Auckland resident, Gavin Wilkinson, posted up a rather lovely cat skin for auction and it sold on Thursday for NZ$70 (about AU$59).
Described as a “beautifully marked wild cat skin”, the auction has some worried that it may have actually been someone’s poor ginger tabby cat.
All cats in New Zealand are introduced, so they fall into one of three categories: companion cats, stray cats or feral cats. They’re all the same species though, so it’s difficult to really tell the difference between a stray and feral cat.
Stray cats are still protected under New Zealand’s Animal Welfare Act, so the SPCA (New Zealand’s Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals) has launched an investigation into the sale of the skin.
In Gavin’s defense, as noted in the ad, he caught the cat “eating my chickens, pheasants and who knows what else!”
This wouldn’t be the first time that a dead cat was sold on Trade Me. Earlier this year a stuffed road kill cat proved more profitable than the cat skin and sold for nearly NZ$1000.
My advice, lock up your moggys. Not just for the sake of native wildlife but now there’s a price on their head, and as the saying goes: there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Image: Trade Me
