fractures to his jaw and face, several broken teeth, tongue lacerations, and multiple necrotic wounds. The latter would tend to suggest that he had gone without treatment for some time.

Hercules was Fitted with an Electromagnetic Therapy Collar

Veterinarian Nicole Perreault, who also owns and operates Tuff Start, took one look at him and faltered in her duty to save lives, not to take them. "He was so near death that I wondered if it would be more humane to euthanize him," she admitted to The Washington Post on April 19th. (See "Nearly Fifty Cats Were Rescued from a Hot Car. Now One Is a Target Model.")

There is nothing quite as morally repugnant and infuriating at the same time as a veterinarian who is unable to make up her mind if she is operating an abattoir or a dispensary for injured and sick animals. The very thought of ever snuffing out Hercules' life never should have entered Perreault's warped gourd; on the contrary, she never should have thought of anything other than pulling out all the stops in order to have saved him.

Some conscientious members of the public, such as David Livesay, learned a long time ago without ever having attended veterinary school what most veterinarians still stubbornly refuse to knowledge even today with the benefit of all of their schooling. For example, on July 8, 2010 he was motoring down Interstate 24 in Chattanooga when he witnessed a motorist up ahead of him toss a pretty five-week-old, orange and white kitten out the window of his vehicle and into traffic.

The helpless kitten bounced off a retaining wall and also received a glancing blow from another motorist before Livesay was able to have pulled over and rescued her. Although she was bleeding from the neck and mouth she was, mercifully, still alive.

Over the course of the following four hours he attempted unsuccessfully to have procured emergency veterinary care for her. Finally, he surrendered her to the McKamey Animal Care and Adoption Center which wasted little time in finishing off the job that her cruelj owner had inaugurated.

"It's a life! It's a life!" he pleaded in vain to all the veterinarians who had refused to treat her. "Anything that's alive is worth saving." (See Cat Defender post of July 16, 2010 entitled "Tossed Out the Window of a Car Like an Empty Beer Can, an Injured Chattanooga Kitten Is Left to Die after at Least Two Veterinarians Refused to Treat Her.")

Even though Hercules had weathered many deprivations as well as several attempts upon his life in the past, never was he closer to death than when he was lying helpless on the examining table in Perreault's surgery. During those terrifying moments, the thread that separated him between life and death was even thinner than the horsehair that supported the sword of Dionysius I as it dangled precariously above the head of Damocles.

It only would have taken a minute or two for her to have loaded a syringe with sodium pentobarbital and injected the deadly barbiturate into his system. That also would have been a simple and easy procedure considering that he was too weak to have put up any resistance at all.

It Took a While but Hercules Is Well Again

Afterwards, she could have deposited his corpse in a black plastic bag and tossed it out with the trash. Only a handful of individuals ever would have known that he once had so much as even graced the face of the earth.

His life would have ended right then and there and he thus would have joined the hundreds of thousands of cats and kittens who, like him, are vanquished every day by veterinarians, shelters, cops, ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and others. Even Perreault likely would have chalked up her hideous crime to just being a part of her job. 

That is not what transpired, however, and that which did occur is inexplicable. Perhaps the great god Bastet intervened from across the vast expanses of time itself and whispered in Hercules' ear, "Wake up. Move!" Who knows?

Thus, without there being so much as a solitary grain of sand left in the hourglass, Hercules summoned the last ounce of life left in his body and somehow managed to lift his tired, bloodied, and bruised head and looked right at Perreault and that made all the difference. "I got the impression that he really wanted to fight," she later confided to The Washington Post.

She immediately had an abrupt change of heart and banished all thoughts of malice aforethought from her mind and Hercules miraculously had a new lease on life. "He ripped my heart out when I saw him," she continued to The Washington Post. "... I decided we owed it to him to give him every chance to recover from this horrible ordeal, so that hopefully he can experience the love and tender loving care that awaits."

Even the wise can sometimes be done in by the slick seductiveness of faulty reasoning but the heart seldom errs. As American songstress Iris DeMent plaintively concluded in her mournful 1994 recording, Calling for You, "but the heart it's too wise for deceiving."  

