People who make a habit of falling asleep drunk at parties often have stories to tell about waking up the next morning and finding dicks, obscenities, or art manifestos scribbled in black marker all over them. There’s no bad blood—it’s just a prank that will eventually be paid back. But taking a Sharpie to a cat? Now that is a serious offense that can lead to violence involving shovels.

According to a filed police report, on September 2, witnesses near the intersection of NE 50th St and 16th Ave NE saw the tail end of such a sequence—two men arguing in the street before one of the men allegedly took “a baseball swing with a shovel, hitting the victim in the head.” Another witness who arrived moments later and separated the men told police that he saw the suspect “strangling [the victim] in the middle of the roadway and pulling his hair.”

The men were still separated when the police arrived, one calm and unscathed, the other visibly upset, with “blood spattered on his face, head, and shirt,” according to the report, while a short distance away the shovel was “propped up against a parking sign,” with “a small amount of blood spatter on it.” Based on the “pool of blood the size of a hubcap” noted in the report, the suspect made harder contact than Chone Figgins has all year for the Mariners.

What was it that drove a man to this berserker-of-the-hardware-store level of violence? According to the victim’s statement, the suspect drew on the victim’s cat with a Sharpie earlier in the evening, leading the victim to punch the suspect in the face. Thus began the duel that was fated to end with a garden tool to the face.

The report notes that the victim sustained a “several inch long, full thickness laceration to the front of his face and head. The laceration went down to his skull.” The victim also complained of neck and arm pain. While two witnesses claimed to see the suspect wielding the shovel, according to the suspect, he did not even “[use] the shovel and stated that [the victim] was the one who had attempted to strike him with the weapon.”

Shovel-mad offender though he may be, the suspect was no spendthrift. After refusing to acknowledge his Miranada rights twice, he reportedly said, “I’m not answering any questions without the cheapest lawyer I can get.”

28 replies on “Sharpie + Cat = Shovel Beatdown”

  3. The described beat down sounds like the proper going rate for drawing on someone’s pet with a permanent marker. He’s more of an asshole if he presses charges.

    Also, who does that?

  6. Based on the way it’s written up, I believe the cat-scribbler was the shovel-wielder, NOT the shovel-receiver. As in, the guy sounds like a grade-A sociopath from the given information, and the cat owner has had a terrible day.

  7. I once wrote “JERK” on the side of my own cat with sharpie, mostly as a warning to others. Thanks for giving me a pass on the face-shoveling, world.

  11. The report makes sense to me.
    The scribbler drew on the cat, the cat owner punched the scribbler, the scribbler returned with a shovel and beat the cat owner…
    Actually, the sequence of events is about the only thing that makes sense. If I were the cat’s owner I’d have omitted the punching, and gone straigh for the shovel.

  12. @6 – Ahhh… I wasn’t processing it that way—which is why I admired what I assumed was a “calm and unscathed” cat defender—but it is written the way you say. What a psycho.

  13. Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas. Draw on my cats, lose an eye.

    (Actually, my point was, if you hang out with drunken assholes, don’t be surprised if they sometimes act like drunken assholes.)

  14. Cats’ method of getting themselves clean is to lick themselves. That means ingesting the offending material, whatever it is. When I painted houses one summer during college, some guys on one of the other crews thought it would be funny to paint a white stripe on the black cat who lived in the house where they were working. Of course the cat tried to get itself clean, and died.

    The cat scribbler is the one who deserves to be beaten with a shovel, for (intentionally or not) trying to poison the cat. And no, I don’t care if Sharpies are non-toxic. Beat the motherfucker with a shovel.

  16. @ Cynic Romantic — you got it.

    FWIW, the police report was even more confusing as it omitted the standard “S” and “V” abbreviations for suspect and victim. I was only able to make heads or tails of the identities by matching the length of the redacted text blocks.

  17. @14 You’re an idiot.

    @Everyone, once you get punched in the face, it’s no longer about the cat. It’s about getting revenge for getting punched in the face. That’s how escalation works. Saying someone got shovel-slapped for writing on a cat is like saying that girl got punched for jaywalking.

  25. Oh man. This just makes me think of Pulp Fiction:

    “Don’t fuck with another man’s cat. You don’t do it. It’s against the rules.”

    Or something like that.

  27. @17, when you get punched in the face, you punch or kick back, not run like a little bitch for the nearest weapon, especially one with the capacity to permanently disable or kill someone. Since we don’t know what preceded the punch, I’ll not bother commenting on that guy’s actions.

  28. @27 If the guy jumps on top of you out of nowhere, and punches you while you’re down, I think you can escalate things once he’s off. He has it coming and will always have it coming. That’s the kind of guy who’s going to pull your hair while you’re down and needs to be taught a greater lesson.

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