Waymo Has Gotten All the Blame but It Actually Was KitKat's Irresponsible Owner and the Uncaring Merchants and Their Patrons on Sixteenth Street in San Francisco Who Killed Him
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| KitKat Holding Court at Randa's Market |
"We all started shouting in disbelief. It was an awful sight. The cat was able to crawl about ten to twelve feet off the road and back onto the sidewalk, where my friends immediately approached it to try and help. I ran back into Dalva's to tell them what had happened but it started vomiting blood, and it was clear it wasn't going to make it."-- an eyewitness's account to the killing of KitKat
In an all-too-familiar scenario that is seemingly as old as time itself, the deck was stacked against KitKat from the very moment that his mother gave birth to him in 2016. Shortly thereafter he was abandoned and thus forced to persevere as a homeless waif on the streets.
Sometime thereafter he was given sanctuary by an unidentified woman but that arrangement did not last long before she cast him out, allegedly because she had a family member who was allergic to cats. One way or another, the handsome brown male with black stripes eventually wound up at Randa's Market at 3131 Sixteenth Street at the corner of Valencia Street in the Mission District of San Francisco.
By that time he already was three years old and the liquor store, which also peddles cigarettes, chips, and his name strongly suggests, candy, was at the very least his third stop on his traumatic journey through this mendacious and ailurophobic old world. According to the narrative advanced by the capitalistic media, the store had originally acquired him to be a mouser but he quickly became much more than that.
"The atmosphere at the store definitely changed after KitKat arrived," the store's proprietor, Mike Zeidan, recalled to the Los Angeles Times on November 3, 2025. (See "Waymo Killed KitKat. California Neighborhood Mourns a Corner-Store Cat.")
Friendly and outgoing to a fault, KitKat immediately began to bring in the customers in droves. He also soon attracted more than a half-million followers on Instagram and he even was so obliging that he allowed himself to be dressed up as Santa Claus for Christmas.
"He was a special guest. Made for a store like this," Zeiden added to The San Francisco Standard a few days earlier on October 28th. (See "Waymo Robotaxi Kills 'One-of-a-Kind' Bodega Cat, Owner Claims.") "Friendly with everybody, and not afraid of dogs or anything."
All of that sans doute boded well for Zeidan's business but as far as KitKat was concerned it was an entirely different matter. First of all, a cat never should be overly socialized.
A healthy distrust of all strangers, dogs and other animals, as well as large objects is highly beneficial for his well-being and continued survival. (See Cat Defender posts of July 14, 2016 and August 1, 2021 entitled, respectively, "Missy, Who Was Too Kindly Disposed Toward Humans for Her Own Good, Is Memorialized in Wood at the Bus Stop That She Called Her Home Away from Home for Almost a Decade," and "Amazing Little Juicebox Overcomes Not Only a Near Fatal Mauling at the Hands of His Owners' Dog but also Penury and Being Cruelly Abandoned to Shift for Himself Inside the Snake Pit World of Veterinary Medicine.")
Secondly, given that liquor stores attract a clientele that is composed almost exclusively of drunkards and other assorted riffraff, Randa's was hardly a suitable home for KitKat or any other feline for that matter. Simply put, alcohol and cats are a bad mix under any circumstances. (See Cat Defender posts of January 28, 2008, September 18, 2008, November 19, 2008, January 9, 2009, August 17, 2009, December 18, 2009, October 30, 2010, January 22, 2011, and April 17, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, a Trio of Miscreants Taunted Tatiana Prior to the Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by the San Francisco Police," "A Drunken Brute Beats, Stabs, and Then Hurls Fifi to Her Death Against the Side of a House in Limerick," "A London Teenager, Convicted of Killing the HMS Belfast's Kilo, Also Is Unmasked as a Remorseless Liar and Drunkard," "Disoriented and Racked with Excruciating Pain, Seizures, and Infections, Sparkles Loses Her Long Struggle to Live," "America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as a Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets Off with Time on the Water Wagon," "A Teenage Wino Who Gunned Down Her Neighbor's Cat, Trouble, with a Crossbow from Her Bedroom Window Cheats Justice," "A Drunken Bum Is Foiled in a Macabre Plot to Make a Meal Out of Kittens, Nirvana and Karma, That He Allegedly Had Run Down Earlier with His Truck," "Colin Sherlock, an Admitted Boozer and Dope Addict, Pulls Out All the Stops in His Unsuccessful Attempt to Torture Roxy to Death," and "As Peat Tragically Found Out, Alcohol and Cats Are Such a Bad Mix That Even Working at a Distillery Can Be Deadly," plus Damon Runyon's 1932 absolutely ludicrous as well as ailurophobic short-story, "Lillian.")
Because of that and a score of other reasons, one of the lesser known benefits of forsaking the worship of Dionysius is that of being spared the ordeal of not only rubbing elbows with the types of miscreants who frequent such establishments and bars but also the legally sanctioned drug dealers who operate them.
Things might have worked out for KitKat at the store if Zeidan had cared just a tiny bit about him but that was hardly the case. Rather, the louder his cash register began to hum the greedier he became and the more hideously that he began to neglect KitKat's personal safety.
For instance, he not only allowed him to venture all by his lonesome into the dive bars, restaurants, and other establishments that line Sixteenth Street and possibly even onto adjoining streets and avenues. During any one of those unescorted excursions KitKat easily could have been run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist, eaten by a dog, poisoned, stolen and sold to a vivisector, and possibly even tortured to death by either neighborhood juveniles or cat-hating adults.
Before long KitKat's rambles had become so extensive and Zeidan's negligence toward him so brazen that people in the area had begun to refer to him as the "mayor of Sixteenth Street." C'est-à-dire, he in effect had been cruelly abandoned to his own devices for the third time during his brief existence.
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| KitKat Lasted for Only Six Years at the Liquor Store |
In retrospect, it is amazing that he lasted for as long as he did, especially with an owner as derelict and heartless as Zeidan. Sooner or later his luck was bound to have run out on him and for KitKat the end came on October 27th of last year when he was run down and killed by one of Waymo's self-driving robotaxis, which are owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.
In the immediate aftermath of his killing, all that the public was provided with by way of an explanation was a choice between believing the testimony of two eyewitnesses and accepting Waymo's uncorroborated claims of total innocence.
Even after all these months, Waymo is yet to release to the public the images and data that were collected by the cameras and computers on board the vehicle that killed KitKat. Inexplicably, Zeidan likewise refused to release the footage from a surveillance camera outside the front of his store until finally relenting and doing so on December 5th. Even then he bypassed the local media and gave the video to The New York Times.
"The reason I released the tape was I thought a picture is worth a thousand words," he later told the Mission Local on that same date. (See "Video of KitKat Killing by Waymo Undercuts Company's Claim.") "There were conflicting reports and I wanted everybody to see the truth."
That still does not explain why that he waited nearly six weeks to have done so. Neither does it explain why he snubbed the Mission Local, which had requested access to the video from the very outset, in favor of The Times.
Regardless of the true reason behind that long delay, this terrible miscarriage of justice began to unfold at 23:49 p.m. when the Waymo stopped at the curb outside Randa's Market. Then, according to the video, two pedestrians, presumably eyewitnesses Benjamin Wallo and Elisa Massenzio, can be seen walking by on the sidewalk heading west. At that precise moment KitKat appears in the video.
It is impossible to tell where that he came from but he appears to have stepped out from the shadows in front of the store. Since the liquor store had closed at 11 p.m., he quite obviously did not emerge from it. Most likely he was either hanging out in front of it or he had been visiting the bars and restaurants up the street.
Massenzio pauses for a moment in order to bend down and apparently say something to KitKat before continuing east on Sixteenth Street where she and Wallo, presumably, boarded the taxi. It also is assumed, but not confirmed, that they were the ones who earlier had summed the taxi from next-door at Dalva's bar at 2131 Sixteenth Street.
KitKat continued on across the sidewalk before stepping off the curb and coming to stop in front of Waymo's right front wheel. The time was now 23:50 p.m.
At that precise moment, a young unidentified young woman with shoulder-length dark hair walked up from the west whereupon she immediately spotted KitKat in harm's way. Not hesitating for so much as a split-second, she promptly stepped down off the curb in front of the robotaxi and began attempting to coax KitKat out of the street.
What transpired next is a mystery. One possible explanation is that he fled from her and that she abandoned her rescue effort. On the other hand, it is entirely conceivable that the robotic automobile gave some indication that it was about to pull out, such as by inching forward ever so slightly before stopping, and that prompted her to have abandoned her rescue effort and to have climbed back up onto the curb.
It is unclear what the robotaxi would have done if she had demurred. For example, would it have run her down along with KitKat? Or, would it have remained stationary where it was parked and thus allowed both her and KitKat to have escaped with their lives?
Quite often it is petit faits such as that which determine who lives and who dies in this world. At the very least, Waymo owes the public an explanation as to what occurred.
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| A Memorial for KitKat Outside the Liquor Store |
Regardless of how that the vehicle's onboard computers had been programmed to deal with such a scenario, the very moment that the Good Samaritan got out of its path the Waymo, having presumably collected its fare seconds earlier, shot off with its right rear wheel running over KitKat. He next is seen in the video scampering out of the street toward the sidewalk.
Did Wallo and Massenzio attempt to alert the robotic taxi to his presence? If so, did it have the capacity to understand what they were telling it? Likely the world never will know.
Since the video does not contain audio, the anguished, bloodcurdling screams that he sans doute emitted have been lost to posterity. They most assuredly were not lost on the ears of the Good Samaritan who immediately went into histrionics herself by covering her mouth with her hands and running around in a circle of anguished horror and helplessness before chasing after the mortally-wounded KitKat.
Without the data from its computers and cameras, it is impossible to know if the Waymo's navigational system ever so much as noticed KitKat standing for at least thirty seconds directly in front of its right front wheel. That in turn highlights the glaring need for all self-driving vehicles to be immediately retrofitted with cameras and sensors that are capable of detecting the presence of cats, other animals, toddlers, and adults that are in the path of any of their four wheels.
Unless Waymo and the operators of other self-driving vehicles are willing to make this safety modification their vehicles should be immediately banned from all public thoroughfares. Instead of doing that, Waymo has elected to hid behind a blizzard of lies and half-truths.
"We reviewed this, and while our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away," Google, as it forever has been its custom, lied through its rotten teeth to the Mission Local on December 5th. (See "Video of KitKat Killing by Waymo Undercuts Company's Claim.")
The company additionally has ludicrously claimed that its omission of any reference to the presence of the noble and compassionate Good Samaritan was, believe it or not, to protect her. "We did not want this pedestrian to feel badly or get the impression we were suggesting blame or fault for this unfortunate event, which we sincerely wish did not occur," it continued to the Mission Local. "The outpouring of affection has been extraordinary and we know KitKat must have been very special."
That last statement of the company completely misses the point. All feline life is not only special but worthy of not only veneration but, especially, preservation.
For whatever it is worth, Google did extend its sympathies to Zeidan and the community as well as pledge to donate a few dollars to a local animal rights group. As best it could be determined, to date neither any organization nor an amount has been publicly specified.
That is probably just as well considering that few, if any, cats would ever see any of that money. Rather, whoever got it surely would put it in either his or her pockets and that would be the end of the matter.
Despite continuously spying upon the users of its products, stealing their data and peddling it to the feds and other fascists, and just generally making everyone's life miserable, Google nevertheless would like the world to believe that it is one of the so-called good guys. "The trust and safety of the communities we serve is our highest priority," it earlier vowed to the Los Angeles Times.
Ironically, on the very same day that one of its vehicles killed KitKat, Waymo's co-chief operating officer, Tekedra McGee Mawakana publicly boasted that she thought society is "ready to accept deaths" caused by autonomous vehicles. (See the London Metro, May 11, 2026, "Waymo Driverless Car Keeps Waking Londoners at 4 a.m. by Getting Stuck in Dead-End Street.")
