Barangay Bel Air. Makati. Victor Gomez. Starved Cats. Charged with Animal Cruelty. Not Fit for Re-Election.

I thought I was lucky to be a stray in such an upscale community. Some kind ladies from an organization named CARA Welfare had me neutered and were feeding me outside their homes.I even heard that they had an agreement with barangay officia...ls for a "Trap-Neuter-Return" arrangement for cats so everything was going great.... until that dark day in December 2007 when I found myself in a cat trap for the second time.

Hours stretched into days and nobody came to feed me and the other 5 cats who were also trapped like me. Nobody came to even give us a drop of water when the sun beat down on our traps, making them sizzling hot. I grew weak and the last thing I ever saw were cats feebly meowing in the other traps and three (3) others who were already unconscious.

When I came to, a kind lady -one of those from CARA- was gently stroking my head. I overheard her saying softly over and over again that she was sorry for what I had to go through because of the lack of a heart and a conscience of some of her fellow human beings- like the barangay captain who gave orders to trap us and left us there to die.

I later also learned that three of the other trapped cats had gone through slow, horrible deaths and that only three of us survived.

I recovered - physically - as you can probably tell from my photo. But what you can't see is that I still have fears. I have not stopped being a very scared cat so I try to keep close to the house of the kind lady most of the time.

I do not understand much about human talk but I could tell that my lady-rescuer was upset when she heard some months ago that the barangay official who ordered that we be left in the cages to die - was running to be "re-elected"."Re-elected" , that's what she said.

I truly hope "re-elected" means that this man will never get to hurt a living creature again.

Signed,

Toby