A glance, a whim, and seemingly other inconsequential movements, gestures, utterances, and personality quirks are more often than not the very things that ultimately decide questions of life and death. For instance, in his 1862 novel, Les Misérables, Victor Hugo had the following to say about Fantine's chance meeting with the supremely evil Madame Thénardier which ultimately not only sealed her fate but also that of her young daughter, Cosette:

"Si cette femme, qui était accroupie, se fût tenue droite, peut-être sa haute taille et sa carrure de colosse ambulant propre aux faires, eussent-elles dès l'abord effarouché la voyageuse, troublé sa confiance, et fait évanouir ce que nous avons à raconter. Une personne qui est assise au lieu d'être debout, les destinées tiennent à cela."

 Hercules Relaxing with Kay

Once she had located her errant moral compass, Perreault was as good as her word in that she did everything possible and a good deal more in order to have saved Hercules' life. Doing so was not, however, easy.

Most likely, he was first placed on a heating pad in order to have elevated his body temperature; the cold icy touch of death must be driven off with warmth. He next was administered intravenous fluids, antibiotics, and painkillers.

Secondly, he had to be cleaned up and, in particular, the urine, blood, and other assorted debris removed from his fur. His injuries then had to be cleansed, treated and, in some cases, sutured.

Thirdly, the maggots that were rapidly eating away at his face had to be promptly removed. Normally, either hydrogen peroxide or a mixture of vinegar and warm water will kill them but sometimes medicinal oil of turpentine, mineral oil, and even olive oil are used. The wounds are then flushed and cleansed with more antiseptics.

If the maggots are not promptly removed, a cat can come down with myiasis, go into shock and die. Luckily for Hercules, the maggots had attacked tissues that were easily reachable and treatable by Perreault.

It is an entirely different story whenever a cat has been chased by a wild animal and bitten on its rectum or has sustained an injury to that area, such as when it has been run down by a motorist. In such cases, a killing agent must must be squirted into the rectum and the maggots removed one-by-one.

Compounding an already dreary situation, such cats are often no longer able to walk and thus are doomed to die protracted and excruciating deaths all alone and far from home as the maggots go to work on their open wounds. Time is therefore of the essence whenever a cat does not come home when expected and an owner should not dilly-dally before mounting an all-out search for it.

Flies not only pose a huge problem for ruptures in the flesh of living creatures but also for meat that is left where they can get at it. In particular, they often lay their eggs in wet food that has been left out on patios, in gardens, and at TNR colonies.

Hercules and Juni

Fourthly, the next order of business would have been to have gotten some solid food into Hercules. Fifthly, somewhere along the way Perreault no doubt would have conducted a complete blood count as well as radiographs of his injured neck, jaw, and face. Depending upon how much blood that he had lost, he may even have required a blood transfusion.

Fifthly, in order to have repaired the multiple fractures to his jaw and face, Perreault transferred him to an unidentified oral surgeon who employed, inter alia, surgical thread and blue buttons in order to have held his jaw and face together during his protracted and painstaking recuperation. As soon as his neck had healed sufficiently enough to have tolerated its presence, he was fitted with an electromagnetic therapy collar in order to ease the pain, decrease the inflammation, and to accelerate the healing process.

Although commonplace yet innovative at the same time, serious veterinarians are nowadays more and more relying upon buttons and wires in order to repair the shattered faces of cats. For example, on January 20, 2021 a pretty, orange-colored, seven-month-old kitten named Juicebox was chewed up by his guardians' dog.

Much like Hercules, he too suffered multiple fractures to his tiny jaw and severe lacerations to his face, mouth, and palate as well as head trauma. Rushed to the Massachusetts SPCA's Angell Animal Center in Boston, veterinarians used a combination of multiple buttons, wires, and sutures as well as an Elizabethan collar in order to put back together his face, jaw, mouth, and throat. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2021 entitled "Amazing Little Juicebox Overcomes Not Only a Near Fatal Mauling at the Hands of His Owners' Dog but also Penury and Being Abandoned to Shift for Himself Inside the Snake Pit World of Veterinary Medicine.")  

Sixthly, the lacerations to Hercules' tongue were treatable but it has not been revealed if the oral surgeon was able to have repaired his broken teeth. Dentures and implants are now available for cats but they are expensive.

No timetable has been proffered up but it would appear that Hercules' long and tortuous road back from death's door and rehabilitation surely must have taken at least a year if indeed not longer. Moreover, it was anything but cheap.

