Ministry requests street cats disappearance investigation

The Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Welfare has issued a request to the local authorities to launch an investigation into the sudden disappearances of street cats.

This concern stems from the Feline Welfare Organization (FWO), where they’ve stated the following issues:

- Disappearance of street cats

- No evidence of cadavers of street cats on the roads, leading to questions of whether they have died of natural causes or have been killed

The ministry's media official told Mihaaru News that no agency has come forward to report any of these issues to them directly.

However, this overarching issue has come to the ministry's attention and they have filed a case with Police on the 23rd of this June.

Police are yet to comment on the matter.

The founder of the FWO Ahmed Vision was in talks with Mihaaru last week and stated that they noticed the disappearance of street cats around the tail end of March this year.

According to him, any violence, poisoning, or illness in the cats would have shown visible symptoms. Instead, they are simply disappearing with no clear cause.

The area in front of Marrybrown in Male' is said to have had the highest density of street cats, with a count of 80 to 90 cats during the month of Ramadan. Now, the number has fallen to 15 to 18 cats. Since the steep drop in the cat count, felines that didn’t frequent the area have been seen, with 30 cats congregating in the area during feeding time, said Vision.

The industrial area is noted to have around 15 cats, with around two to three cats frequenting the area around the King Salman Mosque.