Cat owners want answers; say roaming dogs killed their pets in Santa Rosa

Two family members are heartbroken right after they say their cats have been brutally killed on their possess residence in central Santa Rosa Friday by two free-roaming dogs.

Matt Malik and J. Mullineaux reported that at about 5 p.m. they and a neighbor kicked and punched the two puppies, explained as pit bull-mixes, just after the canines pushed by the couple’s gate and attacked their cat.

They stated they attempted to preserve Dale, a male with gray and white shorter hair and green eyes, but they could not get the dogs to let him go.

“We are fairly bruised up just after striving to struggle the pet dogs,” Mullineaux stated. “The issue I can not get out of my brain is the brutality of the attack.

“They have been lightning quickly,” Malik mentioned later.

The few claimed Saturday night time that they are devastated by the attack and experienced been crying and hadn’t eaten due to the fact it transpired.

In accordance to the pet homeowners, the dogs ended up unfastened in the neighborhood for about two several hours Friday.

Very first they attacked Bel, a male orange and white quick-haired domestic tabby, chasing him from the driveway by means of the breezeway and into the yard, stated Alan Butler, a 26-yr house owner with his wife, Margaret, in the Grace Travel tract in close proximity to the neighborhood Proctor Terrace.

“It was pretty terrible and we had been rather helpless to end them,” Butler stated. “We ended up in my wife’s artwork studio and we had been concerned to intervene because of the accidents we listened to people have been given from pit bulls. We viewed them get rid of our cat and then they performed with it,” Butler reported. “They rather considerably tore him aside.”

Immediately after the canine still left, he said he ran out to warn men and women who were being out walking their puppies on Grace Push, such as his neighbor, a female in her 90s, who was walking her “teeny, very small pet dog,” he mentioned.

Butler then saw the dogs chasing a donkey inside a fence, “but apparently he was much too large for them,” he mentioned.

Soon after that the puppies ongoing to roam the community and then attacked Dale, in accordance to the residents’ accounts. Neighbors experienced presently named Sonoma County Animal Solutions, and an officer was on his way from Sonoma, Butler explained.

Dale’s entrepreneurs claimed they rushed him a veterinary healthcare facility. The cat was nonetheless hanging on, but when at the medical center he “only lasted a minute,” Mullineaux stated.

A person resident of the area was capable to seize the dogs in the yard of a further neighbor and delivered them to the Animal Providers officer, Andy O’Brien, after he arrived, Malik mentioned.

Bel, 13, was a person of a pair of cats that the Butlers’ son, Elliot, experienced raised. The two have been named for a band referred to as Belle and Sebastian, Butler said. Elliot nonetheless life in Santa Rosa and visits usually.

Dale had been with Malik and Mullineaux for 15 several years, and they introduced him with them when they moved to Santa Rosa and into a 1951 vintage bungalow, which they restored.

“He was these kinds of a beautiful cat,” Malik said. “People would appear about and hope to see Dale. Just an approachable, sweet cat. As soon as you have an outdoor cat they don’t want to arrive back in. But at least we were ready to get him in in the course of the nights. This all happened just right before we could get him in for the evening. It was just a massive tragedy.”

The identify of the dogs’ operator was not quickly readily available and O’Brien did not quickly return a mobile phone call or an electronic mail on Saturday night.

O’Brien informed the cat proprietors they could file a kind declaring the pet dogs “dangerous animals,” which would outcome in the owner possessing to continue to keep them inside and muzzled when walked on a leash, Butler mentioned.

A lot of other inhabitants in the neighborhood aided research for the canine and arrived by to categorical their condolences, Malik mentioned.

“We wouldn’t have been in a position to get through this with no our neighbors,” he mentioned.

Both households expressed issue if the dogs had been authorized to keep in the neighborhood.

Malik and Mullineaux have presently submitted a “dangerous animal” sort and said they will be conversing to their insurance policies agent about placing in a declare for the destruction sustained to their home by the assault, and placing the blame on the dogs’ proprietor.

“We want to make certain this doesn’t take place to anybody else,” Malik stated.

You can get to Staff members Writer Kathleen Coates at [email protected] or 707-521-5209.