Catastrophe: French rail operator fined after train runs over beloved pet
- The death at Paris’s Montparnasse station of Neko – which means ‘cat’ in Japanese – provoked outrage and shock
- Animal rights body the Brigitte Bardot Foundation asked rail operator SNCF: ‘Are you not ashamed?’
A French court on Tuesday found France’s national rail operator guilty of negligence after a departing train, apparently deliberately, ran over a cat hiding on its tracks.
The death in January at Paris’s Montparnasse station of Neko – which means “cat” in Japanese – provoked outrage, with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin declaring himself to be “particularly shocked”.
Animal rights body the Brigitte Bardot Foundation asked rail operator SNCF: “Are you not ashamed?”
Passengers Georgia and her 15-year-old daughter Melaina said their pet escaped from its travel bag and disappeared under a high-speed train as it prepared to leave Paris for Bordeaux, in southwestern France, with 800 passengers on board.
After 20 minutes of trying to persuade staff to rescue it, the train departed, killing the cat.
“We saw him sliced in half”, Melaina told animal rights association 30 Million Friends at the time. “They told us it wasn’t their problem, that it was just a cat and that we should have had it on a leash”.