Arguing That He Was Only a Cat, the French National Railroad, SNCF, Proceeds to Deliberately Run Down and Kill Neko at Gare Montparnasse in Paris and, Unbelievably, Is Allowed to Get Away with Its Heinous Crime

Neko Was Far Too Beautiful for This Wicked Old World

"C'est n'est qu' un chat, ce n'est pas notre problème. Les agents nous disent qu'on aurait dü le garder en laisse."

-- Melanïa Mylona

On January 2nd, Georgia Mylona and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Melanïa, were waiting on one of the busy twenty-eight platforms at Gare Montparnasse on the south side of Paris in order to board a Train à grande vitesse (TGV) operated by the Société nationale des chemins de fer francais (SNCF) that was to have taken them back to their home in Bordeaux in southern France. They had been in the big city for New Year's and possibly Noël as well.

With them was a handsome longhaired brown and white cat with sad green eyes named Neko. Given that not only are crowds and cats a very bad mix but especially cats and trains, the stage was set for the unfolding of a tragedy of catastrophic proportions.

The French media have not adequately explained what transpired next, but Neko either somehow escaped from his sacoche or one of his guardians committed the stupidity of stupidities by taking him out of it. Frightened to death by all the noise, confusion and people, he bolted down onto the tracks and took refuge underneath the very same TGV that was waiting to have taken him back to Bordeaux.

The twenty or so minutes that ensued were pure hell for the Mylonas as they took turns arguing and pleading with members of the train's crew to mount a rescue but none of them were willing to even consider the idea. "C'est n'est qu' un chat, ce n'est pas notre problème," one SNCF employee callously told Melanïa according to the January 21st edition of Le Figaro. (See "Paris: un chat écrasé par un TGV en gare Montparnasse sous les yeux de ses propriétaires.")  "Les agents nous disent qu'on aurait dü le garder en laisse."

   

Nor would SNCF allow them to venture onto the tracks in order to rescue Neko themselves. "Il est extrêmement dangereux de descendre sur les voies car elles sont électrifiées," an unidentified staffer declared to Le Parisien on January 23rd. (See "Chat écrasé gare Montparnasse: 30 Millions d'amis porte plainte contre la SNCF.") "En parallèle, il y a des trains qui passent sur les voies. On peut chuter ou encore se blesser."

There is some confusion as to whether the SNCF believed that Neko was actually on the tracks. For instance, it later on July 4th told the weekly Parisien magazine Le Point that he was "pas visible" until after the train had departed. (See "Chat écrasé à Montparnasse: la SNCF condamnée à 1,000 euros d'amende.")

That is a nonsensical argument for the rail line to have made in the first place in that it is virtually impossible to spot a tiny cat hiding underneath a train from any of the platforms. In addition to demonstrating writ large an utterly appalling disregard for the sanctity of feline life, the SNCF appears in hindsight to have been simply making up ridiculous excuses for not availing itself of the only humane and sensible option that it had, which would have been for it to have shut off electricity to that particular track and to have mounted an all-out search for Neko.

Under no circumstances should it have allowed that train to have moved so much an inch before Neko had been brought out to safety. Deplorably, it elected to have put euros and efficiency ahead of his life.

"En plus ce jour-là, c' était le retour des vacances donc il y avait beaucoup de monde la gare," the railroad continued to ladle on its self-serving sophistry to Le Parisien. "On ne pouvait pas arrêter la circulation aussi facilement."

Georgia and Melanïa, who by this time surely must have been out of their minds and with their hearts pounding in their heads, continued up to very last second to plead for Neko's life but the SNCF would not listen to anything that they had to say. Heartless, stiff-necked, and imperious, the railroad was not about to be denied its pound of innocent feline flesh.

The conductors gave the all-clear and the train started down the track but the cat that was so invisible to the crew was clearly visible to Melanïa and she had a front row seat in order to witness his cold-blooded, premeditated execution. The last few seconds of his precious life are therefore forever etched in both her memory and soul.

