Proceedings against strangers will be filed following the lawsuit filed at the Lagada police station in Thessaloniki, by an animal welfare representative, for abuse of a pet. The complaint concerns the mutilation of a cat on its three legs by human hands.

The orange cat has been under the care of the veterinarian Kyriakos Agathagelidis for a few days and will soon go back to the surgery to undergo an operation for the placement of prosthetic limbs, in order to be able to stand on his feet again.

Speaking to the Athenian Macedonian News Agency, Mr. Agathagelides stated that, when the injured cat was brought to his clinic a week ago, it was almost deformed and at first he believed that the cuts had been caused by a traffic accident, but the wounds were so special that he did not they matched what he has encountered in his years of work.

“Some wounds are, in several cases, from crushing or traffic accidents. ‘Others involve injuries from other animals, usually dogs and traps. In this case I found that the cuts had been made with a sharp object. The point of the cut was straight, such we can’t make incisions with a scalpel either. I sent the photos to professors at the University of Karditsa so that they could evaluate the case with their experience and they confirmed my unpleasant finding that the injury was caused by a person,” he said.

He notes that three legs have been amputated and the fourth, however, is also seriously injured.

“There will be an operation, implants will be inserted and prosthetic limbs will be placed on top of them. At this stage we are trying to protect him from secondary infections. We already submitted him yesterday to a long operation, we will also do a CT scan in two weeks to let’s see what condition his bones are in.”

The cat is, as those who take care of it say, extremely cooperative and very patient. In fact, they gave him the name of the mythical god, patron of the disabled, Hephaestus.