Hong Kong: Porsche is a shop cat. She lives in a pharmacy in Hong Kong. She is a tabby cat as you can see. It’s not clear what happened but a five-year-old boy suffered a 5 mm scratch behind his ear. He was in the shop with his mother. CCTV footage did not provide any evidence that Porsche scratched the boy. It doesn’t show him doing any harm at all apparently. But…
The boys mother came back to the store and made a complaint. She called the police and paramedics to attend to her boy’s scratch. The next day she went back to the pharmacy accompanied by an officer from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) to take away Porsche for quarantine which is standard procedure under Hong Kong’s rabies ordinance. This is similar to what might have happened in America.
However, when the news got around about what had happened people power stepped up to the mark. They started a petition online which gathered more than 70,000 signatures. The storekeeper was not willing to give up Porsche for quarantine. She was probably worried and rightly so about her cat’s welfare. You never know what might happen. She thought she might never see her cat again. A regular customer at the pharmacy spoke up for Porsche’s character saying: “if you don’t annoy her, she will never attack or injure anyone.”
When the authorities came to pick her up and take away she was not at the shop; apparently suffering from ‘stress’ caused by the incident. The AFCD officer said that he would be back on Monday to pick up the cat.
Porsche’s owner took her cat to a private veterinary clinic for observation on Monday so she was not picked up by the AFCD. Apparently she wasn’t eating and even refused drinking water. I wonder whether this was a ploy by her owner to avoid having to hand over her cat to the authorities. I feel sure that it was and it was a good idea because the authorities relented and allowed Porsche to remain at the private veterinary clinic for the duration of the usual quarantine period.
The petition put some pressure upon the AFCD which combined with Porsche’s owner determination to take charge of the situation and retain possession over her cat resulted in a good outcome from the cat’s perspective. A sensible outcome and I feel sure that Porsche will sail through the quarantine period and come through it with a clean bill of health.
Source: South China Morning Post.
A very wise thought. Thanks.