"With his referral care and everything, we are probably US$12,000 in on him," Perreault disclosed to WCCO-TV of Minneapolis on March 18th. (See "Cat Rescued from Minnesota Rest Stop Nearly Two Years Ago Now a Model for Target.") "We basically say they are worth every penny."

By sharp contrast, Emilee Intlekofer of Black Dog Animal Rescue in Cheyenne last year refused to have spent so much as one lousy penny in order to have saved the life of a beautiful eighteen-year-old tom named Eddie with long white fur and blue eyes. Even though he was diagnosed to be suffering from the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus and had a low platelet count, he nevertheless was lively and looked in photographs to have been the very picture of health.

Hercules and Jill LeBrun

"We're a realistic bunch and we knew we couldn't use our limited resources to give a stray, eighteen-year-old cat a blood transfusion on the off chance that he would live," she proudly announced after she had perpetrated her monstrous crime. "After we were presented with his diagnosis and prognosis from our veterinarian, it wasn't really that difficult a decision to make." 

More than likely she gives every cat that she is able to get her hands on the same short shrift. After all, that is precisely how that her mentors and comrades-in-arms at the utterly despicable PETA always have conducted business. (See Cat Defender post of August 27, 2023 entitled "Too Stingy and Ailurophobic to Have Treated Him, Black Dog Animal Rescue Murders Eddie in Cold Blood and Then Hightails It to Alice Gibbs of Newsweek in Order to Promote Its and PETA's Cat-Killing Cult.")

 

Even after she had freed Hercules from the Grim Reaper's icy grip and gotten him on the mend, Perreault's work still was not finished. She next posted his story and photographs of him on Tuff Start's Facebook page seeking someone to foster him while he continued his recuperation. That call was answered by Jill LeBrun, a pediatric nurse from St. Paul, who in the past had fostered cats and dogs for Tuff Start.

"As a nurse, I'm attracted to medically fragile animals," she explained to The Washington Post. "I knew that Hercules was going to need to be fostered and I felt that I could do it."

Although that arrangement was originally intended to have been temporary, The Fates intervened once again in Hercules' unpredictable life when one of LeBrun's pair of resident felines suddenly died. That was when she belatedly decided to adopt him. Apparently, no thought was ever entertained of returning him to his original owner.

He now resides with her and her surviving cat, Kay, as well as a miniature dachshund named Juni. The trio are said on get along like a house on fire.

"He's super laid back; he just finds a way to get along with everyone," LeBrun told The Star Tribune of Minneapolis on April 19th. (See "The Story of Hercules the Cat: Rescued in 2022, Target Model in 2024.") "Everybody (including visitors) loves him."

Having gone from living in an extremely crowded automobile to near death underneath the wheels of a hit-and-run motorist, to months of agonizing surgeries and recuperation before ultimately ending up in a permanent home is much more than any cat should ever be expected to have endured. Some individuals, however, never seem capable of leaving well enough alone and LeBrun certainly fits into that category.

Hercules Is Now Unwittingly Selling Cat Litter

Motivated by either a love of money or of fame and probably both, in the autumn of last year LeBrun responded to an advertisement placed by the Animal Connection, a talent agency for animals, calling for feline models for Target. She according carted Hercules off to Minneapolis, twenty-three kilometers west of St. Paul, for an interview and a photo shoot for which she was paid US$100.

"Hercules did great. He's a friendly cat and everybody loved him," she caroled to The Washington Post. "They told me his picture would appear on something for Target in early 2024."

Although the Animal Connection seemed to have been smitten with Hercules, particularly since his pink tongue permanently hangs out as a reminder of his violent attack at the hands of a motorist, the months dragged on by and LeBrun did not hear anything from either the talent agency or Target. She and Hercules were called in again in February of this year for a second photo shoot but, once again, nothing apparently came of it.

It therefore was not until the middle of this March that LeBrun learned that her efforts had paid a huge dividend and that realization came accidentally. While she was perusing the aisles at a Target outlet in Roseville, sixteen kilometers northwest of St. Paul, she stumbled upon the face of her cat adorning a stack of Up & Up Fragrance Free Clumping Cat Litter.

It is strange that neither the Animal Connection nor Target had notified her in advance that Hercules had been chosen as the face for its cat litter. The lousy "C" note that she was paid also seems awfully low in that it is doubtful that it even covered her petrol bill between St. Paul and Minneapolis. Would this nation's seventh largest retailer low-ball a cat? Why not? Everybody else does.

