Timur, a 24-year-old tattoo artist from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, caused a lot of controversy after he posted photos and a video of him tattooing his pet cat, a hairless Sphynx, on the Internet.

Apparently, Timur wanted his beloved cat, Coco, to have a similar tattoo as the one he had done on his chest. So he just put the hairless feline to sleep for an hour and unleashed his artistic talent on her little chest. Proud of his crazy idea, he videotaped the whole process and took some photos of the finished artwork and posted them on his VKontakte (Russian Facebook) profile. As you can imagine, animal rights activists weren’t very impressed with his achievement, and began accusing Timur of animal cruelty. Although the young artist tattooed Coco under the supervision of a veterinarian, animal lovers claim the Sphynx was still abused for no reason because every time a cat is put under she loses about a year of her life, and because the healing process for the tattoo is very painful. Also, if any paint got into her blood she could get very sick, and even die.

But there are those who believe Timur did nothing wrong. They say the cat was put to sleep and didn’t feel any pain, and that all the 24-year-old did was to make Coco a beautiful ornamental cat. Unfortunately for Timur, experts say the tattoo will very likely degrade over time and eventually become just an ugly spot. Which is probably for the best, because the guy actually managed to misspell a simple phrase like “carpe diem”, a popular Latin saying translated as “seize the day”. In the mean time, the eccentric artist actually got a tattoo of his tattooed cat on his forearm, and Russian forums posters are now joking about the probability of him tattooing himself on one of Coco’s front legs.

According to local sources, animal tattooing became a fashion trend in Tatarstan about five years ago, when tattoo parlors had a different price list especially for pets. It’s believed the trend migrated here from Belgium, where artist Wim Delvoye started tattooing pigs, in 2007.

via Kazan.kp.ru