None of that is intended to imply that Google harbors an animus against cats; au contraire, once upon a time it even allowed its employees to establish a flourishing TNR colony on the grounds of the Googleplex in Mountain View. That worthwhile initiative came under fierce attack in 2018 from both ornithologists as well as the professional liars and champions of one-sided journalism at The New York Times.
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| A Memorial for KitKat Inside the Liquor Store |
Since nothing further has been heard about the matter, it is not known if cats are still welcome at that facility. (See Cat Defender post of July 9, 2018 entitled "The Slimy, Underhanded, and Utterly Despicable New York Times Fabricates Another One-Sided, Scurrilous Screed Against Cats and This Time Around the Target of Its Libels Is a TNR Colony at the Googleplex in Mountain View.")
With everyone involved in this terrible tragedy so consumed with playing the blame game, the terrible pain and horrific suffering that KitKat was forced to endure during his final minutes on this earth has been, rather conveniently, all but forgotten.
"We all started shouting in disbelief. It was an awful sight," a pair of eyewitnesses, presumably Wallo and Massenzio, testified to the Mission Local on October 31st. (See "Waymo Confirms Its Car Killed KitKat, the Mission Bodega Cat.") "The cat was able to crawl about ten to twelve feet off the road and back onto the sidewalk, where my friends immediately approached it to try and help."
"I ran back into Dalva's to tell them what had happened but it started vomiting blood, and it was clear it wasn't going to make it," the witness concluded to the Mission Local.
Considering that the batteries inside electrical vehicles (EVs) can add up to an additional three-hundred or more kilograms (600-plus pounds) to their weight, the Waymo surely must have crushed the very life right out of KitKat by obliterating his internal organs. What he was forced to endure is so distressing that it is even painful to contemplate.
Another problem with EVs is that they do not make any noise and that hazard needs to be rectified before they are allowed on the street. Thirdly, whenever their lithium-ion batteries catch on fie they burn for an extended period of time and tons of water are required in order to extinguish them.
Given the extra weight of the vehicle, it is remarkable that KitKat was able to have gotten up off the pavement and to somehow made to the safety of the sidewalk. Despite that herculean effort, it likely already was way too late to have saved him.
Since the eighty-seven-second video released by Zeidan ends with the Waymo disappearing east on Sixteenth Street, it has not been publicly divulged what occurred next. In particular, how long was KitKat forced to lie dying on that wretched sidewalk?
The only tidbit of information released to the public so far has been that Sheau-Wha Mau, a bartender at the Delirium bar at 3139 Sixteenth Street, accidentally stumbled upon him when she took a break from leading karaoke. If that is true, what had happened to the Good Samaritans and the "friends" of the eyewitnesses? It is difficult to fathom that they had walked off and left him to die all alone.
According to Mau, however, at that time he was still alive but spitting up blood and suffering from a broken leg. Absolutely nothing in this big, wide world is worse than watching a cat die and not being able to save it.
An unspecified amount of precious time ticked off the clock while she scrounged around for transportation. Eventually she was able to have gotten KitKat to one of San Francisco's few twenty-four-hour veterinary establishments, most likely the Sage Veterinary Hospital at 600 Alabama Avenue, a little more than one kilometers and six minutes removed from Randa's Market.
What transpired there has not been divulged, not even his condition or how long that he lived. It has not even been disclosed whether he died on his own or was killed off.
Most importantly of all, if the latter was the case, who made that decision? According to press reports, Zeidan did not arrive at the hospital until five minutes after KitKat had died.
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| KitKat and His Eponymous Candy Bar |
Of course, it is entirely possible that he could have initialed his death warrant by telephone. If that were the case, was an unwillingness to have footed the bill for his care the reason behind that decision?
Could he have been saved? It is difficult to say without knowing the extent of his injuries. That which is not in doubt, however, is that he unquestionably was preeminently worthy of having been saved.
It did not take long for word of KitKat's untimely demise to spread throughout the small, insular community of Sixteenth Street and before noon on the day of his death a makeshift memorial in his memory had already begun to take shape outside of Randa's Market. It featured a photograph of him along with several eponymous candy bars, flowers, candles, miniature bottles of tequila, ceramic cat figurines, and bags of popcorn from the Roxie Theater at 3117 Sixteenth Street.
"By tomorrow, there'll be a full-on altar, and as Day of the Dead comes, it'll grow and grow. Sixteenth Street will not be the same," Margarita Lara, who like Mau also slings swill at the Delirium, predicted to The San Francisco Standard in the article cited supra. "As I walked from near Mission Street to here with the candles and flowers this morning, everyone knew who it (sic) was for. Everyone bowed their heads with KitKat."
Not surprisingly, in spite of all he ink and paper devoted to KitKat's killing, not a solitary mention has been unearthed so far that even broaches the subject of what was done with his remains. It therefore is probably safe to assume that Zeidan did not want any part of them.
The veterinary house where he died likely therefore either burned them or tossed them out in the trash. KitKat therefore was denied both a proper funeral as well as a final resting place with a suitable tombstone. Such a callous dénouement poignantly demonstrates just how precious little that he meant to Zeidan more than all of his other abject failures as his guardian.
Nevertheless, he would dearly love the world to believe that the exact opposite was the case. "We're heartbroken. He brought warmth, smiles, and comfort to everyone who walked through our doors..." is how that he chose to eulogize him to the Los Angeles Times in the article cited supra. "The store won't be the same without his little paws padding around."
He will never admit it in a million years, but it was he himself, and not Waymo, that killed KitKat and he did so by his shameless neglect of him. Most glaringly of all, given that KitKat was killed at least fifty minutes after he had closed his store for the evening, he did not even bother to put him up for the night.
