Dead cats have been showing up across Nassau County, according to some feline-friendly residents.
About six weeks ago, Roseanne Spinner found a gray cat lying in the middle of a driveway. Spinner noticed the cat had no sores, wounds, or any sign of struggle from an attack. The cat looked like a house cat.
“This cat looks like it’s sleeping,” Spinner said she thought to herself at the time of seeing the cat.
Something that had never occurred to her popped into her head a few weeks later, when her neighbor gave her a call, about a man that had come into a local animal shelter carrying a box containing “yet another dead cat,” something that unfortunately has been happening regularly.
Spinner also noticed the same occurrence in other villages around the area and suspects that some people who find animals as nuisances may be poisoning cats purposely.
“Because of the nature of cats to wander, a person could be doing this in a place and no one suspects it,” Spinner said.
Although there are sometimes concerns whether pets may be deliberately poisoned, according to one Long Island veterinarian, Dr. Gary Dattner, there has been no increase in the number of inexplicable cat deaths at local veterinary offices.
According to Dattner, rodenticides and anti-freeze are common toxins that could kills cats. Anti-freeze can be a poison that cats could potentially ingest on their own.
“Symptoms of poisoning may include vomiting, lethargy, and loss of appetite,” Dattner explained. “In some cases there may be evidence of external bleeding.”
A pet with these symptoms of poisoning still have hope if action is taken quickly enough. “If pets are brought into a veterinarian soon enough and it is known what the pet ingested, it is possible the pet can be helped,” says Dattner. “With poisons like anti-freeze, this can be more difficult.”
Performing an autopsy on pets is one way to find out if the pet has been poisoned, but it can still prove difficult to determine if the poisoning was deliberate, according to the local veterinarian. While it may be difficult to prove that malicious poisonings of our feline friends is occurring, it is important to make it known to others that stray animal shelters are available for people who are not fond of animals wandering around the neighborhoods, Dattner suggested.