"On l'a vu en train de courir en dessous du train. C'est la dernière fois que je l'ai vu en vie," she later related to Midi Libre of Montpellier, seven-hundred-forty-eight kilometers south of Paris, on January 21st. (See "Elle voit son chat se faire couper en deux par un TGV: elle parle 'une exécution' de la SNCF.") "Il (Neko) m' a regardé dans les yeux car il a dü m'entendre. Il a continué à courir puis c'etait fini."

What happened a split-second later was anything but pretty and there is not any way in which to sugarcoat the ugly truth. The TGV sliced Neko in half and left his body parts scattered along the tracks.

Georgia and Melanïa Mylona Witnessed Neko's Cold-Blooded Execution

The outside world in all likelihood never will know how that Georgia and  Melanïa managed to refrain from either going completely out of their minds or fainting dead away on the spot in the face of such an appalling act of cruelty to an innocent cat. "La scène était trés violente," Georgia afterwards told Le Figaro. "C' était comme une exécution."

The high-muck-a-mucks at the SNCF, who only moments earlier were in such a hellfire hurry that they could not spare so much as a lousy second in order to have brought out Neko alive, suddenly slammed on the brakes and brought their hulking death machine to a screeching halt.

It soon became clear, however, that they did not care one whit about the abominable crime that they had just committed but rather that they were only interested in clearing the tracks for the next departing TGV. They also likely wanted to make doubly sure that they did not sashay into Bordeaux with any of Neko's blood splattered on their pretty chemin de fer.

With that objective in mind, the crew wasted little time in retrieving Neko's remains from the tracks but that served only to further incense Georgia. "Je ne comprends pas: on ne pouvait pas descendre pour sauver notre chat vivait, mais il est maintenant possible de la récupérer mort," she complained to Le Figaro. "Ils ont des équipes qui nettoient les voies, ils auraient pu y aller."

The total lack of safeguards for animals on SNCF trains also, quite justifiably, has left Georgia livid. "Si la loi ne protège pas les animaux dans les transports, cela doit changer pour que ça n'arrive plus jamais," she argued to Le Figaro.

Although it is not about to bring Neko back in a million years, Georgia's just cause was almost immediately championed by the Parisien charity 30 Millions d'amis which announced its intention to file formal charges against the SNCF for "sévices graves et actes de cruauté ayant entraîné la mort d'un animal" under article 521-1 of the Penal Code which calls for up to a €75,000 fine plus five years in jail for violators.

"Au-delà de la cruauté abominable des faits, l'animal était en règle puisque ses maîtresses s'etaient acquittées d'un billet pour qu'il puisse voyager en toute légalité," the organization's Reha Hutin told Le Parisien. "C'est donc un passager de la SNCF qui a été sciemment écrasé!"

Therefore, as a paying and ticketed passenger Neko was entitled to the same protections and considerations that SNCF affords its human cargo. Why, the very idea that it would have run down either a man, woman, or a child on the grounds that they were only humans is far too absurd for anyone to even contemplate. When it comes to cats, however, the SNCF refuses to recognize any moral and legal constraints whatsoever upon its behavior.

The better known La Fondation Brigitte Bardot expressed its profound shock at the SNCF's unconscionable, premeditated execution of Neko. "C'est étonnant que la SNCF ne s'inscrive pas dans le renforcement de la protection animale," a spokesperson for the charity told Le Figaro.

"Vous n'avez pas honte? Le chat était accessible. Les propriétaires voulaient aller le récupérer. La SNCF a refusé," is how that ecologist Hugo Clément excoriated the railroad to Le Figaro. "Les animaux sont des êtres vivants doués de sensibilité. Sous réserve des lois qui les protègent, les animaux sont soumis au régime des biens."

