NEWS AND COMMENT: I had believed with caution that Turkey is a country of cat lovers, in general. But like every country even if you have many people who like cats there’s always somebody who hates them. In this instance there is a cat poisoner in the town of Kemer, in the province of Antalya. And he (it is almost certain to be a man) has done his evil deed very successfully in killing seventeen cats and three chickens (collateral damage?). This is a tourist town and I am certain that the poisoner is someone connected to the town’s administration. They want the streets ‘cleaned up’ no doubt.
He did it by feeding them with poisoned ham. It happened on December 21, 2020 and so it is very recent. There are many cat lovers in the area who feed the cats and they of course are very angry. One of them, Mihrican Honamh, the head of the Women Platform of Kemer said, “We want the security forces to find the people who killed them. They should not get away with this murder.”
A pensioner living in the area fed some of the cats and said that he had witnessed the deaths. He said that, “The cats were vomiting and dying one by one. We called the veterinarian immediately. We could save three cats. I cannot tell you how I feel. Seeing them dying was painful. We cannot leave our cats outside due to fear that people will kill them to.”
Honamh, representing the women of the area said that they fed the stray animals and they get furious when this sort of news hits them. She is very hurt and rightly so. She said that she cannot find “a word to describe what these people have done. It hurts us.”
No village, town, city, county, state or country is immune to the presence of sort of people who maliciously and psychopathically poison street cats. The cats were put there by the people due to their carelessness and so it is highly immoral to kill them in this way. This is pure ignorance. The person needs to be punished and educated in equal measure. No doubt nothing will happen because that is the way of the world.