Furthermore, since his store is closed on Sundays and holidays, he likely left him outside to roam the perilous streets of San Francisco on those occasions as well. Based upon the testimony of individuals who work on Sixteenth Street, it is even questionable how much time that KitKat spent inside the store even when it was open for business.
Given that hit-and-run motorists are one of the most prolific killers of cats on the planet Zeidan most assuredly knew that one of them was bound to sooner or later gotten KitKat yet he did absolutely nothing to have safeguarded his life. (See Cat Defender posts of June 18, 2015, June 2, 2015, June 23, 2024, and August 27, 2024 entitled, respectively, "Harry Is Run Down and Killed by a Pair of Derbyshire Police Officers Who Then Steal and Dispose of His Body in an Amateurish Attempt to Cover Up Their Heinous Crime," "Kayden Is Run Down Three Times in Succession by a Van Driver in Yet Still Another Graphic Example of How So Many Motorists Intentionally Kill Cats," "Beautiful King Hercules is Condemned to an Early Grave by His Derelict Owner Who Did Not Care Enough about Him to Have Kept Him Out of the Street," and "A Tale of Two Cats: Garfield Is Long Dad and Teddy Is Being Led Down the Same Path in Order to Soon Join Him.")
Even those cats that are lucky enough to come away with their lives from attacks perpetrated against them by motorists are often left with debilitating injuries. (See Cat Defender posts of March 5, 2007, May 2, 2012, and August 8, 2019 entitled, respectively, "Run Down by a Motorist and Frozen to the Ice by His Own Blood, Roo Is Saved by a Caring Woman," "Pregnant, Abandoned, and Then Deliberately Almost Killed by a Hit-and-Run Driver, Sugar Crawls Back to Her Subterranean Abode in Order to Feed Her Kittens," and "Hounded Down and Nearly Killed by a Hit-and-Run Motorist, Eli Desperately Needs Additional Surgeries in Order to Fully Restore His Previous Level of Mobility.")
There simply is not any point of Zeidan and his confederates feigning ignorance of the matter. Cats that are allowed in the street eventually end up either dead or crippled for life and motorists commit crimes of this sort intentionally and for fun. (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 Food in the Street Can Expect from the Bloodthirsty Motoring Public.")
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| Coco's Reign as Queen of the Liquor Store Was Short-Lived |
Since he cared absolutely nothing for KitKat's personal safety, that prompts one to wonder if Zeidan even so much as bothered to feed and water him on a regular basis and, if he did, what did he feed him? It is well-known that cats which are allowed to roam are prone to being not only sickened by the garbage that people feed them but also sometimes poisoned by ailurophobes.
For example, Nadine Biewer of Aachen would drop off her cat, King Loui I, each morning on the campus of Rheinisch-Westfälishe Technische Hochschule (RWTH) and leave him there to spend the day before returning in the evening in order to collect him. On those occasions, he also would stray into the Innenstadt where he would drop in to various establishments, including the Aachener Cathedral. On any one of those excursions he easily could have been killed by a motorist but Biewer could have cared less.
It was, however, the garbage that he was fed by the professors, students, and staffers at RWTH that ultimately led to him coming down with a cancerous growth underneath his tongue that finally killed him. Biewer did that to him because she was too lazy and uncaring to have stayed home with him.
She also used him in order to gather material to enhance her stature online. Writing under the Schriffstellername of Dina Bell, she additionally got a tome out of her naked exploitation and neglect of him entitled Die Fellnasenbande Hinter dem Gartenzaun.
As for Loui, all that he got out of the deal was loneliness, horrible pain and suffering, and finally a jab of poison from an unscrupulous veterinarian. He was only seven years old. (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2017 and September 15, 2017 entitled, respectively, "A Death Watch Has Begun for King Loui I Who Has Been Abandoned to Wander the Dangerous Streets of Aachen by His Derelict Owner and the Ingrates at RWTH" and "King Loui I's Days of Roaming the Perilous Streets of Aachen Come to a Sad End Shortly after He Is Diagnosed with Inoperable Throat Cancer.")
Since d-Con and other deadly poisons are still on the shelves, it is not even a good idea to allow a cat to hunt and eat mice. The same holds true of allowing one to come into contact with raw milk which can be contaminated with bird flu (H5N1).
It also would be interesting to know if Zeidan ever took KitKat to a veterinarian or even bothered to have confined him inside his store during storms and other types of inclement weather. Although San Francisco does enjoy a very mild, albeit cool, climate that seldom varies, in recent years the city has been hammered by a few torrential downpours that were accompanied by high winds.
On such occasions, KitKat easily could have been swept away by the rising waters or felled by a flying object. Visibility also is greatly reduced at such times and that would have further jeopardized his life if he had been cruelly left outdoors.
"It's sad. Everyone's heartbroken. I've been crying all fucking day and night," Jessica Chapdelaine, another mixologist at the Delirium, told the Mission Local on October 29th. (See "KitKat, Liquor Store Mascot and 'Sixteenth Street Ambassador,' Killed -- Allegedly by Waymo.") "He's the baby. He was everyone's best friend, and he was just the sweetest boy."
It often has been said that a cat has the intellectual development of a four-year-old child and anyone who allowed a toddler out into traffic surely would be arrested and locked up. Moreover, since she has digs above the dive bar, she could have taken him inside and given him a safe and proper home but she chose not to have done so because she, like everyone else on Sixteenth Street, was too busy nakedly exploiting him for their own narrow, selfish reasons.
"People would come in the shop and he would go follow them, make sure they didn't steal nothing," she continued to the Mission Local. "He'd check the bars (the Delirium has at least two of them), make sure everything's good. He was like our little security guard. He was our family."
With family like her and Zeidan, whatever did KitKat need with enemies?
Anna Yarbrough of the Little Roxie Theater at 3125 Sixteenth Street and two doors west of the Roxie Theater, lamely attempted to exonerate Zeidan and the community by packing off all the blame for KitKat's death onto Waymo. "Losing any pet by a man-made thing is very heartbreaking, especially a driverless car," she argued to the Mission Local.
