Cat scratch fever in Algeria

Fluffy, the world's ugliest cat.

Cats only pure animals for Islam...
Despite the fact that cats are the only pure animals for Islam allowed even in mosques, the number of cats captured in the streets of Algiers in 2007 and then killed remains very high: some 16,000.

Thirteen teams were sent by Hurbal, the public hygiene body, with the aim to capture the thousands of cats that crowd the capital. "It is impossible to keep the cats in captivity long," explains Saidi Bendjaballa, a veterinarian of Hurbal in Algiers' eastern district, El Harrach.
"They do not eat anymore, they do not resist and after 72 they are put down,"

Bendjaballa specifies, pointing out "that the animals do not suffer from the treatment". "We cannot do otherwise. No one comes to adopt a cat," she explains. Dogs are more fortunate, although they are much less (wide) spread in Algiers: "We have had at least a dozen cases of adoptions of dogs".

(See Kafir K-9 Brigade in the sidebar.)