Paul Zhang resumes cat killing in Florida

We’ve been asked to revive this site to continue to document Paul Zhang’s cat-killing, which has unfortunately continued since he left the New York area. The below article from the Palm Beach Post explains what he’s been doing lately. It’s pretty disturbing stuff, he traps perfectly healthy cats and has them killed, sometimes getting caretakers to comply by claiming he will bring them to a sanctuary.

Zhang shrouds his animal-killing (he’s killed dogs as well and would prefer “a world with fewer animals”) in faux-spiritualism. He seems to be suffering from a savior complex, thinking that only he can ‘save’ these animals. His attitude is that real death is preferable to life with the hypothetical possibility of suffering.

Unfortunately cats and most other companion animals still don’t have many rights. And as long as unethical vets continue to abet Zhang by indiscriminately putting down any cat he brings in, he’ll be able to get away with this. The latest word is that Zhang has relocated to Roanoke, Virginia. Let’s hope we can get word to animal advocates there before another killing spree can begin.

Full text of the article:

Is serial ‘cat euthanizer’ merciful advocate or has he gone too far?

Paul Zhang, who moved from New York to Greenacres in 2012, said he humanely euthanized about 76 community cats in New York. He’s accused of euthanizing another 26 community cats and an 8-year-old Chihuahua named Daisy.

He was once called the “proud cat killer of Brooklyn and Queens,” a term Paul Zhang resents. He said he prefers the self-anointed term “cat euthanizer” because he doesn’t equate killing and humane euthanasia.

“Euthanasia is to not let animals suffer. Killing is violent, it’s brutal and bloody,” Zhang told The Palm Beach Post.

But Palm Beach County officials and those who care for so-called “community cats,” or felines without owners that freely roam neighborhoods, see it vastly different. They say Zhang has wrongly euthanized cats that may have had potentially treatable conditions and were being cared for, and deceived the public about his connections to animal sanctuaries.

The disputes are likely to be heard in a Palm Beach County courtroom this month when Zhang will be called upon to answer allegations in four citations from the county’s Animal Care and Control division. Central to the case the ideological differences of rules approved by the county four years ago to govern community cats.

Those rules include having these free-roaming cats go through a process called TNVR — an acronym for the process of trapping, neutering, vaccinating and returning these free-roaming cats to their communities — and require volunteers to feed and care for them.

Zhang, 48, said he worked in finance and described himself as a “vegan advocate” and a spiritualist. He is also an adamant opponent of TNVR who admitted to euthanizing about 76 community cats under his care in New York before he moved to Greenacres in 2012, according to a Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control case report.

 Now, he is accused of euthanizing at least one dog and 26 cats in Palm Beach County, all while falsely reassuring their caretakers that they would be sent to a sanctuary in Florida.

But there was no sanctuary. In an interview with The Post, Zhang said he sent the animals to the “afterlife sanctuary,” further clarifying when specifically asked that these animals were euthanized.

“What better sanctuary than being in a blissful spirit world where they will truly be safe?” Zhang said.

In mid-May, Animal Care and Control began investigating an anonymous complaint made against Zhang that suggested he was “trapping cats and possibly relocating them or having them humanely euthanized,” according to a case report.

After several conversations with Zhang and witnesses over the next three weeks, investigators say they learned the following:

 

• Between early April and mid-May, a town of Palm Beach woman and her daughter helped Zhang trap 17 community cats in the Boynton Beach area, according to a case report. The cats had names like Roxie, Mango, Calvin and Sabine. Zhang told the Palm Beach woman that the cats would be taken to a veterinarian for a check-up and relocated to unnamed sanctuaries in either Stuart or Orlando, the report said.

• A suburban West Palm Beach woman, who needed to find a new home for several animals, was introduced to Zhang through a mutual friend. The friend suggested Zhang because he had alleged connections to sanctuaries in Stuart and Orlando, a case report said. Zhang and the woman spoke by phone on May 13, and he swung by her house that same day, taking with him cats named Bandit, Sparky, Pandy and Lucky, the report stated. The following day, he took five more cats and Daisy, an 8-year-old Chihuahua, according to a case report.

