NEW YORK — A grisly discovery in a Queens neighborhood this weekend has the community worried. Indeed, more than a dozen dead cats were found in a vacant lot full of weeds and trees.
Rescue teams called it one of the most heartbreaking things they had ever seen, as 14 cats were found on the other side of a chain-link fence on 102nd Street in Howard Beach. Each of the cats was dead, and the images of the animals were so disturbing that our sister network NBC New York he hid them.
“The little baby hanging out was right here,” said Meagan Licari of Puppy Kitty, New York, who was called to view the location over the weekend. “His head was stuck in the branches. So I think people were throwing them away and that one just didn’t survive.”
His theory is that someone was throwing cats over the fence, but what really happened is a mystery. Licari called the police and the ASPCA, and now the two are investigating.
The cats were of different ages, according to Licari, of different breeds, and appeared to be in different states of decay.
“That’s exactly what we found: who knows if they have another place, how they trap these cats, what they do to them,” Licari said. “It’s one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen, especially innocent little babies. I don’t know how you do something like that. to see it thrown away like rubbish is sad.”
Stunned neighbors also try to help.
“We were trying to figure it out. Nobody saw anything. I even tried to look at my cameras at night…it’s hard to see that far down the block,” neighbor Dominick DeVito said.
The ASPCA will perform necropsies on all 14 cats to determine how they died. Licari hopes he will reveal crucial information that will help the police put a stop to what is happening.
This is the second horrific case of animal abuse and cruelty in Queens in less than a week. Stray cats with horrific and life-threatening injuries have appeared in Richmond Hill, and rescuers say the felines may have been tortured.
One of the cats is a stray that is often seen on 102 Avenue. In late February, local rescuers noticed the animal’s paw shaking and bleeding as it lay on the sidewalk one night . Further examination revealed that all four legs had devastating injuries, some so severe that the bones were completely exposed.
Things got even more disturbing and mysterious when two more cats were found with identical injuries, with a huge red flag showing the injuries were no accident.
Licari said at the time that he contacted the police and was in contact with a detective. So far there are no leads, but the vet treating the cats believes they suffered chemical burns.
One of the cats taken to the anima hospital did not survive.