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| She Is Now in Jail at SNAP Cats in Santa Rosa but Looking Well |
She surely must be off her rocker given that whenever a robotic car kills a cat it surely is unintentional. By contrast, motorists kill them with malice aforethought.
Zeidan likewise was given nothing but the highest possible praise for his abject neglect of KitKat by Rick Norris, director of publicity for the Roxie Theater. "Only Mike at Randa's, the most righteous merchant on the Sixteenth-Valencia corridor, could have found and raised such an award-winning, neighborhood-loved critter as cool as our kitty, KitKat," he blew long and hard to The San Francisco Standard. "Those two were perfectly paired, and we mourn his (our) loss of a creature that absolutely elevated the quality of life in our corner of the Mission."
In other words, neglecting and killing an unsuspecting cat is perfectly permissible in his way of thinking so long as the community profits from such barbarism. Moreover, his callous and exploitative attitude is a classic example of what this world has come to expect from the irresponsible and selfish theatrical community which has used and abused cats ever since it came into existence. (See Cat Defender post of September 20, 2018 entitled "Pirate Pleasantly Surprises the Thespians at the Bush Theatre by Turning Up after a Six-Month Absence but He Is Far from Being Out of the Woods Just Yet.")
The circle of blame for KitKat's horrible death neither begins nor ends with Zeidan and the other merchants on Sixteenth Street but rather it extends to their patrons who could not have helped but known that his life was in mortal danger throughout the six years that he spent on the street. Yet, they did absolutely nothing in order to have saved him.
The capitalistic media, including the Mission Local, also were acutely aware of what was going on but they too failed to have acted to have saved him. Au contraire, they cashed in on Zeidan's outrageous neglect of him by doing features on KitKat that never once mentioned the grave perils threatening his continued existence. (See the San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 2020, "Aquariums, Clock Repair Shops and Corner Stores: Where to Find San Francisco's Favorite Shop Cats" and the online journal The Bold Italic and an undated article entitled "The Store Cats of San Francisco.")
Although both the San Francisco SPCA at 201 Alabama Street and Animal Care and Control at 1419 Bryant Street have been discredited so many times in the past that they are hardly worth mentioning, they too could have saved KitKat but, like everyone else involved in this tragedy, they simply did not care what was about to happen to him. Likewise in 2007, both agencies refused to have investigated the poisoning of a TNR colony in the Excelsior District. (See Cat Defender post of July 2, 2007 as republished on April 1, 2020 and entitled "Cats Are Being Poisoned with Antifreeze in San Francisco but Animal Control Refuses to Take the Killings Seriously.")
Zeidan, his confederates on Sixteenth Street, the apostles of the capitalistic media, and the membership of the so-called animal protection establishment in San Francisco can lie their ugly little faces off until the cows come home but they were the ones who killed KitKat and they did so through their greed, naked exploitation, neglect, and total lack of so much as either a scintilla of love for him or a jot of respect for his inalienable right to live.
"My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty, or wrong that we have the power to stop, and we do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt," Anna Sewell proclaimed in her 1877 masterpiece, Black Beauty and there is not any way that KitKat's killers can get around that verdict. His blood is all over their hands and it is going to take considerably more than soap and water for them to remove it.
It also is nothing short of astounding that not a single one of these moral degenerates has expressed so much as a syllable of regret, remorse, or guilt about having so flagrantly failed KitKat in their sacred obligation to have safeguarded his life. Perhaps they secretly hated him all along and wished him dead. If that was not the case, why did not any of them raise so much as a finger in order to have saved him?
If that were all that there is to this story that would be god-awful enough but, regrettably, that is hardly the case. Most individuals and groups that exploit, neglect, and abuse cats are serial offenders and that is true for both Zeidan and the Sixteenth Street crowd.
Zeidan, who qualified as the very antithesis of an ailurophile, wasted little time in grieving over KitKat and by late November he had already acquired a replacement for him in the form of a pretty, six month old white female with a grayish-black face and head and blue eyes named Coco. Described as being feisty, friendly, and cute, she reportedly was given to him by an unidentified neighbor of his.
Not having learned a thing from his killing of KitKat, Zeidan promptly turned her loose to roam perilous and congested Sixteenth Street and that stupid and totally irresponsible act on his part nearly killed her. "...a couple of days ago, she walked outside to chase pigeons and, when a truck drove by, she ran back inside the store in fright," the Mission Local reported on December 2nd. (See "After Beloved KitKat Was Killed by Waymo, Liquor Store Gets New Feline.")
She survived that misadventure but, sadly, that proved to have been only the beginning of her travails that continue to this very day. Shortly thereafter Zeidan took her to a veterinarian in order to have her spayed and vaccinated and that was when she was diagnosed to be suffering from the feline leukemia virus (FeLV). No mention has been made in press reports as to whether she has an abortive, regressive, or progressive infection.
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| Shadow Dearly Loves Boxes... |
Not about to tolerate the presence of a sickly and potentially expensive to medicate cat at his profitable booze dispensary, Zeidan immediately decided to get rid of her. "I didn't think the environment of the store would be good, because she's going to have a weak immune system and a lot of trips to the vet," is how that he rationalized his perfidy to the Mission Local on January 26, 2026. (See "Coco, Bodega Cat That Followed KitKat, Leaves Liquor Store after Leukemia Diagnosis.")
His first thought was to have returned her to where he had gotten her until he realized that there were other cats living there. The most obvious problem with his thinking is that it is doubtful that any of those cats have been tested for FeLV. Besides, not all cats that test positive for the malady actually have the virus; false positives are rather common.
Much more importantly, although shelters across the world stubbornly and inhumanely continue to slaughter FeLV-positive cats in droves, doing so is barbaric and unjust because the disease is preeminently manageable. First of all, FeLV-positive cats can safely live together and that is so much the case that Alley Cat Allies of Bethesda, Maryland, strongly recommends against even testing outside cats for the virus.