It is even odder that the New York edition of The Sun of London had reported on April 14, 2023 that Target had discontinued that particular brand of cat litter. (See "Gone Away. Target Confirms It Has Discontinued Popular Household Essential -- and Fans Are Furious About It Never Coming Back.")

Apparently Hercules was called back for a third audition in April and it is expected that his handsome face soon will be adorning other products for cats that are sold by Target and possibly other retailers. "He's a natural and he loves to be the center of attention," LeBrun told The Washington Post. "I feel very lucky to be the person who gets to spend every day with him."

How could that possibly be even remotely true, especially considering that she not only works as a pediatric nurse but is all the time carting him off to Minneapolis for interviews and photo shoots? It thus would appear that she actually spends precious little time with him.

Joe and Chris Ward in 2007

Even more deplorably, she seems to be much more interested in what she can get out of him rather than in him himself. Although it is not believed that Perreault charged her anything for saving Hercules' life, it is conceivable that she could need the money in order to pay for his continued recuperation. In that case, she might not have all that much of a choice in the matter.

Still, as Arthur "Dooley" Wilson crooned in Casablanca, "the fundamental things apply as time goes by," and the truth of the matter is that cats do  not have any need for money and they do not have any earthly conception of fame. Rather, it is individuals like LeBrun who lust after fame and fortune.

When it is taken into consideration that Hercules is a long-suffering and obliging cat who has endured many deprivations in his short life, he in all likelihood does not object too much to all the bandying about and the strange people who walk into and out of his life on an almost daily basis. Nevertheless, it is hard to get around the strong suspicion that he would be much happier if he had an owner who stayed home with him an doted on him. His contentment also would be enhanced if he had an opportunity to spend more time with playmates of his own species other than just Kay and if he had a fenced-in garden in which to frolic.

Moreover, the new career that LeBrun has embarked Hercules on is not without its own inherent dangers. First of all, being constantly on the road with a cat is not only a nerve-racking experience for most caretakers but perilous for the cat itself.

Automobile accidents do occur and cages do come apart sometimes. Cats therefore can easily become frightened and take to their heels with the least bit of provocation and, quite often, disappear never to be seen again.

Secondly, posing for photographs and working on the sets of commercials places a cat's life in the hands of individuals who normally are not familiar with the myriad of unanticipated mishaps that plague the lives of members of the species. For example, a vicious dog could get loose on the set and gobble up Hercules before anyone had the time in order to spirit him to safety.

 

Thirdly, thanks to the worldwide web he is now famous and that in turn makes Hercules an appealing target for thieves. It is impossible to anticipate all the dangers but precautions nevertheless need to be taken.

Whereas much of what little is known about performing cats is anecdotal, it is far from encouraging. For example, in 2003 June Ward of Funny Friends Cat Sanctuary in village of Dore in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, took in a homeless two-year-old, brown and white tom with green eyes named Joe and transformed him into a television star. 

Hercules' Tongue Hangs Out Even When He Sleeps

He appeared in at least one episode of "A Touch of Frost," a comedic police procedural which ran from 1992 until 2010 on Yorkshire Television. He also appeared in the detective comedy "Mayo," which ran for eight episodes on BBC One in 2006.

He additionally is known to have put in at least one appearance on the BBC soap opera, "Doctors," which began its run in 2000 but is expected to end in December of this year. That soap opera is not to be confounded with another show of the same name that ran on NBC-TV between 1963 and 1982.  

Like Hercules, he too was scheduled to have done some commercials. Initially, his roles had been pretty much limited to either sleeping in someone's arms or strolling across a room but Ward was hoping for bigger parts for him in the future.

It has not proven possible to determine how that things ultimately worked out for Joe but, since he was born in 2001, he in all likelihood is long dead and forgotten by now. (See Cat Defender post of March 22, 2007 entitled "In an Amazing Rags to Riches Turnabout, Joe Goes from a Homeless Shelter to TV Stardom in One Giant Leap.") 

In 2018, a three-year-old orange and white tom subsequently dubbed Crash was, like Hercules, run down and left for dead by another hit-and-run motorist. Rescued by Simply Cats of Boise, he was diagnosed to have suffered a broken left front leg and multiple fractures of his jaw. Most debilitating of all, the criminal robbed him of his right eye.

