The secret war between cat lovers and the abusers who profit from cruelty

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic images and descriptions of violence.

Every night after returning home from work, Chen opens his laptop and switches to his secret life as an undercover activist.

From his bedroom in eastern China, he spends hours witnessing scenes too graphic for a horror movie and trying to befriend people who would be his sworn enemies in real life.

Chen – a pseudonym to protect his real identity – is part of a team of internet sleuths whose mission is to shut down a shadowy global network that mutilates and kills cats for profit.

“It’s become a pretty international phenomenon,” said Jenny Edwards, a criminologist and specialist in animal sexual abuse, based in Seattle. “It is happening much more often than people realize.”

Activists say many of the cat torturers are based in China, where there are no laws against animal cruelty. Protected by an apparent culture of impunity, they make videos for consumers around the world – including in the United States, UK, Turkey and Japan.

Undercover with the cat torturers

The chat groups provide a snapshot of an underworld where torture is trivialized and celebrated as if it’s part of a video game.

A culture of competition has also developed among members to suggest the most inventive style of abuse – while creating heroes out of the perpetrators.

Chen was in similar groups. For years, he’s been watching gruesome videos and befriending torturers to gather enough information to track them down.

He’s part of an alliance of activists called Feline Guardians, who hope that drawing attention to the issue will pressure law enforcement globally to take more action – particularly in China.

“China is now experiencing a wave of cat abuse, from elementary school students all the way to the elderly participating in it,” Chen said.

Chen says the number of people involved in Chinese-based networks is “growing larger and larger,” and include foreigners outside the country.

Data gathered by Feline Guardians showed a 500% increase in new torture videos added to the Chinese Telegram groups they monitor between June 2024 and February 2025 – with a new video being uploaded on average around every 2.5 hours. In the first two months of this year, more than 500 new torture videos have been uploaded, with most coming from previously unknown abusers.

‘They are treated like celebrities’

More than 5,000 miles away from Chen in London, Feline Guardians activist Lara has been monitoring the global spread of this content.

“It starts off in China, and then you have people who mimic these videos from elsewhere, (and) we have children who are exposed to this,” said Lara, who asked to only use her first name to avoid online retribution.

When Lara first learned about the trade in cat torture, she said her reaction was “surely this must be embellished.” But very quickly, she had her eyes opened to the extent of this dark subculture.

“They are treated like celebrities,” Lara said. “So, there is a drive with not only being able to get the satisfaction of torturing horrifically cats, but also the feedback and the notoriety that they receive.”

Lara and Chen, along with their fellow activists, keep in constant contact despite most of them having day jobs – often staying up all night across different time zones as they try to track down the torturers.

Their detective work involves combing through every frame of the footage, examining the background for clues on location or identity, and trying to glean information from their bank details if they are selling their content online.

“Through repeatedly watching it, we can roughly determine some details about their life,” Chen said. “(Then) we can conduct some investigations locally.”

When they think they are closing the net, they also conduct interviews with local people and neighbors, in case they witnessed or overheard anything that could be used as evidence.

Chen often poses as a zoosadist, who is trying to buy torture material, to gain the trust of fellow members. But some groups also demand complicity as their entry criteria.

“Most core groups require recording a video that volunteers can’t do – that is, taking a cat from being full of life and torturing it to death,” Chen said.

Still, in the past few years, he has managed to delve so deep within Chinese torture networks that he’s exposed the identities of more than a dozen perpetrators.

Torture to order

Entering the disturbing world of these networks exposes an entire subculture with its own terminology and hierarchical structure.

Once inside dedicated chat rooms, creators were also sometimes called “cat deleters” or “masters” and the consumers who paid for the videos were known as “sponsors.”

Collectively, they appear to view themselves as vigilantes who aim to get rid of all “evil cats” – possibly also to provide a falsified sense of justification for their crimes.

The creators even advertise specific cats for “torture to order” which enables buyers to select the animal, the tools and tactics of their death – all for a price.

Promotional posters are shared showing a photo, name and age of the cat, along with their “shelf life,” indicating the date they plan to kill them. The “sponsors” are urged to “contact customer service” to receive a quote.

“There is a sadistic and twisted mindset for these torturers where they try to elongate the torture as long as possible,” said Lara.

“These videos show cats being burnt alive, they have been liquefied in blenders,” Lara said. “There have been cases of cats being dismembered and their guts being pulled out and stretched.”