Secondly, even FeLV-negative and FeLV-positive cats can live safely together indoors if proper precautions are taken. The most important of which is to vaccinate all FeLV-negative cats against the virus, even though that is not totally effective.
Thirdly, all FeLV-positive cats living in the home need to have food and water bowls as well as litter boxes that are separate from the FeLV-negative cats. Thirdly, there must not be any fighting between the two groups of cats and those that are infected with the virus need to be kept indoors in order to prevent them from spreading the disease to other cats. Fourthly, since in rare instances the virus can be spread through grooming, it perhaps would be best to segregate the cats in different rooms whenever it is not possible to closely monitor their behavior.
Although the virus can be transmitted by a mother's milk to her kittens as well as by blood, tears, saliva, and urine, it is most commonly transmitted from one tom to another through biting. It cannot be transmitted to humans and it can only live for a few hours outside of an infected cat's body. Even then it is easily killed with soap and water.
With returning Coco to her original guardian seemingly out of the question, Zeidan's second thought was to fob her off onto SNAP (Special Needs Are Precious) Cats, a no-kill sanctuary in Santa Rosa, eighty-nine kilometers north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. Not surprisingly that facility was full and had a waiting list.
He therefore next turned to Karen Langland who is not only a cat-sitter but also the wife of his buddy, Rick Norris of the Roxie Theater. She magnanimously consented to take in Coco but soon thereafter she placed her in a foster home.
Eventually, Coco wended her way to SNAP Cats and at last check she was still there. She is being sponsored by Langland and, although no amount is specified on the charity's web side, all other sponsors are paying US$30 per month.
"Coco is extremely sweet and outgoing. She's the first kitty to greet you when entering our FeLV-positive habitat and hounds you for pets and attention until you leave," SNAP Cats writes on its web site. "Coco is great with other cats and (she) uses the litter box one-hundred per cent of the time."
From that description it appears that she is lonely, starved for attention, and dearly misses some or all of her previous families. Between her original home, the liquor store, Langland, her foster mother, and now SNAP Cats, she already had had at least five homes during her first eleven months on this earth.
Not only is bandying kittens and cats between multiple homes and shelters traumatic for them but it also sometimes makes it more difficult to place them in proper homes. (See Cat Defender posts of August 31, 2017, March 12, 2018, July 29, 2019, and October 27, 2020 entitled, respectively, "With His Previous Owner Long Dead and Nobody Seemingly Willing to Give Him a Second Chance at Life, Old and Ailing Harvey Has Been Sentenced to Rot at a Shelter in Yorkshire," "Much Like a Nightmare That Stubbornly Refuses to End, Harvey Continues to Be Shuttled from One Home to Another at the Expense of His Health and Well-Being," "Repeatedly Shunned, Maligned, and Bandied About from One Place to Another, Harvey Is Now Engaged in the Most Important Battle of His Life," and "Noble and Courageous Harvey Who So Desperately Wanted to Go on Living Is Instead Unforgivably Betrayed and Killed Off by His Foster Mother and Yorkshire Cat Rescue.")
That is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg given that there are additional warning signs that Coco is in deep trouble and may never get out of SNAP Cats' jailhouse alive. "You might have heard about this incident. It was all over the news and was quite traumatic for Mike and the Sixteenth community, who knew and loved KitKat," SNAP Cats, and presumably its founder Darryl Roberts, writes on its web site.
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| ...but How Long Will He Last at the Liquor Store? |
That is pure rubbish! Individuals who care anything at all about cats do not allow them to stay out all night and to wander out into traffic.
Secondly, those sentiments make it appear that the charity is every bit as aulurophobic as Zeiden and his cronies. Rather, all of its sympathies lie with Zeiden and the shekel-chasers on Sixteenth Street.
"Enter Karen (Langland), a huge SNAP Cats supporter. Karen knows Mike through her hubby Rick (Norris) who works at the Roxie Theater next door (to) Mike's (sic) Market and who helped Mike navigate the whole publicity generated by the Waymo death of KitKat. So Karen reached out to us...and the rest is history," SNAP Cats concluded.
Not so fast! That is hardly the case. In human affairs, nobody should ever take either his or her peepers off the money, including the pennies, for so much as a split second; all good and, especially, evil flows from it.
Following the money trail, it is conceivable that SNAP Cats either has waived or, at the very least, greatly reduced the monthly fee that Langland normally would have been required to pay for sponsoring Coco. More to the point, whether Coco will profit from Langland's coziness with SNAP remains to be determined.
Secondly, it now appears that Zeidan possibly could have purchased the effusive praise ladled on him by Norris to The San Francisco Standard. On the other hand, Norris simply could have been merely extending a professional courtesy from one bloodsucking capitalist and cat killer to another bloodsucking capitalist and cat killer.
To say the very least, neither Langland's coziness with SNAP Cats nor Norris' serving as a behind-the-scenes mouthpiece for Zeidan are all that savory. In particular, Zeidan's reliance upon Norris in order to stage manage publicity for him all the while he was feigning to be all broken up about losing KitKat makes it appear in hindsight that all along he viewed KitKat's horrible death as nothing more than a bit of unpleasant publicity that only required Norris's élan for him to successfully deflect.
Even in cruelly abandoning Coco, Zeidan was unable to think of anything other than himself and his own interests. "Needless to say, it's heartbreaking. We lost KitKat, and how this," he continued to the Mission Local on January 26th."It's a little bit hard, but we're okay."
Of course he is all right. He is still above ground and his cash register is continuing to hum that same sweet tune that signifies that the money is still piling up. On the other hand, KitKat is dead and Coco is facing not only difficult times but a very uncertain future.
He could have kept her at the store and that way she at least would have had a home. He would have needed to have kept her inside, fed her a healthy diet, minimized the stress that she was subjected to, and to have monitored her closely for the onset of secondary illnesses that are caused by FeLV.
On the other hand, considering how miserably that he failed KitKat, she probably is better off at SNAP Cats. He never would have taken proper care of her.
