Kurt Zouma has been fined £250,000 by his club and had his cats taken away by the RSPCA after a video emerged of the footballer kicking his pet. Here we look at some of the other people who have faced criticism over their alleged treatment of animals.
Ozzy Osbourne and the bat
At a concert in Des Moines, Iowa in 1982, the Black Sabbath frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, shocked the world when he bit into a bat on stage. He has since said he thought the bat was rubber but quickly realised something was “very wrong” when liquid poured out of it and he felt its head “twitch”. The person who threw the bat was reportedly a 17-year-old fan, who said the animal was dead and had been stolen from his younger brother’s science department. After the show Osbourne was rushed to get rabies and tetanus injections. He attracted global headlines, questions from the city’s mayor and a visit by the local animal control unit. But in recent years Osbourne, 73, has capitalised on the incident, launching a bat toy with a detachable head and even a non-fungible token called CryptoBatz.
‘Cat bin woman’
Mary Bale, from Coventry, became reviled around the world and known as “cat bin woman” after she was captured on CCTV picking up a four-year-old tabby cat Lola during her walk home and depositing her into a wheelie bin in 2010. The cat was trapped for 15 hours until her owners found her the next day. The former bank worker, then 45, described the act, for which she was punished with a £250 fine and ordered to pay a victim surcharge and costs by Coventry magistrates court, as a “split second of misjudgment”. But her act of cruelty attracted newspaper headlines such as “Miaow could she?”
Justin Bieber’s pet monkey
In 2013, the 19-year-old pop star Justin Bieber was criticised when his pet capuchin monkey, Mally, was seized by customs officials in Germany during a tour because he did not have the required vaccination and import papers. Bieber was accused of having taken the monkey, who was about 14 weeks old at the time, away from its mother too early. He then failed to reclaim the monkey from a shelter.
Paris Hilton
The heiress Paris Hilton, 40, reportedly received a visit from the Los Angeles department of animal services in 2008 after she revealed she owned 17 dogs. More recently, in 2016, Hilton was criticised by the UN, which said her behaviour was “appalling” after she posted a video of herself with a young orangutan, called Dior, dressed in baby clothes.
