I'm with Susan on this one, except I I don't know that I would consider it safe to go out there with anyone EXCEPT armed law enforcement officers.

From what Tami has described, this guy is beyond your garden variety abuser with a bad temper and poor impluse control when he gets drunked up. (and I am not in any way making light of any situation involving domestic abuse.)   He is clearly capable of both implusive and premeditated violence.   

Ripping out phone lines and beating a captive woman for two days indicates a problem that goes well beyond impulse control. And on top of that, he has continued to stalk her via telephone and internet for 6 months now, across several thousand miles.    These are huge red flags that ramp-up the lethality potential by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Just since Friday there have been accounts in the national news of two adult sisters murdered by their father for protecting their mother from more abuse, and a mother and daughter killed by the daughter's estranged boyfriend. In the last month, in regional news, there have several accounts of murders and attempted murders of women and/or children where the perpetrator was the estranged spouse or boyfriend.   The danger here is very, very real.

It is not that the cat doesn't matter. But is the cat worth dying for?