Based upon a fairly recent photograph of her published online and SNAP Cats' testimony, she does not appear to be exhibiting any of the symptoms commonly associated with an FeLV-positive cat. Most notably, she appears to be maintaining a healthy weight and her fur looks to be normal. Nor does she appear to be either depressed or lethargic.
It is impossible to know from a distance, however, if she is experiencing any neurological, respiratory, urinary, or skin problems. Diarrhea, fever, and inflammation of her gums and mouth are additional concerns.
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| Archie Was Killed by Pit Bulls at a Deli in Manhattan |
Sadly, there is not any cure for the disease and some experts have estimated that a staggering eighty per cent of kittens who contract the disease, usually from their mothers' milk, live less than a year. Otherwise, most adult sufferers can live pretty much normal lives although they do die sooner than non-sufferers.
It is encouraging that the public's attitude toward FeLV cats is changing and many individuals are now more than willing to take them into their homes. Based upon her vibrant personality and past history, Coco richly deserves to be sprung from SNAP Cats' jailhouse as soon as possible and placed in a loving home.
The long, dark shadow hanging over her future concerns whether the charity will ever give her such an opportunity. Like all rescue groups, it has its own financial interests and ingrained prejudices.
First of all, it will only adopt out its kittens to homes that already have at least one other kitten. That prohibition makes some sense but only so long as a kitten has been separated from its mother.
As long as a kitten still has its mother most, but not all, of them are willing to not only teach it to hunt but also to play with it as well. Secondly, it will not allow women that are planning on getting pregnant within a year to adopt its kittens and cats.
Considering that women have been having babies and caring for kittens and cats since time immemorial, there can be little doubt that many of them would be astounded to learn that SNAP Cats does not consider them capable of doing so. Besides, unplanned pregnancies do occur, so what then?
Does the charity reenter the picture and confiscate them? The entire scheme is not only madness but unworkable as well.
Thirdly, it will not permit students and those under twenty-one-years of age to have its kittens and cats. Although it might be somewhat difficult for those still in school to give a cat the care and attention that it requires, there are unquestionably some individuals who are eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years of age who are quite capable of properly valuing and caring for as cat.
Adopting out any feline is, admittedly, an extremely dicey proposition but the emphasis always should be on the character, past history, willingness, and capacity of would-be adopters to properly take care of a new arrival, and not arbitrary rules and prejudices. Besides, the most sure-fire method of ascertaining how that either a cat or a kitten is faring in its new home would be for rescue groups to make surprise, unannounced home visits but few, if any, of them are willing to do their due diligence.
In the final analysis, adopting out a kitten or a cat comes down largely to faith but allowing one, such as Coco, to rot at a shelter is not the answer either. In a world where there are more kittens and cats than there are decent homes for them there are not any easy solutions.
Even more troubling, very few individuals and groups involved in the feline rescue business are capable of looking upon any kitten or cat as an individual with a history, a personality, and an intrinsic value all its own and it is precisely those concerns that always should take precedence over petty financial and ideological interests.
Having apparently, at least for the time being, exhausted his private pipeline of free kittens and cats, Zeidan next turned to the San Francisco SPCA and in early February he adopted a one-year-old black tom named Shadow. He thus has become the third cat in a little over three months to have been shanghaied into slaving away at his booze emporium.
Not surprisingly, he arrived at the store frightened and perturbed by the radical change in his circumstances but he since then apparently has adjusted. "He's adapted pretty well," Zeidan disclosed to the Mission Local on February 26th. (See "Third Time's the Charm: Sixteenth and Mission Bodega Gets New Cat after Waymo Tragedy.") "He seems very happy and very friendly with the customers."
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| The Annapolis Maritime Museum Killed the Lovely Miss Pearl |
That, of course, is the only thing that matters as far as he is concerned. The customers must be kept happy so that the money will keep right on rolling in and his cash register humming.
"He has some of KitKat's traits," he continued to the Mission Local. "He loves boxes. Anytime I open a box, he wants to go and jump in it."
Unfortunately for Shadow, Zeidan has not mended his irresponsible ways. For instance after initially pledging to keep him inside, he immediately turned him loose in the street.
"He does not like to go outside. He saw a pigeon the other day, and wanted to go outside," he confessed to the Mission Local. "He went outside, but he got scared and ran back in. He loves to sit on the window and just watch the outside."
If he were a moral man, Zeidan would value and safeguard Shadow's life. Likewise, if he had any brains he would realize that keeping him safe inside his store would be good for his bottom line.
Since, however, he is both morally and intellectually bankrupt, Shadow's prospects do not look particularly promising. Equally disturbing, since he has owned and operated the liquor store since 2005, there is not any way of knowing just how many cats in addition to Shadow, Coco, and KitKat that he has exploited, killed, and abandoned over the course of the past twenty-one years. To him, they are a cheap, inexhaustible commodity, much like the rotgut that he peddles to the misguided, and nothing more.
As far as the SPCA is concerned it sans doute was tickled pink to have seen Zeidan's money and the last of Shadow all in one fell swoop. Founded in 1868 and with reportedly more than US$82 million stashed away in the bank, it nevertheless continues to slaughter cats, dogs, and other animals in droves.
The idea of spending any small portion of those generous donations in order to save lives has not, quite obviously, ever so much as crossed the minds of anyone who ever has worked there. (See Fix Our Shelters on Facebook, April 9, 2026, "San Francisco, California, SPCA Defends Shelters Accused of Animal Cruelty," the San Francisco Chronicle, June 20, 2025, "San Francisco Is Euthanizing More Stray Dogs. Here's Why," and the Marina Times of San Francisco, October of 2019, "San Francisco SPCA Using Underhanded Tactics to Push Controversial Feral Cat Policy.")
Zeidan is far from being the first shopkeeper to have cost a cat its life through his irresponsibility and uncaring attitude. For example, on October 20, 2021 a handsome, seventeen-month-old tuxedo named Archie was savagely killed by a pair of pit bulls outside his home at Myers of Keswick at 634 Hudson Street in Manhattan's West Village.