The suffering of the animals is also turned into searchable terms – including “T-Rex” for cats that have had their front legs cut off and can only stand on their back legs.

A ‘fetish I can’t quit’

A Chinese consumer who regularly pays for this sort of gratuitously violent content admits that it gives him a sexual thrill.

A married man in his mid-twenties, Zhang said he first started watching animal torture videos when he was a teenager, after he saw a report about it on the news.

“It’s just this fetish that I can’t quit,” Zhang said. “This is much harder to quit than cigarettes.”

So far, Zhang has spent thousands of dollars buying cat torture videos through the networks, which can cost from a few dollars to $50 each.

He added that his wife “doesn’t know about this thing,” and would likely divorce him if she did.

Zhang says he can’t afford to order the custom videos that are set at a much higher price, often over $1,300. But he says the other members are usually “rich people,” who he claims include officials, programmers and managers, some of whom share WeChat IDs showing their name, company or government department.

Zhang says in the outside world, he is “quite normal” and would never personally hurt an animal – and even keeps rescued cats and dogs as pets at home.

But he admits that he enjoys watching women torture cats, especially if they crush them with high heels.

Criminologist Jenny Edwards says the “primary driver” of this fetish is sadism – a “sexual deviance” which is “getting sexual arousal from watching these (videos) or feeling the pain of discomfort and humiliation of seeing another being suffering.”

“It’s part of antisocial, psychopathic behavior,” Edwards added.

She says zoosadists often hide their proclivities from their families and friends.

“They are leading a double life, because they have this whole other life that they completely keep separate from everything else that they’re doing,” Edwards said.

Some have threatened physical violence against activists who try to expose their secret lives.

Phaedra, a US-based independent animal rights activist who asked to go only by her first name, said she was doxxed – the process of revealing someone’s real identity – and targeted by anonymous accounts, after highlighting graphic torture content on X to prompt censors to take them down.

Phaedra says she also tried to alert Chinese and US officials.

As revenge, some of the abusers used Phaedra’s photograph from her X account to create deepfake pornography of her – and one even used a photo of her as a child alongside dead cats and a sign that read “I’m coming for you Phaedra.”

“They’ve said that they’ll come and skin my dog, they’re going to kill my pets and family,” Phaedra said.

In December 2024, she also received death and rape threats via X.

At one point, she was terrified – thinking they’d find out where she lived and come through her bedroom window – but added that she’s “not afraid of them anymore.”

Chen, the undercover volunteer, said most people he encounters in the groups are lonely men who feel left behind by society, which suggests they are also searching for connection within these groups – bonded by their unspeakable hobby.

He described them as “incels” – involuntary celibates – who feel rejected by women and therefore get sexual pleasure from hurting an animal that most women love.

Activists say some consumers are also drawn to this content because the screams of a cat sound similar to those of women, or children – prompting fears that the behaviors in this online underworld could develop into the abuse of humans.

“They’re becoming more elaborate with what they’re doing, and far more methodical,” Lara from Feline Guardians said. “This will only get worse.”

For example, Chen said in 2024, a sickening mission emerged to target an app called “Street Cat,” which livestreams stray cats or those in shelters for cat enthusiasts to watch.

In the US, Feline Guardians also found evidence of a crossover between cat torture and neo-Nazi groups, including one private Telegram group called “The Eternal Reich” with more than 600 members, which mixed torture content with videos of abuse against women and posts on far-right ideology.

One member posted a photo of himself holding two dead cats in front of an American flag.

A fantasy through cats

Social media companies have come under pressure for not doing enough to prevent the proliferation of this sort of extreme, and in most places, illegal content.

“The platforms are social media networks, mainly end-to-end encrypted platforms such as Telegram,” Lara said. “Also, these videos are being shared on other social media platforms like X, Instagram and Facebook.”

Often potential consumers are recruited directly by the torture rings via a direct message.

If they have commented on a graphic video on YouTube or Facebook, they might receive an invitation to free-to-join Telegram groups with thousands of members. Those who want more depraved content, or want to order something specific, can join smaller, more extreme Telegram groups.

“It definitely needs to be restricted, and a lot of it can and should be restricted by the social media provider,” Edwards said. “The challenge is we don’t have a cohesive way of attacking it.”

Edwards said in most countries legislation is too weak and inadequate to fit the extent of these crimes, and that law enforcement should be pushing tech companies to do more.

