The SPCA says it’s disgusted by a man’s decision to kill a cat, skin it and list it on Trade Me.
The seller says he shot the cat humanely after he saw it killing chickens on his property, but the SPCA says the man could face prosecution.
Bird breeder Gavin Wilkinson says the cat was responsible for killing 10 of his birds, so he trapped it and shot it in the head.
“This one was taking my baby chickens, probably about two a day, day after day,” he says. “I watched it and made sure it was a feral cat, and I put the cage out there and caught him.”
Mr Wilkinson says he skinned the cat because he wanted to use it to show people what he’d caught killing his free-range chickens. But recently he decided to sell it on Trade Me instead.
But as well as buyers, it attracted the attention of the SPCA.
“I find it quite disgusting and certainly of great concern that animals are treated this way,” says Bob Kerridge of the SPCA.
The other day I blogged about a guy who had found a good use for a cat. He was selling its skin on Trade Me.
Now, predictably, someone, the SPCA is outraged by it.
Mr Kerridge says it can be extremely hard to tell if a cat is feral or just a stray, and if the cat wasn’t wild, and was killed inhumanely, Mr Wilkinson could be charged under the Animal Wefare Act and be fined up to $10,000.
“A stray cat, because it’s frightened, may hiss,” says Mr Kerridge. “It may give the impression of being wild, mainly because it’s frightened in its environment. It probably was a domestic cat one day.”
Oh piss off Bob, it killed chickens, it is a bloody bird murdering killer. It might have been a domestic cat one day, but now it is a rug, it would still be alive if it hadn’t trespassed and murdered chickens.
As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.
They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.
He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.
Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.
To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.
