Warning: This story may be disturbing to readers.
It was an incident that Leigh Mauceri was all too familiar with.
On Aug. 18, Mauceri noticed her outdoor cat, Carlos, was acting strange, and didn’t want to eat his breakfast.
“He hissed at me and growled, which was unusual for him,” said Mauceri.
When Mauceri got closer to Carlos, she noticed his hind paws were bloody. After she got him assessed by a vet, she was told the cat had all of his hind claws removed.
“(The vet) said it didn’t look like any kind of accident. It looked deliberate,” said Mauceri.
But this isn’t the first time the seven-year-old feline had been reportedly abused in the Town of Port Hope, Ont. Mauceri said a few months earlier, Carlos came home with part of his tail deliberately sliced off.
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“It makes me feel sick,” said Dr. Tiffany Wolters, a veterinarian and the owner of Ganaraska Animal Clinic in Port Hope. “I mean, there’s not much of a step between doing this to a cat and doing this to another human being.”
Dr. Wolters said in the past few years, they’ve received multiple reports — from the same neighbourhood as Mauceri — of suspicious action specifically targeting cats.
Mauceri recalls to other incidents of the same nature. The first involved a cat called Remi that she had previously owned, but gave to a neighbour a few years ago.
“While Remi was in (the neighbour’s) care, someone shot him with a pellet gun,” she said.
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Then there was a stray cat wandering near her house seven years ago.
“This poor little cat had come along, and it looked like it had rope marks all around its neck…and half of his face was also – it looked like it had been peeled.”
Global News Peterborough was told on Monday by two sources that the Port Hope Police Service has been notified of these incidents, but that no arrests have been made in connection with the events.
As for Mauceri, she said she’ll try to keep Carlos inside from now onward.
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