It took Grani.lv a whole week to unravel this mystery. The investigation into the mysterious disappearance of the cats led to a shocking discovery and unexpected results.
At the end of October, upon returning home after a week-long vacation, I noticed something unusual. The stray cats were sitting in a tree during the day, which surprised me. I had not seen them do that before. I thought it would be a good idea to buy some food for them since the neighbor who regularly fed them had left for a few months.
Things progressed quickly. I bought cat food a couple of days later, but soon discovered that there was no one to feed in our yard. Four or five cats that used to be constantly visible had disappeared. I went out with food during the day, as well as in the evening and at night. It was only on the third day, around nine in the evening, that I saw a terribly thin and scruffy black cat. It looked extremely frightened and kept looking around. One cat was found, but where were the others?
I waited a couple more days and decided to find out where our cats had gone.
First, I asked the janitor. She also hadn’t seen them, neither alive nor dead. The thing is, it seemed that the day before, they had been exterminating insects in our building. “Could the cats have been poisoned along with them?” I asked the janitor. But if that were the case, we would have found cat corpses, and there were none.
It made no sense to take them to a shelter since all the cats and kittens we have are sterilized.
I turned to a volunteer named Zhanna, who has been rescuing the stray cat colonies in Daugavpils for a long time, with the question of where our cats could have gone. I explained the situation to her. Zhanna thought for a moment. Her first assumption that the cats might have been locked in a basement was not confirmed. However, her second theory: “Could you have foxes appearing?” turned out to be quite plausible. I had indeed seen a fox near my house in the summer, more than once. At that time, I was worried about the cygnets and ducklings (my house is located on the shore of Lake Gubišče). I hadn’t even thought about the cats.
When I started actively asking neighbors about the appearance of foxes near our house, I found eyewitnesses who saw the cats running away from a fox and climbing trees.
Zhanna advised: “There’s only one way: buy a couple of kilograms of chicken necks and throw them near the forest strip or not far from where the fox appears. It will eat, and a full fox won’t touch the cats. You can also buy cheap dog food, meat scraps, pieces of udder — anything raw that the cats don’t eat.”
I thought about it and decided that I probably wouldn’t do that. Feeding a wild animal that may have eaten all the local cats is too much for me.
When this semi-detective story about the disappearance of the stray cats became clear to me, an unexpected turn occurred. I stumbled upon a message from the Daugavpils Society Murrā:
“One can get used to human indifference; in our reality, it is unfortunately not the worst thing. But to understand and accept the conscious cruelty towards a defenseless being? That is beyond comprehension. In one of the neighborhoods of Daugavpils, some moral freak (there's no other way to put it) is shooting cats with pellets. Several reports have already been made to the police. We cannot physically protect all the street cats, so we are currently dealing with the consequences… At the moment, we have a little one in our care, found in terrible condition by one of the locals and taken to the clinic, from where she has already come to us. The five-month-old kitten has several pellets lodged near her spine, resulting in severe neurological disorders.”
And just an hour after reading this message, at 11:30 PM, I heard clear sounds of gunshots (what a coincidence!). There were 5 or 6 in five minutes. I called the police and reported it. They called me back an hour later and said that no one else had reported the shooting at the Leather Factory.
The next day, I asked the press secretary of the State Police about the shooting and the shooter who is shooting at cats with an air gun. I was told:
“The State Police has initiated a criminal case regarding the shooting of cats in Kalkūni. Residents have filed a complaint, and an examination has been appointed.
The report of shooting from a weapon has not been confirmed. The loud noise was likely caused by falling metal. The shooter has not yet been found.”
It seems like I should calm down. But for some reason, I can’t. Perhaps some of our readers heard sounds resembling gunshots on November 13 at 11:30 PM near the Leather Factory and know exactly what it was? Please let us know.
