Animal activists rescue 46 cats from Malaysia apartment
Man who sought donations online insists he did not abuse the animals but could not afford to treat their illnesses or clean his apartment since his mother’s death last year
Forty-six cats neglected were rescued by a police team from an apartment in Bandar Baru Sentul, Kuala Lumpur following a complaint lodged by animal rights activists.
The chairman of Sahabat Kucing Jalanan, Mohd Rosli Mohd Ariffin said he and a group of netizens had suspected that an unemployed man had exploited the cats to make money.
The man was said to have used his Facebook account to solicit financial contributions, purportedly to buy cat food and for the treatment of his sick cats.
Subsequently, Rosli lodged a police report at the Sentul Police Station.
Rosli and his friends, together with the police, had gone to the 41-year-old man’s home and found the neglected cats locked up in cages in several rooms.
“It is very sad to see the cats being locked in small cages in the kitchen and that the cats were not looked after at all. Almost all the cats were infected with ‘sporo’ and were sick,” he told reporters.
The sickness sporotrichosis or sporo, he explained, is a type of fungal infection.
According to Rosli, the owner of the cats had uploaded statuses and videos of his cats for several months now in Facebook, appealing for financial help.
A netizen, who was also suspicious of the man’s activities had stated in Facebook that the man was a fraud as he had 23 Facebook accounts and was using them to ‘sell’ sob stories about his cats.
Bernama and other media representatives, also visited the man’s house and found that the areas outside and inside the second-floor unit of the four-storey apartment littered with rubbish.
Police took about 15 minutes to persuade the man to surrender the cats.
The man had claimed that he loved all his cats but he had no time to clean the house since his mother died last April.
He said he had been looking after the cats for several years and the number of his feline friends, which has been keeping him company since his mother passed, had increased.
“My house is small...I have no other place to keep the cats. I did not abuse them, it’s just that I could not afford to provide treatment for the sick cats as I have no money,” he said, adding that this made him depend on public contributions to maintain the cats.
A neighbour told reporters that previously there were other neighbours who had lodge complaints with the Kuala Lumpur City Hall as they could not stand the stench coming from the apartment.
A member of Kelab Pencinta Kucing Malaysia, Datuk Leen Mustafa, 38, who was also present at the site, said some of the rescued cats are now placed temporarily at a shop that provided ‘cat hotel’ services.
She added that the Sahabat Kucing Jalanan members are also now seeking assistance to treat the sick cats.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd