Iowa City Man Arrested After Torturing Roommate's Kitten for Hours // Updated on 11/22/14: Fritz Continues to Heal!

(Leo Nopoulos)

(Originally written on 10/15/14): A 21-year-old man from West Liberty, IA, was arrested and charged late last week for torturing his former roommate's 8-week-old kitten "non-stop, for a period lasting longer than three hours." Leo A. Nopoulos has been charged with animal torture, which is an aggravated misdemeanor, and faces up to two years in prison if convicted.

According to Nate Schloss*, he believed last week that his kitten Fritz was sick due to periodic incidents of bleeding from the cat's right eye and nose. Things would improve and then the bleeding would resume. He rushed the kitten to the pet hospital and received treatment last Wednesday evening the 8th. (Jon's note: For some reason, nobody -- including the hospital staff -- was able to recognize the signs of severe abuse. I'm just saying...)

Schloss decided last Thursday the 9th to set up his laptop to record his bedroom while he was away in order to get a better idea of what was going on with his cat. This is what happened over the course of nearly four hours while he was away:

I can't say it enough again, but it's simply a miracle after the extent of trauma my kitten Fritz sustained that he is even alive! There is a 3.5 HOUR VIDEO in police possession that shows the CONTINUOUS torture of my little kitten Fritz going on in my bathroom AND bedroom. The depth and details that I would need to explain involving everything that this recording shows would take me more than several hours to elaborate on. To give even the smallest idea as to what exactly happened, the video shows Leo leaving my room only a few times and for only several minutes at a time, AND brings 3 other friends total in at different times to show them my kitten Fritz and what he has done. Whether they have knowledge of what exactly happened is still not known. The first scene shows Leo searching my room, in, under, and around everything searching for Fritz as if he is on a mission. You see him take Fritz by the neck and throw him into my ceiling in my bathroom and hear all the sounds that follow along with, which in itself I cannot begin to explain enough. He is shown throwing my 8-week old KITTEN into the walls, doors, cupboards of my bathroom. He is shown bringing Fritz into my bedroom and violently with full force throwing Fritz into the walls, into corners, into my t.v. stand, beating Fritz with his own hands many many many times!He is shown grabbing a t.v. remote and full force beating Fritz in the head and face over and over and over. He is shown taking a Glade metal spray bottle and beating Fritz in the head over and over and over with NO REMORSE SHOWN. The metal bottle was obtained from my bathroom and brought to police as tangible evidence with blood spatter still being present all around the bottle in multiple places. This is only a BEGINNING as to what I can explain as to what occurred on Thursday, Oct. 9th.

The Press-Citizen included this extra bit of detail:

At one point, police said, the cat gets away, and Nopoulos is seen in the video actively looking for the cat; once he catches it, he continues to abuse it. Police said Nopoulos admitted to abusing the cat to his roommate, his parents and an officer.

According to Schloss, Fritz survived this abuse, though his left eye had to be removed yesterday. Additionally, Fritz is blind in his right eye, but hopefully he will eventually recover his vision in that eye.

Schloss communicated that Nopoulos admitted to the animal abuse several different times. He reportedly said that he was "fucked up" and that he has "bad voices in his head telling him to do terrible things."

*I feel a bit "oogy" about including the name of the cat's owner in this blog. However, he directed people to his Facebook account of the abusein the comments section of the Press-Citizen article and I believe that his account gives a lot of needed detail to this horrific story.

Updated on 11/22/14: I have had requests from others to provide an update on this situation. I don't know much, but here is what I know...

The legal case against Leo Nopolous continues to wind its way slowly through the courts. The arraignment hearing is currently scheduled for 12/04/14. In other words, it's gonna be a while.

As for Fritz, he now has his own Facebook page. For the most part, Fritz appears go be mostly healed. However, he still appears to be blind or mostly blind in his right eye. At most, he is only seeing shadows at this point. He's also learning to navigate his home and how to play again quite successfully.

Earlier this month, his owners got a second cat named Squash and the two cats appear to be getting along well.

So that's the update!