A French court on Tuesday fined France’s national rail operator after a departing train ran over a cat hiding on its tracks.
The death in January at the Montparnasse station of Neko — which means “cat” in Japanese — provoked outrage.
Passengers identified in court documents as Georgia and her 15-year-old daughter Melaina said their pet escaped from its travel bag and disappeared under a high-speed train as it prepared to leave Paris for Bordeaux, in southwestern France, with 800 passengers on board.
After 20 minutes of trying to persuade staff to rescue it, the train departed, killing the cat.
“We saw him sliced in half,” Melaina said.
Train company SNCF offered the cat’s owners a free ticket to Bordeaux.
But animal rights body the Brigitte Bardot Foundation filed a complaint for “serious abuse and cruelty leading to the death of an animal”.
A Paris court fined SNCF €1,000 for “negligence”, ruling the pet’s killing had been caused “involuntarily”.
The travel agency branch of SNCF was ordered to pay another €1,000 in damages to each of the pet’s two owners.
