Road death pet was ‘ dumped like trash’
AN ANGRY pet owner has lashed out at Townsville City Council after staff took her dead cat to the dump after it was hit by a car.
Louise Marry has spoken out about her grief and anger over the council’s “insensitive” actions following her cat Bella’s escape and eventual death last week.
She said she took to Facebook about her missing cat last Monday and another user responded, telling her they had seen it on the side of the road.
But on arriving at the scene on the Wednesday, she found the council had already cleared away the road.
Ms Marry admitted Bella should not have been out of the house, but said the council should have checked the microchip to see if the cat had an owner before dumping her “like trash”.
“She shouldn’t have been out, but I don’t accept that they just threw her in the trash,” Ms Marry said.
“I got out there ( to the place on the road where she was told Bella had been hit by a car) and she was gone. So I rang council and they said she’d gone to the dump.
“I can’t imagine why they would treat my cat like waste, it’s very insensitive, I can’t even believe it.”
Ms Marry said she would be campaigning to have the council’s policy changed so that no pet owner had to go through it again.
“This is their policy. People make the assumption that when their animal dies it gets scanned, she was chipped, I didn’t ring the council because I thought I would have heard from them if they had found her.
“I will have this policy changed so that they get scanned. Those scanners aren’t expensive. All they have to do is get the number and they’ve got all the information there, “she said.
Ms Marry said that if a pet was run over, the minimum that should be done was to ID the animal if it was chipped, not just take it to the dump.
Infrastructure Services Committee chairman Mark Molachino said it was sad to lose a pet, but it wasn’t possible to track down all the owners of animals hit by cars.
“We all know how upsetting it is to lose a pet,” he said.
“It’s an unfortunate fact that council’s maintenance crews have to remove dead animals from roads every day.
“In many cases it just isn’t possible to track down an owner. But where an ID can easily be found, staff will put in place a process that allows them to notify an owner.
“The death of any pet on the roads is a reminder to all owners that the safest place for an animal is at home.”