OAK HARBOR, Wash. — A 25-year-old Oak Harbor man has been arrested and is accused of animal cruelty after he brought in his two dead cats to a vet clinic.
On February 19, the Oak Harbor Police Department was called to Best Friends Veterinary Clinic for a report of two deceased 10-month-old cats that had died under “suspicious circumstances.”
Police say the cats’ owner brought them in after he said he found them injured and unresponsive.
The cats belonged to his girlfriend, and after she left for work that day, the suspect said he heard a crash and then the sound of cats “squealing, gagging and struggling,” the Island County Sheriff’s Office said.
The sheriff’s office said an initial examination showed that both cats had “rolled pieces of a foil cat toy lodged in their throats.”
The examining vet thought that that was an unusual coincidence. The vet who did the necropsy, a pet autopsy, noted that there was blood in the abdominal cavity as well as “fractures and lacerations to the liver, hemorrhages on the hearts, spleens, kidneys, lungs, and brains, all indicators of blunt force trauma,” the sheriff’s office said.
The doctor described that the injuries to the liver would have had to have been caused by “high velocity or high force and directed at the abdomen, causing significant and severe damage,” the sheriff’s office said.
The suspect was arrested on March 26 after the sheriff’s office got the necropsy report from the veterinary office.
He was booked into Island County Jail for two counts of first-degree animal cruelty.
The investigation is ongoing.