MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. -- Martin County Sheriff’s Office agricultural detectives are working to determine who tortured at least six cats, three of which died as a result of their injuries.
All of the injured, feral cats have been discovered on 175th Court in Indiantown.
Nikki Parker reported the possible abuse and cruelty to the sheriff’s office.
Her family takes care of many of the feral cats in the area. “My grandparents have taken in 11,” she says. “They get them fixed and make sure they have shelter and water.”
She knows not all of her neighbors are pleased about this. Many do not like cats, she says.
But, what she does not know is who would go to the level of hurting and killing the cats.
In October, she noticed one of the cats had a seriously injured leg. She says it looks like someone took a knife or machete to the leg.
“Then a second cat was hurt. Then a third cat was hurt,” Parker said.
Finally, by January, she started finding dead cats.
“They’ve been shot or pretty much mutilated,” Parker said.
She described one with what appeared to be a gun shot wound and cut off leg, another with a chest sliced open, and a pregnant cat with its back cut open.
Its kittens, she says, were outside of the cat's body and dead.
“The last cat, the mother, I was distraught. I was sick for a whole day after seeing that.” She buried the dead cats herself.
Sheriff William Snyder is urging people in that community to come forward with information on who is doing this.
“Torturing them with some kind of machete-like instrument, it’s off the cart. We want to find who is doing this and put a stop to it,” Snyder said.
