Investigation launched after cat allegedly drugged and abused, images sent to owner on social media

Courtesy: Facebook

A Duncan cat is back home and safe Tuesday night after being subjected to what appears to have been a particularly malicious form of abuse.

Gigi, a one-year-old calico cat, managed to get out of Sharline Haglund’s Duncan home on Monday night when she appears to have been taken.

Then at around 3 a.m. Tuesday, her teenage daughter started receiving disturbing videos via the social media app Snapchat.

“My daughter at 3 o’clock in the morning or something got Snapchats from these people,” said Haglund.

“They were sending pictures that they were drugging the cat, that they were shaving her hair.”

Haglund says Gigi was then thrown out a window and left to fend for herself on a chilly November night.

In the morning, she went to inform the local RCMP about what happened and they’ve launched an investigation.

“It’s like cyberbullying too,” said Haglund.

“To be taunting somebody when you have their animal and taunting them about what you’re doing to them and thinking its funny.”

Haglund’s says some of those she believes are responsible, former friends of her her daughter, have been spoken to by police.

On Tuesday night, she and her daughter were out looking for Gigi near the Sherman Road Soccer Park but couldn’t find her.

Soon after, a woman posted a message on social media saying that she and a friend had been walking to the corner store when Gigi came running up to them and meowing like crazy.

“I quickly knelt down and put her in my hoodie to warm up,” she wrote.

“She is indeed shaved and very shaky, she also has 666 (written) in her ear.”

In an interview after Gigi was back home, Sharline Haugland says she and her daughter are happy to have her back but still shaken but what unfolded over the past 24 hours.

She says she will bring the cat to the veterinarian’s on Wednesday for a full check-up and to see if the cat was indeed drugged and, if so, what the long-term effects could be.

Haugland and her daughter also wanted to thank the community for all the support they’d received.

“It’s amazing how many people reached out and, on their own time, had been looking for Gigi, it’s really heartwarming how people stepped it up.”

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