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also expressed his shock at how the SNCF had behaved. (See Deine Tierwelt Magazin of Hannover, February 4, 2023, "Frankreich: Kater Neko von Zug überfahren -- war es Absicht?")

As far as the cat-killers at the SNCF are concerned, they have not had much to say on the matter and that leads to the conclusion that they have tardily realized that their abhorrent behavior is indefensible. "(We) regretter ce triste incident" and "se préoccuper de la condition animale," the railroad told Midi Libre in the article cited supra.

The trial was held June 19th in an unidentified police court in Paris but the verdict was not publicly announced until July 4th. Strangely enough, neither the Mylonas nor the SNCF even bothered to attend the reading out of the court's decision.

The Entrance to the Scene of the Crime

Not much has been reported about the proceedings other than that the attorney for the Mylonas and 30 Millions d'amis pointed out to the court the world of difference in how that the state-owned railroad treats baggage and cats. "On arrête un train pour un bagage abandonné mais pas pour un animal," the lawyer argued according to July 4th edition of Le Parisien. (See "Chat écrasé par un TGV: la SNCF condamnée à une amende de €1,000.")  

Having jettisoned its obviously insincere "regretter ce triste incident" argument, the best defense that Philippe Sarda was able to muster on behalf of his client, the SNCF, was to blame 30 Millions d'amis and other animal rights groups for their "instrumentalisation" of Neko's death. C'est-à-dire, it is perfectly permissible for the railroad to have done what it did to Neko; the only crime lies in 30 Millions d'amis' calling attention to it and attempting to have it held legally accountable under the animal cruelty statutes.

As things eventually turned out, le président of the tribunal de police was not quite so easily bamboozled by the SNCF's sottise.  Au contraire, he found it guilty of negligence for "atteinte involontaire à la vie ou à l'intégrité d'un animal domestique." The judge went on to condemn the railroad for its inexcusable failure to have taken "de moyens humains nécessaires pour récupérer le chat."

"C'est une très belle décision de justice," Patrice Grillon of the Association Stèphane Lamart of Boissy-Saint-Léger, seventeen kilometers southeast of Paris, rejoiced to Le Parisien. "Le juge a pris tout le temps nécessaire pour examiner avec sérieux et précision les circonstances de la mort de ce chat et tiré la conclusion qu'il fallait: la SNCF est bien coupable de négligence."

From there Grillon proceeded to point out the obvious. "Tout le monde avait été averti de la présence de Neko sur les voies," he told Le Parisien. "Le train n'aurait jamais dü démarrer."

The judge also ordered the SNCF to pay €1,000 each to Georgia and Melanïa for killing Neko. That in itself is not much but in light of the petit fait that the railroad recorded revenues of €34.8 billion in 2021, it is not even a drop in the proverbial bucket.

The SNCF is therefore destined to feel about as much pain over the loss of its much beloved €2,000 as it has felt in the way of genuine remorse about slicing Neko in half. C'est-à-dire, none at all.

That was the sum total of good news that the Mylonas were destined to have received from the judge because after that he blotted his copybook by turning thumbs down on a demand made by 30 Millions d'amis and four other unidentified animal rights groups that the matter be referred to a tribunal correctionnel for further action against the SNCF for "sévices graves et actes de cruaute." (A correctional court is one level above a police court and therefore has the authority to impose harsher penalties should it see fit to do so.)

What those employees of the SNCF who were in charge of the TGV that ran down and killed Neko so richly deserved were lengthy terms in some hellhole prison where they would have been denied both time off for good behavior as well as early parole. By refusing to allow this case to go forward, le président of the tribunal de police has exposed himself not only to be a lackey and a numskull for the establishment but additionally demonstrated for all the world to see that in France the lives of cats and the feelings and desires of their owners count for almost nothing at all.

