Seller: a man in Birmingham. Product: a live 3-year-old cat. Price: 30 pounds, about 38 dollars. Platform: Vinted, the app where people get rid of old T-shirts and shoes they no longer use. Just that simple. Just that disturbing.
It was Abi Left, founder of Left Paw Cat Rescue —an organization in southern Birmingham dedicated to rescuing abandoned and vulnerable felines— who spotted the listing and contacted the seller. What she found was, perhaps, the most disturbing part of all: the owner insisted he did not see that he was doing anything wrong. No guilt. No awareness of the harm. A living being reduced to a second-hand item with a bargain price. 🐱
What makes the case even more serious is that Vinted explicitly prohibits the sale of pets on its platform. The rule exists. The listing existed anyway. The cat was rescued thanks to Abi Left’s alert, but this case raises a question that animal welfare organizations have been asking for some time: how many more animals are circulating on buying-and-selling apps without anyone detecting them in time?
