Angelos Demetriou and his wife Tatiana have lost many cats to poison over the years. Angelos describes the distress
JUST four weeks have passed since we lost our cat, Minnie, to the teeth of unleashed dogs, and now the family tragedy continues in a second and deadlier form. The lanate serial killer is back, and in a deadly spree has left nine cats dead in our neighbourhood.
Among the list of victims was our baby Jane and her friends Copy, Pashia and others. I thought that someone has to speak up for them, since they can’t for themselves.
The serial killer has been in our neighbourhood, Kykladon Street in Potamos Yermasoyias or in the surrounding streets, for the last three years. It all started when the streets were packed with cats, and we were feeding around 12 of them.
I was on the annual “Nikiforos” military exercise when my wife called me to say she had found three of our cats dead. By the time I came back, the numbers had grown to seven or eight.
Going to police, municipal and government offices had no effect. Everyone was ignoring us. Then one day, I started shouting outside in the hope that the poisoner would hear me and stop. A couple of days later, they stopped, but not because they heard me… they had run out of cats to kill. The last ones to go were Felix and her sister Grizoula which both died leaving behind six kittens, which we hand fed and kept. These included Nouri, Jane, Tarzan, Copy, Pashia and Batman.
When they grew up, we castrated them all (our cats and wild cats) at our own expense. We had that fact circulated so that everyone knew that those were the last cats in the neighborhood. For that reason most probably, the killings stopped for a year or so.
Last year they were again back. Again we tried in vain to get someone official to come to the rescue. After losing Tarzan, Batman and five to six of the wild cats, the police showed up finally and had a look around, and warned people that this was illegal. My sincere thanks to them. Because of that, the killings stopped for another year.
Until yesterday… The drama began when up to three of the wild cats in the neighbourhood went missing. Jane and Nouri were in our house all the time. They got out a couple of times a day, for five minutes and came back into the house. Then I got the call. My wife had found Jane poisoned. She had gone out of the house, and my wife had gone to the supermarket for 20 minutes. When she returned she found Jane already dead. We were too late. She died outside her favourite door, where we usually let her into the house.
After disposing of Jane’s body, I went to the police. They promised to have a look, but did nothing. By the afternoon, another three cats were dead. Among them was Copy. Then at 5pm, I got another call. It was Pashia this time, and she vomiting and bleeding from everywhere. I raced to the house, with the time ticking away. She was in deep pain. I never saw anything more torturing. I grabbed her by the neck, and she was trying to bite me. I finally managed to get her, put her in a small cat cage and drove her just in time to the vet. With five to six shots and other medicine, we had managed to save her life. I will never forget the pain she was going though, her eyes blurry from the poison, her mouth full of foam, blood and other body liquids coming out from everywhere. Screaming, shouting, not recognising anyone, burning from the inside out, not being able to breath or fight it… I imagined how Jane and the other ones must have died. No one deserves to die like this, it is inhuman.
Another six cats since then have not been so lucky. The police have visited three more times. We made some home-made leaflets which we handed around from house to house, trying to get people to sympathise, or stop poisoning. I doubt it helped. It certainly didn’t stop a dog from being poisoned.
Now the neighbourhood is left with only the four cats I have locked up in my house. We are desperate. No one wants to help, the officials promise to help, but are doing nothing. The municipality is ignoring us, the government doesn’t care.
There is something sinister going on. Just think about it: every year the same time, usually simultaneously in many locations across the same municipality. The same methods and outcomes have been discovered in parts of Nicosia, and other municipalities in Limassol. I think it is time someone had a look into these cases.
I found the poison in the end, pieces of it in the park where children play, pieces of it outside our back door, about half a kilo or more. It was all planned and premeditated. Suddenly, it takes a whole new twist, and you start being more afraid of children dying of this. Poison in the children’s park?
Also, in 90 per cent of the cases, the cats were dying, bleeding and vomiting in the park in front of those children. If it tramatised me so much, how about those children? Some are just two years old. Even worse, what if one of those kids dropped a chocolate, and then picked it up and ate it? What do we have to do to get someone to care, if not for us, for our children?
Are we waiting for some child to pick go through the same agonisingly painful death as Jane, Copy and the others?
