publishedJuly 16, 2022 at 8:30 p.m
Heerbrugg SG“My children are sad” – cat no longer wants to go home following being fed by someone else
In Heerbrugg SG, a woman has been missing a mother cat for over a month. When she reappears, she has gained one and a half kilograms. The owner suspects foreign feeding.
The mother cat’s two kittens slept in their sleeping place at night and were restless. The owner’s son is also wondering where his darling is.
20min/News-Scout
The cat Hera is friends with a Chihuahua, the family dog.
20min/News-Scout
Bahar Inanir from Heerbrugg SG owns three cats: a mother cat, Hera, and two offspring. The mother of the two cats, a Bengal cat, has not come home for a month. “I saw her once more and once more in the neighborhood, but she didn’t want to come to me anymore,” says the 39-year-old woman from the Rhine Valley to 20 minutes. It wasn’t until Thursday that she walked back into the apartment.
When Inanir saw Hera back home, she was shocked: “She looked totally well-groomed and suddenly had one and a half kilograms more on her hips.” Although Hera is shy, she loves treats and is immediately attracted to them. The owner assumes that neighbors give her cat so much to eat that she no longer has to come home. A neighbor had even stolen her cat before. “It was only when the police came that the woman came to her senses and gave me the animal back.”
The mother cat is missing from home
The situation is very annoying for Inanir: “You have to teach the children that there are stupid people who feed strange cats and lure them home,” says the mother. She has a nine-year-old son who searches in vain for the cat every evening. The young animals also long to be close to their mother, as the Rhine Valley native explains. According to the news scout, they slept in their mother’s empty bed every night and were very restless.
The 39-year-old posted the story on Facebook and let her anger run free: “It makes me and my children very sad when something like this happens,” she writes, among other things. And: “In the future I will no longer warn, but report such people.” Many users give her encouragement and write that they have already experienced the same thing in the Rhine Valley.
Penalty of up to three years imprisonment possible
But is it illegal to feed other people’s cats? “Not in general,” says Caroline Mulle, a lawyer at the Foundation for the Animal in Law (TIR). It becomes much more of a problem when this happens regularly and systematically.
“In the example of Inanir, luring the cat away represents an infringement of the cat owner’s property rights, once morest which the cat owner can defend himself with legal means,” says the lawyer. The threatened penalty might be imprisonment for up to three years or a fine for confiscation of property or unlawful appropriation. In any case, feeding might be prohibited under civil law.
“Foreign feeding is an intervention in a relationship”
The animal protection association in St. Gallen is already aware of the problem and strongly advises once morest feeding strange cats. “Feeding strange cats is an intrusion into the relationship between the cat and the actual owner,” says Julika Fitzi-Rathgen, President of the St. Gallen Animal Welfare Association.
In her experience, strange cats are often fed out of a “misunderstood love of animals”. The person in question finds the cat a bit too slim or wants to do something good for it with treats, without even realizing that this cat then often alienates itself from the actual owner. “You should only feed a strange cat, if at all, with the appropriate clarifications.”
Do you know of an animal in distress?
Fire brigade, Tel. 118 (animal rescue)
Police, Tel. 117 (for wild animals)
GTRDlarge animal rescue service, Tel. 079 700 70 70 (emergency call)
