Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)A SPATE of mystery cat killings has shocked a sleepy mountain village.
The moggies were allegedly poisoned in the streets of Montejaque, near Ronda.
Resident Rita Koehler, 58, was confronted with the corpse of a neighbour’s cat, just one day before her own pet, Cleo, perished.
“I am outraged that someone has murdered my pussy, just one-year-old and such a pretty, friendly and home-loving cat,” said Koehler.
“We’re all shocked that a fellow human being could so indiscriminately seek to kill cats. I have now seen two dead cats in two days, it’s awful.”
Koehler’s vet, Jose Maria Gonzalez, confirmed that Cleo was likely to have been poisoned.
“Cleo came in for a check-up one week before and she was in perfect condition.
“It was a sudden death and, although an autopsy hasn’t been undertaken yet, it looks as if she was poisoned.”
Another cat owner Jill La Peche also found her tomcat Wink Wonk, three, dead in the road.
“It’s devastating, I am shocked,” she said. “If it was poison then it’s completely illegal, imagine if children picked it up.”
Another resident, Barry Harrison, 74, claims that a further ten cats may have been poisoned near his house.
“Less than six months ago, there used to be 14 stray cats who hung out at the top of the village. I used to feed them and look after them as much as I could.
“Now there are just four. I’m so worried what will happen if I take my eyes off my very own cat Billy. It’s terrible.”
A spokesperson for the local Guardia Civil said that he couldn’t divulge any information regarding the ongoing investigation.
Frankly I think these plagues of semi-feral and entirely wild cats are a nuisance and health hazard as they spread or are a resevoir of bartonellosis, salmonellosis, parasitic infections including roundworms, hookworms and fleas, protozoal infections including cryptosporidiosis, giardiasis, and toxoplasmosis and viral infections including rabies in the pueblos! I have one of the very few gardens in our village and the people who sporadically feed these vermin feel the cats are entitled to use my property as a toilet. If I raise the matter with the feeders (as they suddenly don’t “own” them) they look at me like I’m crazy. “But the’re cats!” they exclaim as if that entiltles the cats to crap everywhere and also abdicates the feeders of any responsibility. Councils should anounce a cull. All cats to be kept should be chipped, licenced and and spayed at the “owners” expense. Any cats caught out of the owners control should result in a fine for the owner. Thats why litter trays where invented.
Yes, they are nearly as bad as humans Ivan. Imagine trying to police every cat that was “out of the control of the owner” lol.
I entirely agree Ivan, and the same goes for dogs. If all the energy that people spend looking after and raising funds for stray dogs, was spent caring for starving children, the world would be a better place. Many people apparently abandon dogs when they leave Spain. So surely the most humane thing is to put the dogs down rather than keep them in kennels in the mountains. Although dogowners always say it is the owners fault, I get fed up with watching owners allowing their dogs to defecate on the beach, by children´s play areas, then walk away as though it is nothing to do with them. That and the incessant barking-which the owners never hear, as the dogs only bark when they are left alone, makes them very antisocial.
Stray cats can be a nuisance, I quite agree, but the sight of carcasses of randomly killed cats littering the streets – as was the case in Montejaque – is more than disgusting. “Pest control” of this kind should be left to authorities, not to anyone who just feels like it. (The world would be empty if one started poisoning everything one might find annoying.)
The only efficient means to keep the numbers of cats at a reasonable level is spaying/ castrating the existing specimens. Maybe the money spent on poisoning other people’s pets would be much better invested in vet’s bills?
Cats, that shoud not be forgotten, do keep the numbers of snakes and rats down.
Well well the linch men are all out, just read what our respectable members of the community have to say about poor animals some without homes and some much loved pets and memebers of the family…..Well let me see which group is more agresive stray animals or KIDS WHO ARE ALLOWED TO RUN RIOT vandalishing private and public property costing communities and private idividuals money..bring on the strays thats what I say, also posioning is forbidden thats why so many kind volenteers including vets set up animal shelters and spay our strays was founded. Its a good job the public don’t use vigilantey methods to rid the streets of out of control kids!
Seems that the local dogs and cats are also being poisoned in Cadiar. There was reports of poisoned meat along to river to kill foxes but now they are poisoning animals within the small village.
This is a cowards way of killing animals. They suffer a horrible painful death. Last week 2 beautiful pointer dogs were poisoned. One died and the other was saved. To see an animal suffering from the effects of eating poisoned food is heartbreaking.
Poisoning is apparently against the law yet nothing is done and the local guardia do nothing.
If they want to cut down on the stray population there are more human ways of doing it.
Ivan and Steve what a pair of nasties you are.
Steve of course is not telling the truth – it is’nt foreigners leaving Spain who are responsible for the abandoned dogs – it’s the Spanish.
