Whiskers from his nose, ears and eyebrows were also gone. What was worse, his attackers had used a vivid marker to draw the Nazi symbol on his shaved back. ''It had obviously just happened. I just cried,'' she said. ''It's so horrible. I just couldn't believe it.'' At first, she feared it was a racial message aimed at her husband, as he is Filipino. They washed off the swastika immediately after taking photos. Now, she presumed it was simply children thinking it was a joke.
McGiffin said her cat stayed close to home, but was so friendly he would likely have gone willingly with anyone. ''The scariest bit is they took my cat off the street, took him somewhere [and] held him down,'' she said. ''When he was two months old he got stuck in a fence and we had to remove his tail. Now he is tail-less, whisker-less and has shaved spots.'' An electric razor had been used in the incident. McGiffin's husband had gone driving in the area to see if he could spot who may be responsible, but found no one. They are now keeping Turbo inside until his whiskers grow back.
She had reported the incident to police and the SPCA. SPCA Canterbury chief executive Barry Helem called the incident ''bizarre'' and ''very bad taste''. The shaving would be an offence under the Animal Welfare Act if the cat was in distress or pain while it was being shaved. This would require a witness coming forward. Cats relied on whiskers for spatial awareness. While they could survive without them, they were ''there for a reason''. ''You shake your head sometimes at what people do,'' Helem said. ''This is a newbie for me and hopefully the last. The message is offensive in itself. There is no need for it."
With news video.
3 comments:
This kind of story makes me glad that my indoor-outdoor kitty is the highly-suspicious type.
Side issue: Outdoor cats kill much wildlife. I've found that collars with TWO bells prevent the cat from developing a gait that silences the one bell, and this has reduced the carnage from my adopted neighborhood cat about 95%. Extra bells for collars can be found in pet stores, usually in 3-packs.
Lurker111
As a counter argument, my cat and I live on a couple of acres of rainforest just outside of Auckland NZ. No bell goes on my cat as he regularly brings home a rat he has caught. These are the same rats that eat the eggs and kill the chicks of the endangered Kereru (Wood pigeon) amongst other native birds. I closely monitor his kills just in case he opts for the feathered kind, so far, after 2 years here, no birds have been caught by him. However a Kereru has committed suicide by flying headfirst into my window. Made a heck of a noise and left an imprint of 'bird dust' on the glass. I buried him next to the tree he was so fond of dining on. Very sad.
@WilliamRocket:
Happy to hear your kitty has a practical sense of game. Here in the U.S., it's usually the birds that suffer from feline predation.
My kitty does nail the occasional mouse or vole, but I'm not concerned about these species' extinction. (And for some reason, cats like to go after squirrels, which makes no sense to me, because squirrels have claws like razors.)
Lurker111
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