“Content that promotes or glorifies violence is explicitly forbidden,” a Telegram spokesperson said, and “any groups, channels or users found distributing violent content are immediately banned.” Hundreds of moderators using AI tools are removing “millions of pieces of harmful content each day,” the spokesperson said.

In China – which has some of the world’s most tightly-controlled internet restrictions – censors rarely remove any cat torture content, Chen said.

“In most situations there is no supervision of this,” Chen said. “China’s censorship of political content and pornography is very strict, but with animal abuse, basically no threshold has been set.”

Multiple cases of cat abuse in China have been reported by state media in the past few years, but most alleged that the perpetrators did not face any legal consequences.

Other countries with animal cruelty legislation have made multiple arrests of cat torturers in recent years – including the US, Canada and Turkey.

In the UK, two teenagers were recently charged with causing animal suffering, after a pair of kittens were found dead and mutilated in north-west London on May 3. The local police also wrote a letter to schools in the area, warning them of an increase in reports of young people committing acts of cruelty towards animals.

In Turkey – which is known for its abundance of street cats – five members of a cat torture network were arrested in January 2024 for “abusing cats and engaging in organizational propaganda.” More arrests were made in February and September last year, including one for “torture of a kitten.”

“In Turkey, within these groups, there are up to 15,000 members, possibly even more,” Lara said. “So these networks are spreading, and they mimic what the same networks in China have been doing.”

Activists say the role of legislation and enforcement is critical to shutting these networks down. High-profile cases in recent years include a monkey torture ring originating in Indonesia which was exposed and dismantled in 2023. British man Adam Britton was also jailed in August 2024 for torturing and sexually abusing dozens of dogs in Australia and sharing the videos on Telegram.

Peter Li, an associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy specialist for Humane Society International, says China is the only major industrialized country that does not have comprehensive anti-cruelty laws.

“It’s time that China adopts an anti-cruelty law,” Li said, though he conceded that it was “a politically challenging issue.”

Li said multiple proposals have been submitted over the past two decades to China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, but they have never progressed – partly due to fears they could impede the farming industry, and due to a cultural lack of concern for animal welfare among China’s older generation.

But with the growing number of pets in China – totalling more than 120 million in urban areas alone – the pressure to legislate for the protection of animals, especially from younger pet owners, will likely only increase.

Beyond the suffering of animals, Li says there are also “broad social consequences” for allowing this trend to spiral. “You would encourage copycat behaviors,” Li said. “Most of the audience are young people, and (they) would be desensitized.”

In 2024, Chinese state media reported at least four separate cases of university students allegedly torturing cats.

China Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper, reported in May that “incidents of students being punished for torturing animals have been on the rise.”

The article said the alleged offenders had been punished, but didn’t specify what punishment they’d received, beyond at least two expulsions.

“Simply expelling the students cannot solve the problem,” Wang Wenda, director of students’ psychological health at Xinhua College of Ningxia University, was quoted as saying. “They might not only hurt animals but also people if they do not get proper guidance and help.”

Links between cruelty to animals and to humans – documented by multiple global studies – could ultimately drive law enforcement in China – and elsewhere – to take the issue more seriously.

“It starts off with cat torture,” said Lara. “There have been multiple cases of people who go off to commit other crimes, such as serial killers, but also those that we don’t hear of – abuse within the home (and) maybe children.”

“There is a crossover here, and so they’re just acting out a fantasy through cats.”

For campaigners, there’s no choice but to keep going, despite the huge impact on their own mental health.

“It’s definitely changed the way that I view the world,” said Lara. “I believe that I have taken on something which I am committed to for the rest of my life, until this changes.”

On May 18, Lara helped to organize global protests calling for an end to cat torture, held in more than 20 major cities around the world.

Chen said he had sought medical support for his mental health, but he’ll keep logging on every night because each sickening video takes him closer to a potential arrest.

He said he’ll watching in the hope of ending the depravity, because “someone has to do it, right?”

Madalena Araújo, Isil Sariyuce contributed reporting

Story Editors: Hilary Whiteman, Jerome Taylor

Video: Vina Salazar, Alex Dicker, Dan Hodge, Martin Bourke, Kevin Broad

Data and Graphics Editor: Lou Robinson

Illustration and Motion Designer: Alberto Mier

Visual Editor: Mark Oliver