Since he had arrived at the English-style deli in May of 2020, he therefore lasted there for less than seventeen months. (See the New York Post, October 23, 2021, "Tributes Pour In for Archie, the Cat at Manhattan's Myers of Keswick.")
Earlier in 2006, the deli acquired a black female named Molly which the delicatessen's proprietor, Peter Myers, negligently allowed to get stuck in one of its walls. (See Cat Defender post of April 20, 2006 entitled "Molly Is Finally Rescue After Spending Two Weeks Trapped Inside the Walls of an English Deli in Greenwich Village.")
Once Molly began to show signs of aging, the deli fobbed off her care onto an employee who lived in Jersey City in April of 2020. That unidentified individual then had her killed off in December of 2021. (See Cat Defender post of May 26, 2025 entitled "Molly of Myers of Keswick, Who Soared to International Fame in 2006, Meets with a Cruel and Unjust End in Obscurity Fifteen Years Later.")
Before she arrived at the deli, the store had another resident feline that Myers had ignominiously branded as Fluffy Fleabag but it is not known what became of her. Archie was succeeded by a cat named Gracie who was still at the store as late as a year ago.
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| KitKat Died Never Knowing How Badly He Had Been Used |
On December 9, 2020, the Annapolis Maritime Museum (AMM) inexcusably allowed a large dog to waltz unmolested onto its grounds and savagely kill its mascot, Miss Pearl. As was the case with Zeidan and KitKat, staffers at the museum cared so little for her safety that they did not even so much as bother to put her up overnight.
Not missing so much as a beat, in March of 2021 the AMM acquired a new mascot named Big Mac. Although he arrived grotesquely overweight, at last check he was still alive and presiding over cruises of Chesapeake Bay. (See Cat Defender post of April 30, 2022 entitled "Relegated to the Dustbin of History and All but Forgotten by the Grossly Negligent Annapolis Maritime Museum, Miss Pearl's Beautiful Soul Continues to Cry Out from the Grave for Justice.")
When it comes to neglecting and nakedly exploiting cats as mascots it is difficult to find a viler group of rotters than the eggheads who lounge around the degree mills. In addition to RWTH's complicity in the death of King Loui I, Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, callously allowed Moxie to be run down and killed by a motorist on campus on July 6, 2022. (See Cat Defender post of August 23, 2022 entitled "The Narcissists at Kenyon College Enter into an Unholy Alliance with an Ambitious Methodist Minister and in Doing So Doom Moxie to an Early Grave Through Their Insufferable Arrogance, Naked Exploitation, and Abject Neglect of Him.")
Earlier in 2012, the professors, students, and administrators at Plymouth College of Art in Devon, now doing business as the Arts University Plymouth, negligently allowed a beautiful female named PCAT to be killed by a hit-and-run motorist on the outskirts of campus. That unconscionable act on their part followed on the heels of a decade of hideous neglect during which time they cruelly denied her food, water, veterinary care, and a real home.
The only thing that the cheapskates furnished her with was an unheated kennel. (See Cat Defender post of November 21, 2012 entitled "Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT.")
Veterinarians and shelters hold innumerable cats hostage as blood donors, surrogate mothers, and other assorted unpaid servants. (See Cat Defender posts of November 13, 2010 and May 30, 2023 entitled, respectively, "Christopher, Who Has Persevered Through Tragedy and Given Back So Much, Is Now Being Held Captive for His Valuable Blood" and "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.")
Whenever they are not deriding cats as being unfit to live and exterminating them en masse, wildlife biologists are only too happy to shanghai them into caring for dangerous wild animals at zoos and refuges. (See Cat Defender posts of June 30, 2008, October 6, 2008, and April 12, 2013 entitled, respectively, "The Berlin Zoo Reunites Old Friends Muschi and Mauschen after a Brief Enforced Separation," "In Memorian: Thomas Dorflein 1963-2008," and "Arnie of the Linton Zoo Is Remembered as a Wonderfully Loving and Charismatic Cat Who Gave Back Far More Than He Received During His All-Too-Brief Sojourn Upon This Earth.")
Regardless of whatever the world chooses to call these long forgotten cats, whether it be mousers, mascots, shop cats, working cats, barn cats, or something else, these felines constitute a rather large group of abused exploited, and neglected animals. Tant pis, they do not enjoy any protections under the law.
Rather, in most cases it is precisely those organizations that are charged with protecting their lives and prerogatives under the anti-cruelty statutes that are instead dispatching them to their deaths by fobbing them off on capitalists and other institutions to exploit and to kill with impunity. On top of all of that, they are cheered on in the commission of their crimes by the thoroughly unscrupulous capitalistic media.
The public at large is also complicit in their heinous crimes. They encounter cats like KitKat every day during the course of their rambles yet they steadfastly refuse to lift so much as a lousy finger in order to protect them and to put an end their exploitation and suffering. The entire situation is insufferable.
In his 1933 tome, Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell wrote the following:
"The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent."
Change the name of the city and advance the timeline by about a hundred years and he easily could have been describing the merchants and residents of modern-day Sixteenth Street in San Francisco who are so far gone that they are totally incapable of even expressing so much as a syllable of either regret or remorse for their role in the killing of KitKat. Factor in their outrageous mendacity and they surely would feel right at home in Orwell's dystopian London of 1984 where ignorance is strength, war is peace, and freedom is slavery.
Photos: Nick Escobar (KitKat holding court at the store), Randa's Market (KitKat lounging on the counter, on Sixteenth Street, and Shadow looking out the window), Oscar Palma of the Mission Local (memorials outside of Randa's and inside the store, KitKat with an eponymous candy bar, Coco inside Randa's, and Shadow in a box), SNAP Cats (Coco at its shelter), Helayne Seidman of the New York Post (Archie), and Steve Ember (Miss Pearl).
posted by Moonraker @ 2:48 PM
