Dubai cracks down on cruelty to animals

Increasing incidents of abuse are cause for concern, official says. Incidents of cruelty and abuse towards animals must be reported so that they can be controlled, said a civic body official.Dubai Municipality takes a serious view of such incidents and, where required, will refer such cases to the police, said Adil Al Badri, head of the animal welfare unit of Dubai Municipality."Abuse or cruelty is totally unacceptable, and if we find it has happened, we will refer such an incident to the police," he said. Recent incidents of animal abuse have been causing concern among animal welfare organisations and also pet owners.Al Barsha resident Alison Caldwel was terrified to find her cat covered in blood around a week ago. Much to her horror, she found the cat had not wounded itself but had been shot."When I took her to the vet and got the X-rays, I was shocked to learn that he had been shot 12 times with an air rifle. There are pellets around the spine, also around the lungs; it seems someone actually trapped him," said Caldwel.Caldwel, who wants to report the matter to the police, feels that all incidents of abuse should be reported so that people become aware and those who engage in cruelty know the consequence of such activity."There are a lot of incidents we come across. Shooting cats with air rifles is very common, we get a lot of those. Recently there was one that had five pellets. Now, the case of Mickey is shocking, it was shot 12 times and it seems the cat was physically held," said Lesley Muncey, chairperson, Feline Friends.Apart from animals being tortured, there are cases where owners abandon their pets or do not feed them properly. "During summer, cases of pets being abandoned increase. We get close to 20 calls every week regarding those. People abandon pets, maybe because they get bored of them, or are going for holidays, or sometimes even leaving the country," said Muncey.