Guest-workers coming to Moscow feed on dogs, cats and pigeons

A family residing in the city of Poltava, Ukraine, has been sentenced to up to six months in prison for killing 15 cats and using their meat for food. Some witnesses on the case said that the family was also selling the meat for cakes.

Photo: Guest-workers coming to Moscow feed on dogs, cats and pigeons

Investigators determined that the family couple had been catching and killing cats in their neighborhood for years. The slaughterers had killed and eaten 15 felines in total, or at least that was what 51-year-old Nikolai Penkovsky and his wife said.

Witnesses said that the couple was selling the cat meat to various outlets dealing with sales of meat dumplings, cakes and pancakes.

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The cat eaters were arrested in December 2007, but were later released in their own custody.

Bones and feline skins were found in the perpetrators’ apartment.

In Russia, incidents of cruelty towards animals occur on a regular basis. A 25-year-old citizen of Vietnam was arrested last week in Moscow for killing 50 pigeons. The man had a handcart with him, in which he was carrying the bodies of 50 pigeons, a bird net and some grain. The young man testified that he had killed all the birds for food.

A 41-year-old man from the Kaliningrad region of Russia killed and ate a bullterrier last week. The man caught and strangled the dog with the help of a rope. When he brought the dog home, he boiled the dead animal and ate it.

A chain of Chinese restaurants has been recently closed in Moscow. The restaurants were selling the meat of slaughtered mongrel dogs as beef. Eye-witnesses said that they saw employees of one of the restaurants in the back entrance carrying sacks with something moving and squeaking inside.

Psychologists acknowledge that it is hard to describe such people as adequate individuals. “When a person has a choice of either buying food at a grocery store or killing an animal for food and when he or she chooses the second option, it testifies to aggressive conduct. They used to eat dogs and cats during war times, when people had to do that to survive. Nowadays, such people need psychological help. A human being willing to slaughter a pet can vent their aggression on other people,” a psychologist said.

Indeed, over 85 percent of serial killers, including cannibals, used to torture animals before they started killing people.

Source: agencies