Seventy-five dead cats and three dogs were discovered in the freezers of a home in the Mons region of southern Belgium, a local branch of the Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) said on Thursday.
The intervention of the animal welfare services of the Wallonia region also allowed the seizure of 25 cats alive but in poor health, said the same source, confirming information from the RTBF channel.
“In memory of a (animal) shelter manager, we have never seen that,” our colleagues Gaëtan Sgualdino, director of the La Louvière SPA, near Mons, told AFP.
“I never imagined that one day I would have to place such a number of corpses on the ground to do the controls,” he added.
An “unspeakable” discovery
It was due to “a complaint”, probably from a neighbor, that the Walloon animal welfare unit intervened on Wednesday in this unsanitary house, with the reinforcement of the police, explained Gaëtan Sgualdino.
No details were given about the identity of the occupants, described as marginalized, nor about the town. According to RTBF, the police had to question “witnesses” to the events, a step prior to questioning possible suspects of animal abuse.
Lost eyes on some corpses, frozen carcasses already in a state of decomposition: the head of the SPA spoke of an “unspeakable” find.
According to Gaëtan Sgualdino, the large number of corpses could be explained by “uncontrolled reproduction” in cats.
“We often talk about the obligation of sterilization, but in my opinion there was such negligence, such lack of care, that the animals sometimes died quickly” after birth, he told RTBF.
Possible prison sentences for perpetrators
“We found carcasses (of old animals) a few days old, sometimes a few hours old.”
According to Wallonia’s Animal Welfare Code, serious cases of mistreatment can lead to a prison sentence, provided that the prosecution initiates the prosecution. Hefty administrative fines can also be imposed.
The 25 cats found alive were received at three shelters to be treated there, particularly for skin conditions related to the fact that they lived in their droppings.
Source: BFM TV
