The City Council of Puerto de la Cruz has made the decision to immediately cease the public activity of the La Rosaleda Cat Protection Association. A thoughtful and decided measure with the consensus of the presidency of the private center in question, whose current situation makes it impossible to safely care for any animal that may enter the center.
The report on which this decision is based detects veterinary, health, environmental and urban breaches. An accumulation of insurmountable circumstances in the short term, in facilities that according to the report are obsolete and that could become a source of infection for animals.
From the Department of Animal Welfare, a request for municipal protection was received in May by the protector, residing in the municipality, who declared that she was going through a very complicated health situation. In the request, she warned of the death of 46 cats in three months as a result of multiple infections that, despite all the efforts made, could not be controlled.
For this reason and under the presidency of Idaira Esther González, an investigation process was initiated by the Consistory and in which the president of the Council of Veterinary Colleges of the Canary Islands and president of the Tenerife College of Veterinarians participated, together with the technicians Municipal Environment and Health, the Department of Community Welfare and the Local Police, in addition to the Seprona Civil Guard unit.
During it, the association apparently managed to respond to the serious problem raised at the beginning, managing to curb the number of deaths that were occurring.
End of the process
The action, which ends this process with the cessation of public activity, allows them to continue with the one that already exists with the cats that are in the center, always with the aim of ensuring the dignity and well-being of the people who are within it.
After this declaration by the municipality after exhaustive analysis of the facilities, it realizes the due compliance that must be given to the existing ordinances and laws, remembering that animal abandonment is a crime punishable by imprisonment. For this reason, in order to prosecute this type of infraction, which the protector assures has been occurring outside its facilities for many years, police surveillance will be intensified in the vicinity.
Similarly, the case will be raised to higher authorities and a work table will be created with the areas involved, which will advise the association at all levels in order to be able to recover its public activity in the near future, if it so considers.
