A Blind Bay family was left shaken after a cat was found with a sock over its head, collapsed and bleeding in the middle of a road.
Cindy Cameron-Cherry said her 15-year-old son was walking with two other boys to one of their houses for a sleepover on Friday, March 7, when the found the tabby cat in the middle of Forest Drive, near the Serene Place intersection.
"There was a dark sock around the cat鈥檚 head and neck," said Cameron-Cherry, noting the cat was bleeding from its front paws and face. "I suspect it was trying to get the sock off its face. It was still alive when my son called me, because he wasn鈥檛 sure what to do."
"He said it was still really shallow breathing. They took the sock off the cat鈥檚 head and鈥� the fur was indented around the neck, so it had to have been there for quite some time and it was obviously smothering the cat."
Cameron-Cherry said the sock had been cut, and the tight end around it's neck.
While on the phone with her son, Cameron-Cherry said her husband was getting ready to head out and go to the boys when the cat stopped breathing.
"It was pretty traumatic for the kids for sure and it was pretty awful," said Cameron-Cherry.
Cameron-Cherry said it was around 10:30 p.m. when her husband arrived.
"He pulled the cat to the side of the road鈥�," said Cameron-Cherry. "It was pretty late it so we didn鈥檛 want to go knocking on doors. I thought I would just post it in case someone is missing their cat and they would know where to find it.
Soon after sharing a post on social media, Cameron-Cherry was advised to contact the RCMP.
"I called the police in the morning and I asked them is that something that I should be calling you guys about and they said, yeah, normally you would call the SPCA, he said, but this looked like there was criminality involved and so he said it was good that I called the police鈥� said Cameron-Cherry, who provided police with photos of the deceased cat.
As of noon on Tuesday, March 11, Cameron-Cherry had received no further communication from police. She had received a private message from someone who'd lost a cat, but it turned out not to be the same one.
The Observer contacted the Salmon Arm RCMP but no one was available to respond before deadline.
Cameron-Cherry said her son is doing OK, but was pretty shaken by the experience.
"I was proud of them for telling one of us to let us know鈥� because they recognized immediately that it wasn鈥檛 OK, that something horrible had happened," said Cameron-Cherry.
"I don鈥檛 know why you would do something so awful 鈥� that was torture right, the cat was tortured and I don鈥檛 know how long the poor thing had been like that."
Anyone wishing to see if it was their cat may contact Cameron-Cherry at 250-517-9529. Anyone with information that may help the RCMP can call the detachment at 250-832-6044.
