Cat feeders in Marbella routinely suffer threats of violence and even death for carrying out their volunteer work, the Spanish Eye can reveal.
It comes after viral video footage emerged this week of a wealthy resident telling a volunteer he would ‘shoot all the cats’ and then ‘take care of her’ afterwards.
The man, believed to be Danish, lives in one of the mansions in the exclusive street in Nueva Andalucia.
But in an unedited version of the video, seen by this newspaper, the episode is actually started by a British man, who pulls up in his BMW to tell the feeder to stop.
The woman, named only as Simona, told the Spanish Eye: ‘He stopped first and was quizzing me and was not very nice.
‘I asked him to speak Spanish and he called me racist, even though this is Spain. He was British.’
The Brit can be heard telling another female volunteer, and Simona’s colleague: ‘You say they’re your cats, if they’re your cats take them home then.’
He said a relative ‘hit one with the car the other night’ and that he ‘had to pay the vet to have it put down.’
He added: ‘I don’t like it because it’s not fair on the cats, they’re running around wild, going into our house… I haven’t seen this before, no where else does this happen.’
The Brit then says ‘why don’t you take them to Triple A?’, to which Simona replies ‘because they’re full!’.
Speaking to the Spanish Eye, Simona said she has been feeding the colony for eight years and never had a complaint until recently.
She explained: ‘My cat colony is not on his side of the street. It’s much further down the street by the roundabout. The cats are always waiting for me and don’t go near his house.
‘I have been going to this place for the past eight years and I never had a problem, because I used to go in the evenings, so nobody saw me there.
‘But now in the daytime, I go at 6.30pm and they see me, so they are complaining.’
She added: ‘I’m not scared of them. There’s another Swedish man, and he was the first one who threatened me. He also said he would shoot the cats.
‘So there have been three men now, I’m not stopping feeding the cats.’
Simona said she has reported the man in the blue top to the police.
‘The police took it seriously, they said they would visit him,’ she said, ‘But I haven’t heard anything from them yet. I did make the denuncia.’
Simona said she went back to feed the cats the next day but brought a male friend with her.
‘One of the guys saw me but he just gave me a middle finger,’ she said.
Brit feeder issues warning
It comes after British expat Henrietta Ross, 36, issued a warning to cat owners and feeders last November, after a group of strays were found brutally killed in Marbella.
She told the Spanish Eye how they were found dead with their heads ‘bashed in from the back’ near Aloha Hills Club.
The bodies were fully intact and were found hugging each other, raising suspicions.
‘It’s not possible for all three to have been run over only on their heads,’ Henrietta explained.
‘When a cat is run over, typically their insides spill out, but their bodies were all intact, and they were found hugging each other, so they must have been placed there like that.’
Adding insult to injury, the kittens were dumped next to an approved cat colony that had been repeatedly threatened and attacked over the previous year – in what Henrietta believed was a sinister message.
‘I was hysterical when I heard the news,’ Henrietta said, ‘I don’t know how people can be so cruel. The mother of the kittens was meowing and crying all night, obviously she couldn’t find her babies, it was absolutely heartbreaking.’
The alleged attack followed a campaign of abuse suffered by Henrietta and other volunteers who help control and look after the local stray population.
They manage a cat colony near to the Aloha Hills Club urbanisation, leaving food out and capturing and spaying cats in the hope of finding them homes.
‘We are simply trying to help,’ she explained, ‘we get them spayed and try to home as many as possible, I got 25 cats homed last year, I’m really proud of the work we do.’
But Henrietta, who is four months pregnant, claimed a squatter in the complex has repeatedly threatened to harm the cats and allegedly admitted to running one over on purpose last year.
‘He says vile things to us, making threats,’ she said, ‘last year a kitten was run over near the complex and he later admitted to it saying we had forced him to do it or some nonsense.’
Henrietta said the stretch of road where they found the kittens has no cameras.
‘I think the person who did this knows that,’ she said.
‘We have seen people speeding up on that stretch in a bid to run the cats over.
‘There was recently a fire right by the colony which some people fear may have been set deliberately to drive out the animals.’
The expectant mother said she was also berated by a neighbour for feeding kittens on the outskirts of the complex.
Henrietta added: ‘Spain is one of the worst places for animals, just look at the treatment of horses and donkeys, there’s such little regard for them.
‘When I told a local about the kittens being killed he told me ‘this is normal’.
‘He said people throw kittens in bags with rocks in and dump them in a lake, and when he and his friends go swimming it’s not uncommon to see bags with dead kittens in.’
Henrietta, who has three cats herself, says she is simply too scared to let them go outside.
She warned fellow cat owners on the coast: ‘Keep your cats inside unless all your neighbours are friendly to animals or you are sure it is safe. You just need to be really aware.
‘I am moving and I will also be putting air tags on my cats and building them an outdoor area where they can roam safely.
‘And for anyone involved in cat colonies, make sure you hide the bowls of food so they are not in plain sight, or they may become a target.
‘Unfortunately, many people in Spain just see cats and all animals as pests that need to be eradicated.’
Henrietta said she does not have enough evidence to take the killing of the kittens to the police.
What does the law say?
Last April, Marbella town hall approved a programme for the management of feline colonies in the municipality, regulating the feeding and protection of the animals.
In announcing the decision, it said that ‘we must care for those animals that do not have an owner.’
Marbella launched an online system that allows volunteers to register cat colonies, which will then be approved by the local council.
A statement explained: ‘The Health Department will then assess whether the site complies with the law and with a series of requirements.
‘Colonies may not be located on private property – unless authorised by a residents’ association – nor at the entrance to schools or parks.
‘If necessary, new locations will be sought and, once a colony is authorised, two people (a primary and a substitute) will be appointed to feed the cats.
‘They will receive an official card with their photo, name and a QR code linking to the decree signed by the Town Hall.’
However, one volunteer told the Spanish Eye that Marbella has a backlog of sites waiting to be approved.
Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.