Let’s define who the culprits are. As many decent Spanish dog owners have told me – 1st, young Spanish couples take a dog when they marry or set up home together. As soon as the female becomes pregnant – they dump the dog. They could of course have the dog put down but being brainwashed by the Roman mafia and their b/s ‘sanctity of life’ crap, they drive out on the motorways and kick them out on a slip road and speed away, I have lost count of the dogs that are killed on these slip roads, I lived not far from the Autovia.
The 2nd lot – an old man dies and the dogs that are kept on their smallholdings and what a terrible life these poor creatures have are then dumped in exactly the same way by the old man’s children.
3rd – many Spanish dump their dogs when they go on holiday, not wanting to pay kennel boarding fees. Then when they come back they get another – what sick vermin they are!
If the Spanish actually took the dogs to a vet to be put down/killed they would be confronted by just how awful their mentality is.
We have two dogs that we brought with us to Spain. The first was dumped in the classic way on a slip road, a 3 month old pup that had obviously been tied up in a garage and probably barked too much, so was dumped. He was the canine version of the ugly duckling but grew into a truly handsome dog that when adult many Spanish wanted to buy from us. Indeed many people both in Spain and in France have asked what raza/breed he was.
The second a female pup was not abandoned but lived on a cortijo, quite obviously was half starved and was riddled with garapatas/sheep ticks – over 250. The Spanish creep who owned her could’nt give a damn. She followed us one day all the way home. A young man who worked in a chapa/pinturs nearby recognized her and said he knew the owner.
He took one look at my face (the Celtic bloodrage was very evident)and his boss and my friend Paco said don’t tell him (me) he might kill him, so he refused to give me his name and address – I made sure I never walked the dogs that way again – it’s not worth spending time in prison for terminating a piece of sub-human crap.
No human being would let an animal get into that condition. She is now a beautiful small hunting dog that can run for 20K.
Also remember that when a dog is unsuitable for hunting aka afraid of the noise of guns, the Spanish hunters will either shoot it or dump it, depending on whether they are still brainwashed by the Roman mafia or not. Or maybe tie it to a tree and leave it to die by starvation and thirst – this I have seen on two occasions.
Dogs are abandoned all over Spain as I have seen for myself but nowhere is as bad as southern Spain – there is a reason for this. To the orthodox Muslims a dog is a dirty creature and children are brought up to fear them, that unfortunately is one of the few negative legacies of Al-Andaluz.
Steve would rather money was spent on starving children – this planet really has only one problem – too many bipeds. I have never given money to Oxfam or Save the Children but I would happily give money for sterilisation programmes – we should start first here in the west.
Only one country has tried to deal sensibly with this, the greatest problem of all and that is the old red fascists who run the the command economy that is China.
Cats are even lower down the scale than dogs in Spain and though I love cats, there is a very good argument that it would be better to sterilize all Europe’s cats because of the destruction they bring on Europe’s wildlife.
As always it’s easier to blame the victim than the perpetrator. Both the cat and the dog were brought to Europe by bipeds. The rabbit was brought to Britain by stupid Norman priests, when we only had the hare. Just take a look around the planet to see all the problems created by bipeds taking animals from one continent to another.
Cats and dogs are not the problem but the monkey that fell out of the trees is.
The Spanish treat their pets horrifically. Last year I found homes for 5 puppies (they went to Germany and Netherlands) that were dumped in a bag outside my Cortijo. Last year my neighbour rehomed a beautiful puppy that was found doused in petrol.
The manner in which many domestic creatures are allowed to die is also quite digusting – cats and dogs set alight, tied in river beds to be drowned, tied to cars for fun, dumped on motorways etc. Could go on with many other such stories, but all too depressing. The Spanish should be banned from owning domestic animals.
Hi,
I have to disagree that the English do not abandon their pets when leaving. We used to have the shop in LÁmetlla de Mar and regularly got people coming in saying they were going home or just didn´t want their animals and if we didn´t take them or find homes they would either just leave them or have them destroyed. We found homes for several lovely dogs. To say the Spanish should not be allowed to have domestic animals is ludicrous. I found a little dog on the N34o, he was knocked down by a car and had to have a new plastic hip which was sent from Madrid and cost over 1000 euros just for the part. I didn´t want a dog but we kept him. We moved to Barcelona where he has settled very well, but every day we walk in the park before we go to work and meet the same people every day. Most of them have got abandoned dogs and love them just as much as we do our Timmy.
My daughter does a lot of voluntary work for Freshfield animal shelter in Merseyside and says everyday dogs are dumped outside, old animals that have been family pets probably for years so animal cruelty is not confined to any one country.
I agree with Stuart, the feral cats should be neutered. The problems are mostly caused by humans who think animals are either a status symbol or toys.
You people at the top leave the cats and dogs alone they didnt ask to come into this world thet deserve to be in this world the same as you and me!The spanish should enforce the law same as Greece to deal with this problem