This respectable-looking septuagenarian from Brehat, with his brick-colored jacket and his big striped tie, does not lead far at the helm. “I’m upset,” he said. It’s a hunter and pest trapper since 1988. A year ago, he trapped a stray cat “very thin with tumors on his head” in a cage by luring him with a piece of chicken… A neighbor surprised him shooting the animal with his .22 long rifle carbine then sees him throw the body into the sea.
“Acts of cruelty”, are indignant the associations for the defense of animals, civil parties. “He was sick,” defends the killer. “He had Leucosis, AIDS in cats”. “What do you know? It’s a wet finger expertise, it would have taken a blood test to find out sir”.
The defendant specifies that he shot the trapped animal because a veterinarian had advised him to euthanize it, so that it does not transmit the disease… “If I had buried it, we could have had contamination on the ground with the worms all that.
I threw it in the sea because gulls don’t catch AIDS from cats…
Hundreds of stray cats on the island
In reality, behind this story, there is also the problem of the proliferation of cats on the island of Bréhat which is raised here. There would be hundreds of them wandering the island, even thousands…
A real plague. The birds are all killed by cats in Bréhat, argues the defense lawyer, himself Bréhatin.
“What is the town hall doing?” asks the president? She is aware of the problem but struggles to find solutions… “My client is not guilty. He acted as he should have acted. A rifle shot or euthanasia, it’s the same thing. It was not a pet cat but a wild cat.”
Three months suspended sentence required
The prosecutor believes that “the defendant clears himself with the town hall”. She is asking for a three-month suspended sentence, the withdrawal of the hunting license for three years and a ban on keeping an animal for five years.
“In all this business I have the impression that my client is the turkey of the farce !” regrets the defense lawyer.
The decision will be made on June 15.