A grocery store owner from Ashdod was convicted in the Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court of torture, cruelty and animal abuse according to the Animal Abuse Law, after he captured a cat and put it in a freezer for about 14 hours. The sentence will be given at a later date.
The indictment, filed by the Agriculture Ministry, claims the defendant captured the cat in a trap in March 2023 in the evening. The next day at six a.m., the grocery owner placed the trap and the cat in the ice cream freezer, where the cat was kept until eight p.m. when it was released by a woman who arrived at the scene.
The judge rejected the defendant's claim that he was unaware his actions amounted to abuse. "It is difficult to accept the claim that a person who puts a cat in a trap for 24 hours, when 14 of those hours are in an operating freezer with low temperatures, is unaware that this is torture, cruelty and abuse," reasoned the judge. "This type of case speaks for itself and does not need an explanation. It can be learned from the circumstances that the accused was aware the cat was suffering from his actions."
During the trial, the judge questioned whether the freezer worked, what was its temperature, and also whether the defendant left a source of air so the cat could breathe. The judge explained: "The ice cream freezer was running and the temperature inside it was low according to the woman's testimony, who testified that when the defendant took the trap with the cat out of the freezer in her presence, half of the trap was covered with ice and the cat's legs were also frozen. The defendant confirmed that he saw ice on the trap, although he later changed his testimony in court. The claim that the cat's feet were frozen was presented to the accused during his interrogation, and he did not deny it, but only asked to apologize."
The defendant said he and his business suffered for more than a year because of the cat, who spent many hours in the grocery store. "Sometimes I would come in the morning and find half-eaten food, sometimes it would defecate in the grocery store." According to him, he tried to keep the cat away from the store for a long time with black pepper but to no avail.
The judge wrote in the verdict that "even in his testimony in court, he stated that the customers shy away from the cat, they avoided coming in when the cat was there, it hurts the image of the business, the employees are afraid of the cat and especially his wife was very afraid of her."
According to the verdict: "The defendant decided to trap the cat to release her as far away as possible. He put a sausage in the trap and trapped her, but he was afraid to lift the trap because the cat went berserk, so he went home and left the cat in the trap." The next morning, he realized that "It wouldn't be pleasant if the cat growled near the customers" so the defendant placed her in the empty operating ice cream freezer. He claimed he didn't know it was working because it was unplugged and thought it would quiet her down.
Dr. Chen Hennig, director of the Animal Welfare Division in the Agriculture Ministry's Veterinary Services, stated that the cat was trapped, howled and ran amok, which led the defendant to put her in the freezer.
"Having the cat in the freezer at a very low temperature, with her feet resting on the ice, constitutes an act of torture and ill-treatment of a helpless animal," she said. According to Dr. Hennig, this prolonged duration in the freezer caused severe physical damage to the cat, which led to frostbite on its legs until they froze like ice, a process that tortured the cat and caused it immense pain, beyond the capture itself.
Attorney Uri Sirota, chief prosecutor and legal advisor to the Agriculture Ministry, added: "We show zero tolerance for animal abuse. Such abuse is a violation of the law, and more than that, constitutes a fundamentally wrong act from a moral and ethical perspective. The accused committed extremely serious crimes against a stray cat, a helpless animal, and these acts indicate a dim sense of morality. We intend to request severe punishment that will reflect the severity of his acts. We at the Agriculture Ministry will continue our work to bring the perpetrators to justice to reduce this phenomenon."