The NYPD’s Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad is looking into a cluster of seven stray cats found dead in a South Brooklyn backyard. Local cat rescuers and state Sen. Steve Chan said they’ve received more reports of cats and other animals turning up dead — and worry the cats are being intentionally poisoned.
Police said officers recovered the remains of seven cats from a home near 86th Street and 16th Avenue, and have sent them for necropsy to further investigate the cause of death.
The seven cats recovered by police were part of a colony Bath Beach resident Albert Vincent Berto said he’s been feeding twice a day for years. He said three weeks ago, fewer and fewer cats started showing up to their feedings. Then, after only one showed up earlier this week, he said he decided on Tuesday to open up the deck in his backyard, where the cats would sleep. That’s when he found seven dead cats, all bleeding from the nose and mouth, Berto said.
“There was so many of them. They were all laying next to each other. It was so sad,” he said. “I've been up for three days straight now. All I see is the dead cats. That's all I see in my head.”
Local animal rescuers Dinamarie Fioto, who runs the St. Vincent Feline Rescue, and Reeva Grammatikopoulos, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, said they rushed to help, hoping there would be live cats they could help save. Instead, Fioto pulled the deceased cats out from the deck, one at a time. She said their bodies, bleeding from their noses and mouths, showed signs of having suffered.
“To physically see it is to understand how bad this was,” Fioto said. “It's just, you know, you have these animals slowly suffering for an hour at a time… It's just not right.”
Berto said he’s received complaints from neighbors about the cats, and believes someone intentionally poisoned them. Grammatikopoulos said she believes it could have been rat poison.
“ Seeing the blood coming out of the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth, you know that it's an anticoagulant 'cause the, the cat's bleeding internally. There's no clot,” she said. “So it's a type of rodenticide that actually has an anticoagulant in it.”
Chan said he agrees the number of cats dead points to intentionality.
“ I'm a retired police officer of 27 years, and I know how some people can get with the stray cats, they dislike them,” he said. “I know for a fact that somebody who is really trying to poison the rats will put them in a cat-proof dispenser. When you just lay it on a pan out in an open lot, you're poisoning every animal that comes across that poison. So this is intentional. I think somebody's got it out for cats.”
In a post on social media, Chan asked for the public’s help in solving the unexplained cat deaths. He added that there have been reports of stray cats as well as pets turning up dead in two other locations in his district: near 63rd Street from Ninth to 12th avenues, and in the area of West Sixth Street and Avenue S.
Community cats are protected under state law, according to the city website. It is illegal to torture or injure animals, engage in aggravated cruelty, and poison or attempt to poison them.
Berto said he's been distraught ever since the discovery of the dead cats, including his favorite, Mr. Wetherby.
“ It gave me purpose. It gave me something to get up in the morning for,” he said. “ I'm just bewildered. I'm just, I feel lost. I'm so lost right now. … I only seen, right now, like four or five cats now in my yard. And if it wasn't for them, if they weren't here right now, I wouldn't even get out of bed anymore.”
