KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The city of Kansas City wants to file charges after a video showed a man kicking a cat as if he was kicking a field goal.
The video was brought to the attention of the Center High School principal, who shared it with investigators at both KCPD and Animal Health & Public Safety several weeks ago.
KCMO Neighborhoods and Housing Services Spokesman John Baccala said the video was shot on May 22 on the high school's football field.
The city is looking for the man who kicked the cat as well as the person who shot the video. Baccala said the city wants to file animal cruelty charges.
"It's one of the hardest things to watch," Tori Fugate of KC Pet Project said of the video.
Each day the shelter brings in about 30 animals from around Kansas City, and 4 to 5 of them are injured or sick. They don't always know how or why.
"We see animals when they come in at the time of their injury, but to actually see the act happen is really disturbing and traumatic," Fugate said.
41 Action News also took the video to the Jungle Law Firm, which specializes in animal abuse cases. You may remember them from a case earlier this year in which a dog was shot and left for dead in Buchanan County. Attorneys Tristen Woods and Lauren Sierra Kruskall are pursuing felony charges against the person responsible.
"Animal abusers, it's been shown over and over, they end up abusing humans. That's how they start, and then they transition into human abuse. So if we can nip this in the bud early, it's going to help the entire community up and down," Attorney Lauren Sierra Kruskall said.
On Tuesday the firm launched a new website, animalabuselaw.com. They're using it to garner support for a new bill that would create an animal abuse registry, like the one used to track sex offenders. The legislation would also bump abuse misdemeanors up to felonies.
"We need to make an example of that guy," Woods, referring to the man in the video, said.
No one knows what happened to the cat in the video, but Fugate hopes its story doesn't end here.
"At KC Pet Project, we do our very best to give every animal a fresh start no matter what happens to them, so we hope this kitten somehow makes its way to our shelter so we can get them to a family that would love and respect them," she said.
The man in the video is facing animal cruelty charges from the city, but the Jungle Law Firm said he could even face a class E felony charge. If you have any information about the case, call 311 or the TIPS hotline.
