A Twitch streamer has come under intense criticism and been banned from the platform after appearing to strike his cat multiple times as a punishment during a live broadcast on Sunday, March 15.
Petr Dolejší, who uses the alias ‘FiendishMora’ when creating content online, is regularly seen playing role-playing games, first-person shooters, and real-time simulators, and was broadcasting himself playing survival game Rust when the incident took place.
The streamer faced immediate criticism from the online community, with the clip going viral on Reddit, while Twitch moved quickly to punish FiendishMora in the aftermath.
While streaming on March 15, the Czech was loading into a server on the survival game when he became distracted by movement to the left of his screen. FiendishMora could be heard shouting “hey,” towards what was then revealed to be his cat, jumping out of his chair and chasing it around the room.
The cat can be seen running across the room away from him, jumping into a cat tree and then running along a table, where the streamer was seemingly able to grab hold of the pet, appearing to strike the animal 12 times, before aggressively pointing his finger and speaking to it before moving towards it again as the clip ends.
Warning, some viewers may find the footage distressing.
The streamer immediately faced backlash following the incident, with the clip receiving 400 upvotes on Reddit as it became one of the top posts on /r/LivestreamFails, and hundreds of Reddit users took to the comments to blast him, and call on Twitch and the authorities to take action against him.
“This makes me so angry. He hit that poor cat so hard,” wrote Quizk. “Someone should report him to the authorities in whatever country he is from. Disgusting coward. The fact that he does it on stream without even thinking twice makes me worried.”
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“Twitch needs to permanently ban, forever, any streamer that abuses an animal [during a broadcast],” wrote vee_lan_cleef, while UndeadMurky wrote that you should “never hit cats” as they “don’t understand” and will only scare them, and could cause behavioral disorders.”
With many on Reddit and social media calling on Twitch to act swiftly, the Amazon-owned platform has banned the streamer, although there is currently no infirmation on whether it is permanent or a temporary suspension. Dexerto has reached out for confirmation.
The Czech has yet to address his ban on social media, although some who claim to have watched the stream live state that he admitted what he did was wrong, and denied that he had abused the cat.
FiendishMora also operates Mixer and YouTube accounts, which remain active at the time of writing.