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When Ozzy Osbourne shot dead his 17 pet cats in a drug-fueled frenzy
Ozzy Osbourne, who died at 76, once killed 17 family cats in a drug-fueled frenzy in the early 1980s—a haunting episode he called a turning point.
With the passing of rock music legend and frontman of heavy metal band Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, on Tuesday, his controversial life has come back into focus. While there were many incidents during his dark days of drugs, one that left a special impression on him was when he shot dead all 17 of their family cats in a drug-fueled frenzy.
The 76-year-old singer, a heavy drug user for most of his life, admitted to killing 17 family cats in the early 1980s, in an interview with Guitar Legends. Whenever he spoke about the episode, he described it as a turning point in his battle with addiction.
With the singer's family announcing his death on early Tuesday morning, here's a look back at the episode and the impression it left on Osbourne.
When Ozzy Osbourne Killed 17 Cats
The incident reportedly happened in the early 1980s when Ozzy Osbourne had divorced his first time, Thelma Riley, and had either married or was yet to marry Sharon Osbourne, his wife of over 40 years. As his substance abuse peaked, he shot the 17 pet cats that lived with him with a shotgun.
Sharon Osbourne was not at home when the incident happened, and as Ozzy Osbourne recalled, when she came back, she found him under the piano in a white with a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other.
Also read: Ozzy Osbourne's 2016 affair with Michelle Pugh pushed wife Sharon into overdose, temporary divorce
"I was taking drugs so much I was a wreck," he said in the interview. "The final straw came when I shot all our cats. We had about 17, and I went crazy and shot them all. My wife found me under the piano in a white suit, a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other."
Ozzy Osbourne Admitted To Killing Chickens & Eating A Bat
Rolling Stone revealed in a 2000 article that Ozzy Osbourne admitted to shooting a "henhouse full of chickens," snorting "line of ants" and eating a bat's head.
". . . he has shot up a henhouse full of chickens and killed a whole gang of cats and snorted a line of ants like they were a line of cocaine and bitten the head off a bat, and catapulted meat (stomach and intestines, mostly) into his audience," the article stated.
Notably, during Ozzy Osbourne's Diary of a Madman tour, fans threw live animals like cats, chickens, frogs, and snakes onstage—some were killed in the chaos. In return, Ozzy hurled raw cow livers and pig intestines into the crowd.
