Watch: Cat Burglar? Teenage Girl Charged For ‘Stealing’ Lost Cat From Streets
Shadow Animal Rights Minister Janice Chetcuti has recounted a bizarre case she helped defend as the courts were largely closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chetcuti told Lovin Malta that her client was a teenage girl who used to feed a colony of stray cats in the south of Malta while returning home from school. One day, one of these cats followed the girl back home and waited in front of her apartment door.
The girl pleaded with her father to let her keep the cat, and the father told her that she would be able to do so long as a vet could confirm it was in good health and didn’t belong to anyone.
She took the cat to the vet, who treated it for fleas and worms and who confirmed that it wasn’t microchipped. After following her father’s instructions, the girl was allowed to keep the cat.
Months later, a neighbour spotted the cat basking in the sun on the girl’s balcony and informed her that the cat was hers.
However, the girl refused to hand the cat over and told her that she had been feeding it on the streets for months and never saw a notice that it was lost or for sale.
The neighbour reported her to the police, who charged her with simple theft and ragion fattasi, (taking the law into her own hands) and the girl roped Chetcuti in as her lawyer.
Chetcuti said it was “almost funny” how they had to regularly attend court sittings for this case, even though the courts were largely closed during the COVID-19 lockdown period.
A magistrate cleared the girl of simple theft but found her guilty of ragion fattasi after a DNA test proved it was highly likely that the cat did indeed belong to the neighbour, and ordered her to give up the cat.
However, Chetcuti filed an appeal and a judge ruled in her client’s favour, noting that the neighbour hadn’t chipped the cat or searched for it when it went missing. The girl won the case and ownership of the cat.
“If we truly love cats, no matter what the law states, we should want to chip them so that we will be able to find them if, God forbid, they ever get lost,” Chetcuti said. “We should want to take care of them and raise them with education and love.”
She urged the animal authorities to focus on ensuring that pets are owned by responsible owners and amending the law to allow people to take their furry friends with them into establishments.
“That’s what we need to focus on, not banning non-pedigree bully breeds,” she said.
“Animals need a serious authority that run by people who know how to reason and also who love animals. If not, we will never progress but rather regress 100 years as I can see happening right now.”
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