The Gozo SPCA has hit out at Victoria local council after shelters for an established cat colony were removed.

The society said that on Friday, council workers informed the SPCA that theywere to remove trees and bushes directly in front of its Centre. They also instructed the SPCA to remove the shelters. Betty Berry, the Centre Manager phoned officials in the Ministry and the Victoria Council to ask that the be suspended until she and the Mayor could discuss the arrangements for the cat colony.

Eventually Mrs Berry and the Strays officer were assured by the workmen and a councillor that this would be the case and that work would be suspended.

"On the strength of these assurances, the SPCA called off a proposed vigil to ensure that nothing took place," the SPCA said.

But when the SPCA volunteers arrived at the Centre later on in the afternoon, they found that the work had taken place and that the cat shelters had been unceremoniously dumped in front of the SPCA Centre.

A Gozo SPCA spokesman said that the cats had been living there for the last twenty odd years, certainly many years before the Victoria Council ever existed.

"It is common local knowledge that the colony exists and it is mentioned in almost every issue of the Gozo SPCA newsletter, which is distributed to the Ministry and the Council, free of charge. Certainly any official inspecting the site prior to sanctioning the works, could not have mistaken it for anything other than a cared for cat colony. The Society is incredulous that such callous behaviour by an official body towards the ecology and the existing environment could take place in this day and age."

"The notion that animals do not have any rights, or that the existing ecology should be simply ignored in the name of progress, seems to persist at the highest of levels," the SPCA said.