For two days the cat of Ben Geraerts from Luyksgestel did not come home. He thought: he will probably come back. When cat Eva did indeed stumble into the garden after much calling, the joy was short-lived. One leg was loose and at the vet it turned out that she had been shot with an air rifle. “There was nothing for it but to put her to sleep.”
Ben is still devastated. “We’ve had that cat for 4.5 years and it really was a member of the family. That animal was so very sweet.” He finds it all the more incomprehensible that someone could have caused the animal so much suffering.
Two weeks ago, he saw the cat stumbling into the kitchen from his yard. “She must have heard us calling and mustered all the strength to move forward.” Ben took the injured cat to the vet, but Eva was beyond rescue.
“That beast has suffered terribly.”
“One of her legs was only hanging on a few tendons because she was stuck in a clamp.” X-rays revealed that the animal also had two bullets in its body.
“She was shot twice in the head, probably to get her out of that clamp, and then she was left for dead. That beast has suffered terribly. Really awful.”
“I think there’s a cat hater living in our street who deliberately puts clamps.”
Ben lives in the center of Luyksgestel with many animal lovers around him. In the same week that his cat came home injured, another cat in the street was also shot, which fortunately survived.
He doesn’t know for sure, but Ben thinks he knows who is responsible. “I think there’s a cat hater with a fish pond living on our street who deliberately puts clamps so those cats don’t get into his yard. I can’t prove it of course, but I’m ninety percent sure.”
“You cause a lot of grief to other people with this.”
By telling his story, Ben hopes that the ‘cat hater’ realizes what he is doing to people. “Then throw a bucket of water over it, but don’t do this, because it will hurt other people a lot.”
After the death of his cat, Ben made a report to the police. There is no point in filing a report, he was told. “The police said: it’s just an animal, huh, so just report it. Well, that’s just the way it is.”
