14 DAY TRIAL // Police officers in China have recently saved as many as 500 cats from being killed and served as “savory” dishes at various restaurants across the country.
Apparently, these neglected felines were rescued quite by chance, meaning that the police officers who found them only intended to perform a routine check on the truck that was transporting them.
The driver tried to keep the police from having a closer look at his truck, and argued that he was merely transporting some rabbits.
However, once the cages in the back of the truck were uncovered, the police came face to face with quite a lot of cats all piled up on top of one another.
“The driver said it was a full load of rabbit,” officer Sun Hai explained.
“But after we instructed him to uncover the load we were shocked to find a full load of living cats,” he went on to say.
According to Daily Mail, the felines were both hungry and terrified, seeing how the people who shoved them into the tiny cages in which they were found did not provide them with any food and even injured some of them.
Some of these cats were not even given the “courtesy” of being placed in a cage.
Thus, they were simply thrown inside burlap sacks and were having serious trouble breathing through whatever small holes they managed to find.
Once the animals were rescued, they were given food and water. Later on, the cats were taken to an animal rescue center at Tangzhang County, where veterinarian technicians and volunteers are to make sure their injuries are properly looked after.
The truck transporting these cats was intercepted by police officers in Xuzhou, eastern China's Jiangsu Province, yet its driver refused to offer any information about when and where these cats ended up in cages and burlap sacks.
In order to rescue them, the police officers had to buy them from the truck's driver. Thus, prior to allowing them to come close to the cages, the man demanded that he be paid ₤350 (€436 / $565).