Whether out of a genuine fondness for him or in order to exploit him, Simply Cats has refused to adopt him out and he still lives at their shelter to this very day. In 2023, the charity entered him in the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts and he thus became the first cat ever to have won that contest.

There can be little doubt, however, that forcing him to don bunny ears and to imitate a rabbit just so that Cadbury and Hershey's can sell chocolates is not only exploitative but degrading as well. (See Cat Defender post of May 30, 2023 entitled "Crash, Who Lived Through Being Run Down and Left for Dead by a Hit-and-Run Motorist, Has Now Been Reduced to Impersonating a Rabbit and Shilling for Cadbury's Creme Eggs.")

Although SeaWorld has been justifiably condemned for its cruel mistreatment of orcas, its naked exploitation of cats is far less known. For instance, at its San Antonio location it used dozens of them in its "PetsAhoy" exhibit until it closed in 2019. (See The Trinitonian of Trinity University in San Antonio, September 30, 2021," Dolly, the Beloved ex-SeaWorld Performing Cat.")

Hercules Looks to Be Happy and Contented

The hundreds, if not indeed thousands, of cats that are shanghaied into performing for the likes of Acro Cats and the Moscow Cat Theatre are often on the road and therefore lead even more hellish existences than do those that are exploited for financial gain by individuals such as LeBrun, shelters such as Furry Friends and Simply Cats, and tourist attractions such as SeaWorld. To even call out that handful of individuals, institutions, and capitalists for forcing cats into singing for their supper barely even begins to scratch the surface of worldwide problem.

Looking ahead, it is difficult to speculate on what The Fates have in store for the star-crossed Hercules. He is, amazingly, still alive but that is about all that has been publicly divulged about his health.

"His jaw is a little crooked and his tongue almost always hangs out because of what happened to him," is all that Perreault revealed to The Washington Post. "But he's a sweet, tough cat. The name Hercules suits him."

It is not known what impact his facial and mouth injuries are going to have on either his quality of life or life-expectancy other than that they surely must make eating, swallowing, and possibly even breathing, difficult for him. No mention has been made in press reports as to whether he is still capable of breathing through his nose or if his sense of smell is still intact.

Since cats rely so heavily upon their sense of smell when eating, if Hercules has difficulty smelling his food that could cause him to become malnourished. Also, given that physicians frown upon humans who breathe through their mouths, it is unlikely that doing so all the time could be beneficial for a cat. Hopefully, he did not suffer any internal injuries as the result of having been forced to have gone for so long without veterinary care.

Perhaps his living arrangement with LeBrun will work out but that in no way alters the conclusion that he would be far better off with a guardian who stayed home with him all the time. Such a dedicated individual therefore would be able to not only constantly monitor his health but also to entertain him as well. Besides, anyone would have to be crazy in order to prefer to be away practicing pediatric medicine when she had such a rare and extraordinary cat as Hercules at home. 

Above everything else, Hercules' spectacular and triumphant return from the world of the almost dead underscores once again the imperative that it is long overdue for legislators to strip veterinarians, shelters, cops, and others of the right to kill cats under any circumstances. Hercules is alive today because Perreault had at last-second change of heart and chose to spare his life out of her own pocket but there are not many others like her practicing veterinary medicine; au contrarie, most of them have hearts that are every bit as thick as the doors to Fort Knox. 

Today, however, is the time to celebrate Hercules' indomitable will to live and his heroic victory over outrageous misfortune. His narrow escape from the clutches of the AHS at the Goose Creek Rest Area in Harris on June 14, 2022 nearly ended up costing him his life but, then again, if he had not taken to his heels he easily could have wound up on a dissection table at the University of Minnesota's veterinary school rather than having his image plastered all over bags of cat litter at Target.

Such are the wicked twists of fate that so often control the lives of cats. Hopefully, all the bad times are now a thing of the past for him but if any additional shadows should darken his path it can only be prayed that Bastet will not hesitate to intervene once again on his behalf. 

Photos: WCCO-TV of Minneapolis (automobile full of cats, Hercules on a stoop, and cat litter), Tuff Start Rescue (Hercules bloodied and bruised and on intravenous fluids), St. Francis Veterinary Clinic (Perreault), Sheffield Today (Joe and Chris Ward), and Jill LeBrun ( Hercules with buttons in his face, wearing a therapy collar, back on his feet again, with Kay, with Juni, with LeBrun, and with his tongue hanging out and wearing a red collar).