NEWS AND VIEWS: A South Korean citizen living in the country’s fifth largest metropolis, Daejeon, has allegedly poisoned stray cats for 13 years with an assessed tally of 1000 cats killed! That report comes from The Korean Times and it makes you wonder what the police were doing at least for half those 13 years because it must have been obvious to many people that a large number of outdoor cats were being poisoned. The police are investigating. Many of the cats have died of rat poison.
It is claimed that the cats were poison with pieces of chicken laced with rat poison as a bait to kill the cats. The investigation has found that the bait put down was meat contaminated with a rodenticide.
One community resident said that she had taken care of a stray cat for a long time and that she had suddenly died. She was so upset with grief that she could not eat. Volunteers have been looking for the baited meat and collecting it to take it away from the street. Despite these efforts two cats were found poisoned in April and three during the previous month.
The report is that blue-powdered chicken chunks were found in close proximity to the dead cats. I suspect that the blue powder is the rodenticide. I’m surprised that the cats actually ate this but they did maybe because they were starving. One volunteer said that they found over 30 poison pieces of meat daily and that they’ve seen more than 1000 dead cats in the area over the past 13 years.
Security cameras are being checked and they are investigating the purchase of rodenticide about a month ago from a local drugstore. A petition has been started which has been signed by 45,000 people calling for the authorities to track down and punish this serial cat killer.
One resident asked the police whether they found the persistent and relentless killing of stray cats to be a crime worth pursuing and prosecuting. They said: “I want to ask police, prosecutors, city officials and district offices. Do you find this persistent cat killing not serious? Would you like to live near a person who keeps spreading poisoned chicken around your neighbourhood?”
My point exactly. The police appear to have been dilatory in dealing with what is a mass slaughter of unwanted cats. This should be completely unacceptable to the authorities in Daejeon. If not why not?
South Korea has a bad record of cat and dog meat. They are killed brutally I am told; sounds like China. Sometimes domestic cats are rounded up and slaughtered for human food. To Westerners it sounds very objectionable. This background attitude will fuel a dilatory response by police to criminal mass cat killings.
SOME PAGES ON CATS:
