"Change the law to protect cats on the roads"

Monday 19 October 2015

Animal lovers are coming out in force to protect local moggies on our roads after an outcry over a woman driver beating a cat to death after injuring it in her car.

More than 1,800 people have signed an online petition set up at the weekend supporting calls to give cats the same status as dogs and make it illegal to hit a cat and just drive off.

In Jersey, as in the UK, you have to stop and report an accident involving a dog to the police, but you don't have to tell them if you've hit a cat. The police's advice is that if you do hit a cat with your car, you should call a vet or the Animals' Shelter.

You can find the petition here.

Cat lover Sandra Jasmins from St Lawrence set the petition up it after hearing about the woman cruelly killing a cat a few days ago after she’d knocked it over on the Island’s roads.

The woman was apparently spotted getting out of car, trying to strangle it to death and then bashing its head with a piece of metal until it died.

Sandra said: “She decided to finish it off. It’s wrong at every level, we have to make a difference.

“Accidents happen, cats are fast and sometimes they run off but do report it. Phone the Animals Shelter and let them know where it happened. Give peace to that family.”

Sandra’s own cat Binky was hit by a car outside her home earlier this year. The two-year-old tortoiseshell was left dying in the road.

She said: “No one had stopped. Her eye was like a black olive, she was coughing blood, she’d been hit on the head and we didn’t think she was going to make it.

“Her jaw was broken, she couldn’t eat, she was skin and bone and she had to be fed with a tube.”

But after spending nearly five weeks at the vets, Binky is back home with Sandra’s three other cats and has made a good recovery.

Sandra said: “She has her tongue permanently sticking out now and she’s lost four teeth but she just bounces around, she’s such a happy cat.

“But I had no hope the day I found her.”