Lieutenant Barbara Balanzoni may face trial and be sentenced to at least one year in prison for saving a pregnant cat, Italian news agency La Nazione reports.
Balanzoni, 49, from Crevalcore, Bologna region, worked for several weeks at the NATO military base in Kosovo as an anesthetist. The woman claims that she followed the instructions when saving a pregnant street cat who had a difficult birth. According to the soldier, do not help her poor animal - unsanitary conditions could arise at the military base, which would endanger the health of the soldiers, as well as the need to disinfect the entire base.
As stated in a lawsuit against a sympathetic woman, she violated a written order prohibiting "making contact with wild, stray or street animals" in the territory of a military base called Villaggio Italia.
Balanzoni told reporters that there were a lot of homeless animals living at the military base, including cats and dogs, to which the soldiers were always very friendly. Once a woman got a call and was informed that one of the wild cats living in Villagio Italy makes strange sounds.
The cat, which was later called Agatha, hid in one of the office premises in order to give birth to kittens, but she could not be the last to give birth.
Lieutenant Balanzoni recalls that, as luck would have it, the military veterinarian was absent that day and the soldier, trying to help the suffering animal, only followed the charter of the base, which states that "if the veterinarian is not in place, medical assistance should be provided by the doctor."
After the incident, Balanzoni returned to her practice as an anesthetist in the city of Pontremoli, Toscana district. Soon, charges were brought against her, according to which the lieutenant “seriously violated subordination”, not obeying a written order signed by the head of the base in May 2012.
However, the woman claims: if she had not helped the stray cat, most likely, the animal would not have been able to give birth to a kitten on its own and would have died, forcing it to completely disinfect the entire base.
“Moreover,” says Balanzoni, “if the cat died, the kittens would also not be able to survive without their mother’s milk, which again entailed numerous disinfection procedures for the entire Villaggio Italy.”
But the investigators conducting this case cannot agree with the lieutenant. They believe that Balanzoni herself posed a threat to the health of the military, since during the birth the cat injured the medic by scratching her arm, and the woman was immediately vaccinated against rabies.
The story of a kind woman who saved the life of a wild animal and her kittens received a great response in the city where Balanzoni is currently working. The inhabitants of Pontremoli appealed via social networks to the Italian authorities with a request to cancel the trial of the lieutenant.
