Bill Frist's cat-killing story

 After adding a post about Kristi Noem's dog-killing story, I realized I hadn't mentioned former House Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) cat-killing story. Jeff Woods gave a quick overview of the story, which appeared in Frist's 1989 autobiography, Transplant, in his review of Frist's later book in The Nashville Scene in 2009:

Never say Frist doesn't learn from his mistakes. In his 1989 autobiography Transplant, he admitted that as a medical student he adopted cats from animal shelters, "treat[ed] them like pets for a few days," then took them to a lab to die in research experiments. He blamed this conduct on the pressures of med school.

"And I was totally schizoid about the entire matter," Frist wrote. "By day, I was little Billy Frist, the boy who lived on Bowling Avenue in Nashville and had decided to become a doctor because of his gentle father and a dog named Scratchy. By night, I was Dr. William Harrison Frist, future cardiothoracic surgeon, who was not going to let a few sentiments about cute, furry little creatures stand in the way of his career. In short, I was going a little crazy."

That bit of honesty cost Frist no little embarrassment in his 1994 Senate campaign, when he was mocked as a cat killer.