On my last visit to Santo Domingo on the way back to the hotel, my taxi driver ran over a cat on a neighborhood street while driving about 25mph. I looked out the back window after we passed over it and I could see the cat writhing in pain on the street. The taxi driver didn't seem to even acknowledge that anything had happened. About 15 minutes later I left the hotel on foot and walked back down that street toward the grocery store. There was that same cat again, still alive but twitching around on its side and bleeding, on the sidewalk directly in front of the entrance to a colmado shop. There were about 4 or 5 guys there out in front of the shop hanging out and talking to each other and not concerned one bit that there was a dying cat about 3 feet away from them. I'm not an animal rights activist by any means, but I was a bit surprised at the level of apathy.