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Physical Cruelty of Companion Animals Arnold Arluke and Leslie Irvine Introduction When incidents of animal cruelty appear in the media, they often evoke intense responses from the public Most people express outrage (Levin et al 2017) When the victim is a domestic dog or a cat, the abuse seems to represent a betrayal of the relationships we have with companion animals If a perpetrator is charged, citizens often appeal for the strictest possible penalties The online comments following coverage of two cruelty cases in 2015 reflect typical reactions ‘Prison sentence is a joke and a bullet through the head is too good for this guy’, one reader wrote Another said, ‘This poor excuse for a human being should have received a much greater punishment’, and one simply posted, ‘rot in hell who ever [sic] is responsible’ (Carey 2014; Vega 2015) Humane organisations make use of cruelty in fundraising efforts, selecting cases egregious enough to prompt donations and solidify support, but not so upsetting that donors will avoid their mail (Arluke 2006) A Arluke (*) Department of Sociology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA e-mail: aarluke@gmail.com L Irvine Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA © The Author(s) 2017 J Maher et al (eds.), The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43183-7_3 39