For several months, more than a hundred cats have disappeared in the Hérault. The rare felines found were tortured or poisoned. The owners want to take legal action.
Worrying disappearance of felines in the Hérault valley. More than a hundred cats with tattoos or identified by a chip have been sought for several months by their masters, reports The Parisian . These pets all come from the same department: from the villages of Pouget, Plaissan, Paulhan or Puilacher. Sometimes several cats on the same street have vanished at the same time. All hypotheses are open: malicious act, trafficking for laboratories? The Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole SPA calls for justice.
Read alsoIn Kerguelen, the puzzle of the eradication of wild cats
In Tressan, Saïda Ounnas despairs of not seeing Choco, a five-year-old Siamese cross feline, return. Adopted two years ago by this particular, this purebred cat knew the street in Montpellier. Then he lived with a composer and a policewoman before being taken in by his new owner. “He is a cat sensitive to music, not aggressive“, she specifies to the Figaro. Choco used to always stay close to her home according to her mistress. After a neighborhood survey, this animal friend discovered that she was not the only one affected, especially in her village.
In order to identify all the disappearances, Saïda Ounnas has compiled a file of several dozen pages, with another victim, whose cat Cerbère disappeared in November 2021. About 150 disappearances of felines of European breeds or types are listed in the Hérault . The few cats found by their owner were tortured or poisoned.
Read alsoShelters overwhelmed by animal abandonment
The president of the Cats du Clermontais association also recorded at least ten worrying disappearances of felines. “Most of these felines are sterilized, so they have no interest in breeding“, she says to the Figaro. For the association, no doubt, “there was human intervention“. But for what purpose?
No open investigation
The opening of a judicial inquiry is demanded by the owners, associations and by the SPA of Montpellier. “For the moment, the gendarmes do not want to take our complaint, because they do not take us seriously”, regrets Saida Ounnas.
Read alsoWhat are the major animal protection laws since 1850?
According to our colleagues from Parisian, the director of the SPA of Montpellier, Annie Benezech, transmitted the file of the missing cats to the public prosecutor’s office of Béziers. “Inevitably, more than a hundred cats do not disappear like that in a few weeks as if by magic. Given the scale of the phenomenon, there is necessarily an organization behind all this.she told the daily.
Animal trafficking is the third largest traffic in the world after drugs and weapons, according to the Humane Society.
SEE ALSO – Animals: “The French are European champions of abandonment”, says Marie-Stella Papeghin
.