The same old cruel charade is likewise regularly played out on daily basis in the United States where state legislators, acting in response to demands made upon them by animal rights groups, are all the time strengthening the penalties for animal cruelty. These cutie pies do so however knowing full well in advance that prosecutors invariably reduce felony animal cruelty charges to misdemeanors which thus allows abusers to strut out of court, like the SNCF, with minuscule fines all the while chuckling up their sleeves at the absurd leniency of the laws.

Even on those truly rare occasions when prosecutors are willing to prosecute and juries to convict, jurists let abusers escape justice by meting out to them nothing more serious than small fines and suspended sentences. Enforcement of the animal cruelty statutes is therefore nothing but beau geste from start to finish.

Worst still, the police and humane groups seldom even bother to investigate complaints of animal cruelty. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that cruelty to animals not only continues unabated but is always on the increase.

Despite her organization's failure to have held the SNCF accountable under the law in any meaningful way, Hutin is guardedly optimistic that the railroad will act on its own. "Nous espérons que la SNCF se dotera dorénavant de procédures claires pour que les décisions prises désormais par les agents ferroviaires dans une telle situation malheureuse ne puissant plus jamais conduire á la mort d'un animal," she told Le Point in the article cited supra.

Fifi Was "Only a Fucking Cat" to an Irish Drunkard in Limerick

Taking proper care of a cat changes everything. In particular, it is a rather confining as well as an expensive undertaking.

With that being the case, hitting the road with one is seldom a good idea. A healthy appreciation of the pitfalls involved combined with vigilance can, however, greatly reduce the inherent dangers.

For example, forty-eight-year-old Michael King picked up a four-year-old gray and white female named Tabor in Portland in September of 2012 and proceeded to carry her au pied one-thousand-eighty-three kilometers in his backpack to Ventura, California, and then back home in spring of 2013. His herculean feat has since become the gold standard of how to care for a cat while traveling and if he, a homeless man without wheels and very much in the way of financial resources, was able to have kept Tabor safe and sound for all of that inordinate distance and length of time, individuals with money, permanent domiciles, and transportation, do not have valid excuses for not being able to do likewise.

All that is required is a certain amount of savoir-faire, diligence, and commitment. (See Cat Defender post of July 5, 2013 entitled "Tabor's Long and Winding Road Finally Leads Her Back Home but Leaves Her with a Broken Heart.")

In traveling with cat, the selection of a mode of conveyance is paramount and in that regard airplanes and airports are to be avoided if at all possible. (See Cat Defender posts of April 7, 2009, February 28, 2020, and February 5, 2023 entitled, respectively, "A Pregnant Minskin Arrives in Oregon Frozen as Solid as a Block of Ice Following a Fatal Cross-Country Flight in the Cargo Hold of an Airliner," "Lost by Lufthansa at Dulles, Milo Is Eventually Located but He Would Appear to Owe His Deliverance More to Pure Luck Rather Than Human Ingenuity," and "Hopkins, the World's Youngest, Tiniest, and Loneliest Flier, Is Abandoned in a Wretched Toilet at an Airport in Cleveland.")

As Neko tragically discovered, trains are the second most perilous conveyance for cats, especially those that are operated by the SNCF. By default that pretty much leaves private vehicles and cars for hire as the only safe options for moving around cats. (See Cat Defender post of February 16, 2008 entitled "Saying Good-Bye to the Rat Race, a Retired Forest Hills' Couple Hires a Taxi in Order to Transport Their Cats to Arizona.")

Even then carjackings do sometimes occur and cats can get lost at rest stops if care is not taken. (See Cat Defender posts of March 2, 2012 and September 23, 2016 entitled, respectively, "A Homeless Man in Washington State Pauses in Order to Take a Snooze and It Ends Up Costing Him His Beloved Cat, Herman" and "Cruelly and Irresponsibly Abandoned at a Michigan Rest Stop, Milkie Is Saved by Staffers Who Did What His Derelict Owner Was Unwilling to Do.")

