Sliema cat-killer’s ‘violent upbringing’ defence sparks island-wide furor over Malta’s feline soul

Sliema cat-killer blames violent upbringing, court hears – but island’s feline faithful aren’t buying it

A 34-year-old Sliema man who admitted to trapping and bludgeoning three cats told magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech yesterday that a childhood “filled with fists instead of affection” had taught him to treat animals as “moving targets”. The confession, delivered in a barely-audible voice inside the packed Valletta courtroom, sent a ripple of disgust through Malta’s cat-loving population and reopened a national debate on how the island reconciles its celebrated “għanja tal-qtates” (cat-loving identity) with sporadic bursts of cruelty.

According to prosecutor Anna Mallia, the defendant – whose name is withheld to protect the identity of minor family members – used a homemade wire snare on the Tigné promenade between 18 and 25 April, then beat the trapped animals with a boat oar he kept in his parents’ locked garage. CCTV from a nearby gym caught him at 04:17 on the final night; footage shows him pausing to light a cigarette while a tortoiseshell cat convulses in the noose. Two of the cats were micro-chipped and registered to volunteer group Sliema Strays; the third was a heavily pregnant semi-feral nicknamed “Ġinġer” by local children who fed her leftover rabbit pasta after Mass on Sundays.

Defence lawyer Kathleen Grima argued that her client had been “desensitised early” by a father who smashed stray kittens against a wall to stop them stealing chicken feed. “He was never shown tenderness, so he never learned to give it,” Grima said, requesting a probation report that includes therapy instead of jail time. The prosecution countered with a psychiatric opinion stating the man displayed “low empathy but full criminal responsibility”, while reminding the court that Malta’s 2014 Animal Welfare Act carries a maximum €50,000 fine and three-year prison sentence for aggravated cruelty.

Outside the courtroom, reaction was swift and unmistakably Maltese. By noon a small crowd – grandmothers clasping rosaries, British retirees in linen shirts, and TikTok-ing teens wearing cat-ear headbands – had gathered on the Palace steps. Someone pinned photos of the dead cats to a cork board normally used for parish feast notices; bouquets of ħobż biż-żejt wrappers and tiny balls of wool piled up underneath. “This isn’t just about three cats,” said Sliema Stray volunteer Maria Pace, clutching a clipboard with 12,000 signatures. “It’s about who we want to be when the cruise ships sail away and the fireworks fade. Do we want to be the nation that feeds the cats, or the one that beats them?”

The case has also exposed a cultural fault-line. On Facebook group “Malta Cat Lovers”, comments ranged from calls for an eye-for-an-eye to reminders that the island’s patron saint, St Francis, supposedly blessed the stray cats of Valletta in the 16th century, granting them perpetual freedom to roam. Meanwhile, hunters’ forum “Tesserati” warned against “emotional lynching”, arguing that rural Maltese traditions often included culling feral animals long before Instagram existed. The tension is compounded by Sliema’s own transformation: once a quiet fishing village where cats lounged on coloured boats, it is now Malta’s densest postcode, where €1.2 million penthouses overlook cardboard colonies feeding on supermarket bins.

Magistrate Frendo Dimech will hand down sentence on 14 July. Whatever the outcome, the episode has already spurred action. Mayor Graziella Attard Previ announced a pilot scheme for 24-hour “cat cams” along the promenade, funded jointly by the local council and a Swedish iGaming company whose staff volunteered en-masse after one of their workplace cats went missing. Meanwhile, parish priest Fr Joe Borg has opened the Sliema basilica’s cloisters at night, inviting children to paint murals of saints cuddling kittens – a gentle reminder, he says, that “mercy is the highest Maltese tradition”.

Conclusion: In a country that proudly markets itself with sun, sea and sanctified strays, the court’s final ruling will be watched as a barometer of national soul. If the sentence is perceived as soft, volunteers fear copy-cat cruelty; if it’s harsh, some worry we risk criminalising a damaged man without healing the culture that damaged him. Either way, the cats of Sliema – fed, photographed and fussed over by tourists and locals alike – will continue to weave between the deckchairs, oblivious to the human drama unfolding in their name. And perhaps that is Malta’s real blessing: that survival here is a shared art, whether you walk on two legs or four.