• Zhang brought about 13 cats to a local veterinarian who specializes in home pet euthanasia as early as mid-March, according to a report. The veterinarian treated nine cats and euthanized four others that were sick, investigators wrote. The report added that Zhang had also mentioned to the veterinarian that he was connected to an unnamed Orlando sanctuary that took in cats that were positive for feline leukemia.

• A case report said Zhang “eventually admitted that there was no sanctuary and never was.” Investigators said “Mr. Zhang advised that there was not (sic) such thing as a sanctuary and explained that sanctuaries are usually hoarders where animals are caused endless suffering.” In another case report, the veterinarian questioned why Zhang “would spend the money on the animals that were not euthanized if there was no sanctuary.”

“Ending suffering is more important that keeping animals alive,” Zhang told The Post.

When a reporter asked if he had euthanized more Florida community cats than what Animal Care and Control discovered, Zhang would only say: “Are there others? Probably.”

Michele Gulick takes care of a community cat colony that lives near her workplace, Boynton Beach-based Heritage Carpet and Tile. Gulick is a project manager, and she said Zhang was a temp worker doing accounting and data entry at the company until May 9, she told The Post on Friday.

The colony was once 14-strong but is now half the size, Gulick said.

One night in May, a warehouse employee told Gulick “someone is trying to get your cats,” she said. Gulick TNVR’d her community cats about three years ago, so she wondered why someone was trying to trap them again.

She said she saw Zhang and another woman setting traps. They told her the cats would be brought to a sanctuary, but didn’t give an exact name.

“It was shortly after that that he decided not to work here anymore,” Gulick said of Zhang.

She and Zhang never spoke about the cats, or anything really, during office hours, but according to Gulick he told her it was a “crime” to keep the cats outside where they can get sick or hurt.

“Granted, they don’t belong to me. When I’ve been taking care of them off and on, different ones over 10 years, they do become mine,” she said. “I was incensed when I saw what he was doing.”

Animal Care and Control in June gave Zhang four civil citations — the minimum to get this kind of case before a judge if the defendant has no prior offenses — for failing to provide proper animal care and one citation for interfering with enforcement. Fines associated with these citations totaled just over $900.

Judge Paul Damico will preside over the infraction trial in August.

Witnesses in Zhang’s case who responded to The Post’s request for comment declined to speak on the record.

The county favors TNVR

Paul Bates carries a large metal bowl filled with a mixture of wet and dry cat food to a nondescript corner of the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League property. Bates, the TNVR outreach coordinator for the rescue organization, dishes out the mixture into a few smaller bowls, taps them together and coos, “Hey guys!” to alert the rescue’s colony of seven community cats. A few of them dare to come out from the safety of the bushes to have a mid-day feast.

A community cat is an non-owned, free-roaming feline that has been trapped, neutered, vaccinated and released. According to Peggy Adams officials, there are anywhere between 140,000 and 200,000 community cats in Palm Beach County.

Palm Beach County approved rules in 2015 requiring these cats to be spayed or neutered, vaccinated, implanted with a microchip, released and taken care of by at least one resident in the immediate area.

A clipped left ear distinguishes a community cat that has gone through the TNVR process, which typically takes 24 hours from trap to release. Caretakers must provide food, clean water and medical care as needed, according to county rules.

Only if a community cat taken to Animal Care and Control is “visibly injured or diseased and appears to be suffering and it reasonably appears that such cat cannot be expeditiously cured” by the advice of the department’s veterinarian can that cat be humanely euthanized, rules say.

Fewer kittens are born and fewer cats end up in shelters as a result of TNVR, county and animal welfare advocates say. New, non-sterilized cats are unlikely to break into these colonies because cats are territorial and protective of food sources, said Rich Anderson, executive director and CEO of Peggy Adams. Each surgery with Peggy Adams costs $50, but grants and fundraising keep them free or subsidized, officials say.

The county shelter took in more than 13,000 cats and euthanized more than 11,000 in 2008. A decade later, the intake numbers have been cut in half and the shelter euthanized just over 2,200 cats. The county aims to reduce the euthanasia of adoptable animals by 2024 through its “Countdown 2 Zero” pledge.

