Every dog may have his day, but in Kyiv cats have just got a bit luckier.
The Housing Committee at the Kyiv City Council has declared the city’s stray cats to be part of the urban ecosystem, and decided to provide the animals with added legal protections.
The declaration, made on Feb. 21, was in response to an electronic petition that asked the city authorities to protect stray cats from trapping and killing. The council now has one month to come up with an action plan to address the concerns expressed in the petition.
The petition appeared on the city council website on Dec. 20, 2016 and collected 10,477 signatures over the next 34 days, passing the threshold of 10,000 signatures required for Kyiv City Council to consider it.
“Kyiv should allow cats to freely live and move in basements, attics (of apartment buildings) and other places of their permanent residence because they perform a very important function of natural pest control – they kill rodents that spread various diseases,” the petition reads.
The petition was posted as a reaction to frequent reports of stray cats being beaten to death, killed or deliberately bricked up inside basements.
Despite Kyiv City Council acknowledging stray cats’ important role in the city’s life, by Feb. 25 a Kyiv volunteer group reported two more abuse cases. In one of them, seven cats living in an apartment building’s basement were found to have been poisoned, in another – a basement with a cat living inside was blocked up with a metal grid.
Kyiv has no city program to help stray animals. Only volunteer organizations and regular Kyivans help the strays: taking them to vets, having them neutered, or finding them a home.
Moreover, there are no state-funded animal shelters in Ukraine. The shelters that do exist are supported by private donations.
Volunteers and animal-friendly communities frequently report cases of cruelty against animals. On Feb. 17, volunteers saved a homeless cat that someone had shot with an air gun in the village Khotyanivka near Kyiv. The cat was named Vasyliy-Syenya, and is now looking for a family. (For more information visit Animal Rescue Group Facebook page)
In another case, a litter of three-month-old kittens was left on a Kyiv street in a cardboard box on Jan. 27, as the nighttime temperature dropped to -20 degrees Celsius. Luckily, the kittens were taken to the Sirius animal shelter, which is now looking for a home for them.
While official statistics on stray animals are not kept, Sirius owner Oleksandra Mezinova estimates that some 2,400 stray dogs and several thousand stray cats live in Kyiv.
The capital is not the only city in the country with a stray problem: a shocking case of animal abuse took place in September in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, when a 18-year-old Liubov Taropina and a 20-year-old Yuriy Hnatiuk posted on social networks a video of them abusing a kitten. In the video, the two throw the kitten into a washing machine, a gas stove, a freezer and eventually – out of a second-floor window. The kitten died three days later.
In December, a court in Lutsk gave Taporina a two-year suspended sentence for animal abuse. Hnatiuk is still awaiting trial.
Animal abuse is a crime in many countries worldwide. In Australia’s Queensland, the maximum penalty for cruelty to animals by an individual is a seven-year prison sentence and a $235,600 fine. If a corporation is found guilty of animal abuse, the fine is $1,178,000.
But in Ukraine, animal abuse is punished with a fine of only Hr 2,400-5,600 ($88-207). And in reality, animal abuse cases are rarely heard in court and abusers go unpunished.
Kyiv animal activists view the Kyiv Council’s ruling as the first step to better protecting the rights of animals in Ukraine.
Volunteers are preparing a new petition on stray dogs’ rights.
