The Cat Serial Killer from U.P.

This is Tengteng. She needs you to visit .thepetitionsite.com/102/Justice-for-Tengteng and sign up.

A student from the University of the Philippines stomped a kitten to death in the university grounds in plain view of other students and lived to tell the gruesome story in his blog. It happened almost two years ago, and it looks like I'm the last cat-lover to know.

The only consolation in not knowing right away is it delayed my sadness for the poor kitten. She was a stray named Tengteng and she died in a very painful way because Joseph Carlo Candare, a BS Physics major of the UP College of Science, is among the many misfit people in this country who exercise cruelty to animals on a daily basis.

I'm not shocked to read opposing reactions online. Many were so angry at the crime committed. Yes crime, because there's a Philippine law that is supposed to punish such vicious acts against animals. Yet there are others who call for compassion for who they say is an obviously sick person who needs help. And, as I expected, there'll be those who would defend Candare by quoting the Bible (he who has not sin cast the first stone, etc.) or by calling the kitten's sympathizers as hypocrite meat eaters.

The UP Student Disciplinary Tribunal in its two-page decision dated November 5, 2009 already dismissed the complaint filed by animal rights advocates led by the Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) against Candare. There's still, however, a criminal case that PAWS filed and now pending for resolution at the QC Prosecutor's Office.

Candare, one of the country's scholars, apparently has issued a public apology. The one he should really apologize to is dead, so his apology really won't make things right. The utmost damage is done.

He and his sympathizers should not play the "I'm a troubled person who is so misunderstood and judged" card so he could get away with murder. Must he crush animals to death to get people to help him?

How could someone blogged boisterously about killing small and innocent creatures then turn around behaving like the meek kitten he just killed to get himself pardoned?

Many would want to believe there's a deep psychological reason behind Candare's actions. I hope they don't deny the fact that some people are just plain cruel and evil.

There are many Candares in this country. They hurt and kill animals brutally and senselessly. If they all cite their questionable psychological state as their excuse for harming animals, cats and dogs in particular, and we simply accept it and feel bad for them more than for the animals they victimized, then the fools just made us the bigger fools.