A local family is still trying to come to terms with losing their treasured pet cat after a council officer and a vet failed to find the feline’s microchip and ethuthanised him.
Patrick, a rare Bengal cat, had an exotic coat that made him something of a celebrity in Port Broughton, with many locals asking to take a photo of him.
“They didn’t know who I was, but they all knew Patrick,” his owner Drew Shepard told www.20304050.best.
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Shepard, a police officer, still finds it hard to believe the local vet couldn’t distinguish Patrick from a stray cat.
“You’d know that this wasn’t a normal cat,” Shepard said.
“The annoying thing; they said they trapped him and he was taken immediately to the vet and then euthanised within the hour.
“If they’d have just put in ‘Bengal cat’ (into the system) it would have come up with my address; done. And Patrick would have been returned.
“It’s crazy that there might not be any consequences for the vet.”
Shepard’s daughter Eleanor initially bought Patrick as a Father’s Day gift, and said his death was unnecessary.
“I think the vet failed in their duty of care to animals. This could’ve been avoided,” Eleanor said.
The Bengal breed is the result of crossing an Asian leopard with domestic cats. They are in high demand with a value of over $3000.
Next year, importing the breed into Australia will be banned, due to the risks it poses to the country’s native wildlife.
Patrick was kept as an indoor pet, but as he grew, the Shepard family thought he should have the chance to experience life outdoors.
“He would meow like a human pretending to meow. He was incredibly loud,” Shepard said.
“He would just meow the house down, so we slowly started to introduce him to going outside, and he was very good, always came back.”
When Patrick failed to return home, Shepard door-knocked nearby homes and posted on social media to no avail. He then called the local council, who told him they’d caught two feral cats.
“I contacted the council and they said that they have got traps out, but they only caught two feral cats this morning. And she said definitely not Patrick, because he’s a celebrity in town because he’s quite unusual,” Shepard said.
Shepard feared a tourist had taken his family’s cat until the next day when he received a call from the council as he was driving his daughter to Adelaide. He was informed Patrick had been euthanised after being trapped less than 150m from home.
Patrick’s microchip wasn’t found until after he‘d been put down.
“They outsourced to Port Pirie, which is where the failings lie, in that he essentially just caught the cat, apparently scanned it with a scanner, didn’t come up, filled in a form, gave it to the vet in Port Pirie, who euthanised Patrick,” Shepard said.
Barunga West Council who outsourced a Port Pirie council worker has since apologised to the Shepard family, and paid them $4000 in compensation.
“They’ve been honest and open, come forward and said, look, we’ll give you everything you want and, to assist you in any way they can, and they have been true to their word,” Shepard said of the council.
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