Peggy Adams began its own TNVR program in late 2010 and has conducted more than 40,000 TNVR surgeries. So far this year, more than 3,000 cats have gone through the TNVR process at Peggy Adams.

Bates said there are two types of colonies: one type is smaller, lives in a resident’s backyard and is taken care of there, while the other is larger and lives in places like parking lots. The rescue league prefers the former kind of colony for the safety of the cats.

The rescue also offers a monthly trapping class and loans traps to volunteers who take care of community cats.

“If someone was going to tell [residents] they would have to trap the cats and kill them, they would never participate,” Peggy Adams Assistant Director Heidi Nielsen said. “Because they understand those cats are getting medical attention, they won’t reproduce and they can keep the cats in their yard, people are willing to do that. That’s why TNVR works and trap-and-kill doesn’t.”

Changing viewpoints

A battle of ideology strikes a divide between individuals like Zhang and those who support TNVR policies.

Zhang calls TNVR advocates “crazy cat people.” But at one time, Zhang concedes, he was one of them.

While living in New York, Zhang said he participated in and supported TNVR efforts for more than three years. He said he spent thousands of dollars on cat food to feed the community cats and those living in his studio apartment.

“If I never did it, I probably would support it,” he said.

He said his philosophy changed when he continued to see injured and sick community cats, cats who died of poisoning, cats living in hoarded conditions. Zhang began reading anti-TNVR literature from some bird organizations and PETA that further informed his change of mindset.

“I didn’t know euthanasia was a kinder thing,” he said in an interview.

PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a July blog post that they have never advocated for the blanket euthanasia of community cats. But the organization questioned whether TNVR was “truly in the cats’ best interests” and did not think trapping and releasing cats was an effective and humane way to address overpopulation.

“We believe that trap, vaccinate, spay/neuter, and release programs are acceptable when cats are isolated from roads, humans and other animals who could harm them. Also, they must be regularly attended to by caretakers who not only feed them but also care for their medical needs and situated in an area where they don’t have access to wildlife and where the weather is temperate,” PETA senior vice president Daphna Nachminovitch said in a written statement to The Post.

When Zhang decided to move from New York to Florida for financial reasons, he told the Post he couldn’t find anyone to take care of his nine community cat colonies. Zhang said he contacted several veterinarians to euthanize the cats.

One of those cats, according to the New York website The Gothamist (which also gave Zhang the “cat killer” label), was an indoor-outdoor cat named Anthony.

“There is something worse than death. The fear of death is very pervasive,” Zhang told The Post. “I used to be very afraid of death until I had profound spiritual experiences. There is no death. We are all eternal spiritual beings having a temporary human experience.”

Officials with Peggy Adams said there are several studies that point to why trap-and-kill doesn’t work, saying that it can lead to unexpected outcomes like an increased rodent population or even more free-roaming cats.

“It’s like the [Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission] trying to round up all the pythons in the Everglades. You’re just never going to get a handle [on it],” Nielsen said. “Once a species is introduced into an area and is in an open environment, there’s no way to kill your way out of the population.”

Anderson added that the rescue group “doesn’t see large numbers of unhealthy free-roaming cats.” The rescue’s veterinarians determine if the community cat is healthy enough to survive before deeming them releasable.

“In a perfect world, every cat would have a home and would be living indoors. We all wish that. That’s not reality. That’s never going to be the case in South Florida,” Anderson said.

In an hour-long interview with The Post, Zhang said he was harassed for his views, digressed on how pet overpopulation hurt wildlife populations and didn’t believe there should even be animal shelters.

He also doesn’t believe he should be punished for euthanizing the community cats and Daisy the Chihuahua because he thought there were far worse situations, like when a runaway cow from a halal butcher shop was killed in a Connecticut Home Depot parking lot in July, as reported by the Hartford Courant.

“For me, a humane, kind, better world is a world with fewer animals with a much higher quality of life,” he said.

Zhang asked an Animal Care and Control officer whether he would have to appear in court if he was out of state, according to a case report. He would not tell a reporter if he had moved, but county records show he sold his Greenacres condo this month and listed an address in Virginia.

Asked if he would appear in court in August, Zhang said, “I don’t know yet.”

hmorse@pbpost.com

@mannahhorse