Joseph Petcka, whose trial for animal cruelty ended in a mistrial, has been making the rounds with the media to work on his image. He appeared on the Today Show and Inside Edition, where he said, "I hope there's something I can do in this lifetime that will make them see that I'm a person that loves animals." Petcka, a 205-pound former minor league player in the Mets farm system and now aspiring actor, kicked......

Though the jury was deadlocked over whether the 205-pound Joseph Petcka deliberately killed a 7-pound cat, the Daily News spoke to a former girlfriend, who has experienced his anger directly: He slammed a door on her fingers, with one finger so badly injured it was partially severed. The woman, who speaks to women about domestic violence, says the prosecution never contacted her about testifying. they did find him not guilty of harassing the cat's owner,......

After a judge declared a mistrial in the the animal cruelty case of a 205-pound man who killed a 7-pound cat, some of the jurors explained what happened during deliberations. The Post reported that "exhausted-looking" Shamsul Islam, Juror No. 11, said, "It was 11 to 1." Joseph Petcka had claimed his girlfriend's declawed cat Norman attacked him, so he defended himself by kicking the animal. But the prosecutors pointed to the extent of the cat's......

In her closing arguments yesterday, prosecutor Leila Kermani told jurors that alleged cat killer Joseph Petcka, a retired minor league baseball player and sometime actor, is just a "washed-up, never-made-it-to-the-big-leagues athlete" and a "D-minus" actor. On Friday the 6'2" Petcka testified that Norman, the name of his then-girlfriend's 7-pound neutered and de-clawed tabby, "came and lunged at me, throwing me on my butt on the coffee table. Norman was biting into my hand." While he......

NY Post columnist Andrea Peyser interviewed Joseph Petcka--the 205-pound man on trial for animal cruelty after kicking his girlfriend's 7-pound cat to death (the cat had a broken leg, three broken ribs, broken teeth, and a lacerated tongue, plus a chest full of blood). She finds him "uncomplicated" and writes his "life devolved into tragi-comedy" because of the incident. Petcka tells Norman the cat, via Peyser, "I apologize, and I'm very sorry - I'm so......

A prosecutor from the Mahattan DA's office called a man who killed his girlfriend's cat "an angry, jealous, drunken bully" during during opening arguments. Joseph Petcka, a 205-pound former Mets draft prospect and actor, is on trial for animal cruelty after he brutally beat an 8-pound domestic, declawed tabby. Petcka's lawyer argued that the cat, Norman, actually bit his client's hand, making Petcka's reaction justified. However, Petcka's then girlfriend Lisa Altobelli testified that she once......

The woman who had to give up her 44-pound cat--who took the country by storm as Princess Chunk when it was thought she was a girl (but actually he's a boy named Powder!)--spoke out, hoping to set the record straight. Powder was found wandering around Voorhees, NJ before the Camden County Animal Shelter took him in, and some have wondered why the cat wasn't sent to the shelter in the first place. After her......

Princess Chunk's visit with Regis and Kelly was very enlightening: America learned that its favorite 44-pound obese feline was actually a boy! The Camden County Animal Shelter had originally named the cat, found wandering around Voorhees, NJ, "Captain Chunk," but gave it the royal, feminine name after thinking it was actually a girl. What happened to gender-neutral names, like "Whiskers"?! It also turns out Princess Chunk did have an owner: An elderly woman who,......

Today will be quite the media tour for newly-minted celebrity Princess Chunk. So what if she's a 44-pound cat, found wandering in Voorhees, NJ without a collar? The cat will be on The Today Show and visit Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, so be ready for some crazy daytime antics (will Ann Curry try to walk Princess Chunk? will Regis ask the full-figured feline to be his co-host when Kelly's on vacation?). And on Friday,......

Let it to an obese NJ feline to give the NY Post a chance to have a "Pussy galore!" half cover. Camden County shelter officials in NJ say the cat, who they named "Princess Chunk," was found wandering around without a collar. A volunteer told the Courier-Post, "How do you lose a 44-pound cat?!" Princess Chunk, described as being "built like a quarterback," was weighed on the dog scale because she was too big for......

This week a story got some ink that raised the question: can't a man just save a cat? 49-year-old Chris Muth was put in a psych ward (where they called him "cat man") for doing just that...but upon his release the NY Post reports that he lost his home, his job and his girlfriend. The Carroll Gardens condo owner told him, while hospitalized, that he was "a nice guy" but "too exciting" and had to......

The Brooklyn Paper reports on a 7-year-old cat that was trapped in a narrow shaft in a Carroll Gardens apartment building, three floors below where it was supposed to be. It took over two weeks to get it out, but that's not was garnered the story so much attention. Turns out Rumi, the cat, was just fine, but Chris Muth, the cat-sitter, landed in a mental hospital during the ordeal! His medical records were brandished......

We have wondered why people put their cats on leashes and it seems the only answer is "Why not?" Today, the NY Times' City Section confirms that answer, with a charming article about Corcoran broker Court Hassinger whose Abyssinian Radar enjoys constitutionals around the Upper West Side. In spite of Radar's previous escapes and in spite of people asking, "Is that a rat there on the end of that leash?”, Hassinger takes Radar (who he......

Attention, outgoing felines and their human companions: The Meow Mix Game Show is having auditions tomorrow and Sunday to find contestants for "the world’s first game show to test how well people can think like their cat." Sleep...groom...chase a fly...sleep. We're told the audition includes a written quiz on cat knowledge/trivia (for the humans, we imagine) and then a Hollywood-style screen test to see how the person-putty tat pair look on camera. For every......

