Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1538811
4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 AUGUST 2025 INTERVIEW Romina Frendo: 'We have a cat abandonment crisis, and government needs to step in' MALTA is facing a cat abandonment crisis, and unless government invests heavily to address the problem, it will only worsen, animal activist and volun- teer Romina Frendo insists. A leading animal rights activist, volun- teer and the owner of a new cat sanctu- ary, Frendo is known as the go-to per- son for all things animals. She is also the woman who brought people from all over the island together to help identify and eventually catch the cat killer. Japanese national Okamura Satoshi, a 31-year-old who lived in Sliema, was ar- rested on 1 August in connection with a series of cat killings across several lo- calities. But apart from police investi- gations, before the case piqued nation- al interest, Frendo was mobilising cat feeder networks from across Malta in a bid to identify him. She explains to me how she would go to Sliema to speak to residents, filtering through the information they provided, and passing it on to the police. "I had to put my life on hold to make sure he was caught, and he stopped kill- ing these cats," Frendo says. She praises the work of Inspector Jef- frey Scicluna from the police's CID, who she says was her contact point in passing on her information. "He is a cat lover like us, and so he understood what this meant to us." But Frendo's work doesn't stop at catching cat killers. She is also the own- er of a brand-new cat sanctuary—on her house roof. "This has always been a dream. By 11 I had already planned out how I would build my sanctuary when I grew up," she tells me. Frendo says she is spending every cent she owns to keep the place running, and wants it to be a haven for abandoned cats. "A lot of these cats have been abused. One of these cats was hit by a wooden plank with nails in it, and has lost its eye. Another was hit with a hammer in its tail and was left without any food. For these cases it's not as simple to find them a home. They need specialised and focused care, and it's not as easy to find," she says. She also insists her sanctuary is only contributing a little to the wider aban- donment crisis Malta is facing. Rise in food and vet costs, social cas- es and an aging population are all lead- ing to more cats being left in the street, Frendo insists. Animal activist Romina Frendo sits down with Karl Azzopardi to discuss how she helped identify the Sliema cat killer, the need to address animal abandonment and the cat sanctuary she has opened on her house roof