On November 13, 2023, a Maldives man stabbed to death a homeless pregnant cat (pictured:- IMAGE CREDIT: MALDIVIAN CATAHOLICS FACEBOOK GROUP) while it was feeding on a street in the capital island Male', the local Dhivehi language magazine "Adhives Online" reported.
The cat was taken care of by a Turkey man who was watching the scene from his shop Diana Trading.
He was observing the scene as the man drew a knife from his pocket and stabbed the cat suddenly.
The Turkey entrepreneur came out with his associates and assaulted the cat murderer.
A passing police officer, who wore a Maldives Police Service (MPS) forensic uniform, who was with his child, interfered and escorted the cat murderer into a building and protected him until police backup came around 15 minutes later.
Enraged people were still calling on him to hand over the cat murderer to them.
Journalists from "Adhives Online" magazine, where I too work, heard the police officer tell a friend that if not for his protection of the cat murderer, the cat murderer would have been murdered by those who attacked him because they were so enraged by the cat murder.
The cat murderer threw the knife into the room he was protected inside. The Turkey entrepreneur picked up the knife and handed it over to another police officer after backup had arrived. A police officer among them then said that because other people had touched the knife, the opportunity to obtain forensic evidence from the knife was "lost".
The "Maavadi" alley behind the former Nasandhura Palace Hotel is allegedly a hangout for "parteys" - a Maldivian derogatory term for junkies.
The cat killer's name is said to be "Naseem", a man from Meemu atoll working on an airport ferry boat. He is reportedly a person frequenting the area.
He had threatened his attackers just before he was put into a police vehicle to be taken away to police. His hands were handcuffed from the back.
"You will have to pay for this," he reportedly said to the Turkey man when he was led away by police.
CCTV footage of the attack on the cat and live video clips of Naseem being assaulted were obtained by Adhives, according to the magazine.
Heed this warning: the video clip of the cat's stabbing and the subsequent assault on Naseem appear on the Adhives report which I have cited as the source for this English language translation of the magazine's article about these events.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST CATS IN MALDIVES:
NOTE: This is an article I wrote in Dhivehi for "Adhives" following the cat murder report:-
1) Maldives police officers rescued a cat from drowning after a group of men ganged up, cornered, and threw the cat into the waters of the harbor.
2) Kittens have been deliberately drowned.
3) Felines have been suffocated to death.
4) A ruling elite home had its expatriate servant collect kittens and put them into a gunny bag from their roof while the mother watched from afar. I witnessed this incident but do not know what that home did with the kittens.
5) Some Maldivians release their pet cats onto the streets when they are struck with illnesses that demand costly medical treatments.
6) Some Maldivians develop an initial interest in adopting cats but later seem to tire of it and release their felines onto the streets - much in the same way that some people get excited to keep plants when they see other people successfully maintain plants in their homes which leads these people to buy potted plants for their homes but later get lazy and do not even water regularly, resulting in the plants' ultimate deaths.
7) In recent times a motorist collided with a cat, resulting in the feline's death. A Maldives newspaper reported that the woman who rode the motorcycle had to be treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital, and quite pointlessly, published a photograph of the dead cat lying in the middle of the road.
8) An attitude of harassing cats still persists: just look around the streets and notice the amount of mineral water bottles filled with red liquids, supposedly to scare cats away, although science has shown that cats can hardly see the color red.
9) Now that Male's homes and buildings have been constructed to stories more than their usual ground floor as decades ago, cats now take shelter under parked vehicles such as cars and scooters on Male's streets.
10) If not for the good-hearted owners of cafes and restaurants and various homes who feed the cats, these homeless cats would not be alive today.
11) In recent memory, residents of an island went on a killing spree, complaining that hungry stray cats were slashing open garbage bags in search for scraps of food and in the process dirtying the roads with rubbish spill.
12) A video went viral on Maldives' social media which showed a Maldivian man hanging and dragging a cat with a noose tied around its neck. Viewers said that the cat was seen motionless and therefore it was not clear exactly what caused its death.
These cruel tragedies demonstrate that president-elect Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, when he is sworn in as the next president of Maldives today, November 17, 2023, needs to immediately deliver upon his promise of a cat shelter and vet service - as he had pledged during his tenure as the Mayor of Male'.
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