Sadie, by AllWaysNY at flickr Given that the MTA project billion-dollar budget gaps in future years and that the cash cow of congestion pricing never made it to the altar, there may be a good idea of increasing revenue by way of Japan. The Associated Press has a story about a "money-losing Japanese train company" whose new lease on business life is thanks to a calico cat named Tama:All the 9-year-old female cat does......

Images of the shrapnel-damaged bedroom from WNBC A NJ family is very angry at the Army for "misfiring" a projectile and having part of a shell crash through their roof and onto their daughter's bed. Their 10-year-old daughter had just left for a sleepover, but the family cat who was sleeping there was so seriously injured she had to be euthanized. The 6-inch by 4-inch, 2-pound piece of shrapnel lay smoldering on the bed......

Another heartbreaking tale of animal abandonment reached our inbox this weekend, but this one could have a happy ending. Here's the story:While walking my dogs this afternoon I found a cat with magical green eyes, a cat that looks to be a housecat, who has lived her entire life safe and cared for, suddenly now abandoned on the New York winter streets in her cat carrier with the door open left to die. Someone......

What is it about people who abuse their significant others' pets? A 24-year-old construction worker David Wrigley was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals after crushing and squeezing the cats. The cats, tabby Madeline and black cat Jynx, belonged to his girlfriend Sara Sabol, whose Selden, Long Island home Wrigley moved into at the beginning of the month. According to police lieutenant Michael Murphy, "The cats didn't take to him. They didn't like him, wouldn't......

Georgia, the runaway subway cat rescued by a Con Ed meter reader and two determined MTA track workers, is resting up not just from her 25 days in the subway tunnels, but from surgery yesterday to repair a fractured leg. The doctors at Fifth Avenue Veterinary Specialists waited until yesterday to perform the surgery because Georgia was dehydrated at the time of her rescue and they wanted her stabilized before they performed the procedure. The......

One cat owner is hoping that her kitten will turn up after escaping at the 59th Street uptown 6 platform earlier this week. Ashely Phillips had just gotten black kitteh Georgia (pictured) spayed at the Humane Society when the feline somehow escaped her carrier "and just took off." Phillips told the Daily News a train was pulling in when Georgia "jumped onto the tracks": "I'm hoping she's down there somewhere and she's okay...but I'm also......

Photograph by lisacat on Flickr; full photo set here Our heart melted when we read how this adorable kitten made its way to the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition:BARC Shelter's kennel manager, Jose, made an unusual rescue last Saturday afternoon. A man named Richard thinks he has a kitten under the hood of his Chevy Tahoe. He's driving and has his dog Duff in the car with him. Duff doesn't like other dogs and really......

Thank goodness WCBS 880 updated its story about a stray cat who was seen in NJ with a bottle stuck on its head. Raritan Township Animal Control and ASPCA helped save the cat! The cat had been without water or food for at least 10 days, because it was first seen with the bottle on its head on New Year's Eve. The cat was "near death" when it was rescued; the rescue took so......

In recent weeks both a man and a woman have been charged with senseless violence against small defenseless animals - the woman for beating her boyfriend's cat to death, the man seriously injuring a girlfriend's dog. Sarah Favorite is a 25-year-old woman who allegedly became angry at her boyfriend's Siamese cat Yoda. Annoyed by the animal, the young woman allegedly throttled the 17-year-old cat and repeatedly bashed it against the floor on November 29 and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a ceiling collapse at Franklin Ave. and Union St. in Brooklyn, a pedestrian was fatally struck on Queens Blvd. in Woodhaven, Queens, and an unusual rescue on the south bound tower of the Throgs Neck Bridge in Queens. An undercover cop forgot to turn off the wire he was wearing while discussing 11 bags of cocaine he seized in a Brooklyn bust that were never turned in. He was......

...and a thousand Photoshop files were launched! Diane Sawyer may be a veteran journalist and may seem totally unflappable, but even she has totally embarrassing moments. This morning, during a segment unveiling Good Morning America's new holiday windows from the New York Botanical Gardens, she called Mayor Bloomberg a "munchkin." Really: “As a little munchkin, did you come to New York?” To be fair, she was asking Bloomberg whether he visited New York during......

The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Sam Mason’s Tailor. Loves the design of the place, and—along with everyone else—the pork belly, the arctic char and the drinks. Overall? “[Mason’s] infatuation with his own imagination doesn’t leave room enough for a self-appraisal of the results… a duck-and-eel terrine in a chocolate consommé tastes like cat food splashed with Yoo-hoo.” Hee. In Dining Briefs, Bruni goes to Toloache. Calls the upscale Mexican restaurant a “welcome addition”......

City officials are warning drivers that they should expect to spend more time sitting in traffic than waiting in line while holiday shopping. Today is the first of nine designated holiday gridlock days, when the city tries to head off street-clogging traffic that can frustrate even a seasoned city driver. NY1 quotes some professional drivers and visitors on how bad traffic can be around Thanksgiving and the holidays in New York. “Oh man, traffic is......

A woman who used to volunteer at the BARC cat loft has a great tale of a kitten she met on the Queensboro Bridge one morning while running. His name is Jeff Bridges.Jeff Bridges is the kitten I found while I was running over the Queensboro Bridge Thursday morning. How the hell he got on the pedestrian walkway of the bridge–a long, long fall on the right, eight lanes of traffic on the left......

The Mermaid Inn, that inviting East Village bistro beloved for its rich seafood entrees, has moved on up to the west side with a mostly new menu. Their second Manhattan outpost is appointed with old nautical maps, dark wainscoting and roll-up doors that will surely suck in the crowds during warmer months. (Alec Baldwin must be pleased about the eatery boosting Amsterdam Avenue’s cachet.) The Inn’s famous lobster sandwich survived the move, but there’s now......