Fina-effing-ly. Police arrested a 40-year-old man yesterday, who’s believed to be involved in the long series of stray cat abuse cases in the Yishun district.
The spate of gruesome cases started since September, when both the police and the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) received 18 reports of killings and mistreatment of stray cats around Yishun and Sembawang.
As months went by, the bodycount stacked higher as community cat caretakers and Singapore’s cat lovers cried out for justice after seeing reports of abuse on Yishun 326 Tabby Cat and Cat Welfare Society Facebook pages. Cats were found strangled, thrown from great heights and even kicked hard in some cases. Out of the 18 cases reported, only one cat survived the ordeal.
The alarming string of cases even prompted Member of Parliament for Nee Soon GRC Louis Ng to mobilise a grassroots fast response team to combat the issue.
Things finally came to a head last Saturday when a dead cat was found floating at Yishun Pond — but it’s not known if it was related to the serial cat killing.
It was only yesterday that the police arrested the suspect along Yishun Ring Road after months of investigations. He will be charged in court tomorrow for animal cruelty, which may land him up to 18 months in jail and up to $15,000 in fines.
We’ll find out soon enough if he was the only person involved in the serial cat abuse cases, or if there were other people involved in some kind of macabre anti-feline cult.