Regardless of whatever mode of transport is decided upon, a sturdy and impregnable cage is an absolute necessity. Those schlocky pet carriers that are made out of cheap plastic and feature grilles in the front that pop out upon impact are hardly worth purchasing because they place the lives of their occupants in grave danger.

Specifically, almost any cat that becomes frightened while in transit can cause them to disintegrate just by launching its body against either the sides or the grille. Once that happens, it can be gone without so much as a trace long before its owner even knows what is happening.

Death boxes of that sort can be reinforced on all four sides as well as on the top, bottom, and in front with a liberal application of duct tape, bicycle inner tubes, and various kinds of rope and twine but even then deploying them can be risky. It accordingly is best to personally construct a one-piece cage out of either metal or wood and to equip it with a door that will remain tightly closed even when subjected to stress.

A handle that will neither break nor come off is also essential. A grille is not really needed provided that the cage has an abundance of air holes.

The Mylonas therefore made three major errors in judgment that ended up costing Neko his life. First of all, they either selected the wrong type of cage or foolishly took him out of it. Secondly, they elected to travel with him on a busy holiday. Thirdly, they chose to take the SNCF.

One of the major problems with the modern world is that just about everyone is in too much of a hurry and in that regard bullet trains are beyond ridiculous. For example, with a capacity to do between two-hundred-seventy and three-hundred-twenty kilometers per hour, the TGV that the Mylonas had intended to take is capable of traversing the five-hundred-eighty-four kilometers that separate Paris from Bordeaux in as little as two hours and four minutes.

Lola Was "Only a Cat" to Mary Bale Who Stuffed Her in a Trash Can

That is akin to being catapulted along the rails in a rocket sled whereby the world outside the windows is reduced to nothing but a blur. Besides, if one of these trains should either derail or collide with another engine everybody on board surely would be killed instantaneously.

Much more pertinently, only a bloody fool would be in that big of a rush to die crammed inside a sardine can with eight-hundred other idiots. Speaking of his fellow countrymen in his 1759 novel, Candide, Voltaire remarked as follows:

"...j'ai parcouru plusieurs provinces. Il y en a où la moitié des habitants est folle, quelques unes où l'on est trop rusé, d'autres où l'on est communément assez doux et assez bête: d'autres où l'on fait le bel spirit; et, dans toutes, la principale occupation est l'amour; la seconde, de médire; et la troisième, de dire des sottises."

If that is indeed still the case, it would seem perfectly fair to ask what a people who cares only about getting laid, back-biting, and spouting nonsense could possibly need with bullet trains? They accordingly could just as well engage in their base raisons d' être by staying at home. 

A few pages later on, Voltaire provides an explanation for that apparent contradiction. "'Que voulez-vous'? dit Martin. 'Ces gens-ci sont ainsi fait. Imaginez toutes les contradictions, toutes les incompatibilités possibles, vous les verrez dans le gouvernement, dans les tribunaux, dans les églises, dans les spectacles de cette drôle de nation.'"

As far as the SNCF is concerned, its staff and management are far from being the only moral retards in this world who fervently believe that Neko n'est qu' un chat: au contraire, such thinking aligns them with all ailurophobes and abusers.

For example, at around 5 p.m. on September 7, 2008, two drunks got into an altercation outside a bar in Limerick. Tragically, a young black and white kitten name Fifi who had just settled into her new home on Hartstonge Street near People's Park just happened to be walking by at that same time.

Upon seeing her, one of the louts grabbed, beat, and stabbed her with a knife before finishing off the job by bashing her against the side of a house. When the man with whom he had been fighting demanded to know why he had done that, he replied that "it was only a fucking cat! What are you getting worried about?"

Fifi later was rushed to Treaty Veterinary Clinic where she died. It is almost superfluous to add that her killer never was either identified or arrested. (See Cat Defender post of September 18, 2008 entitled "A Drunken Brute Beats, Stabs and Then Hurls Fifi to Her Death Against the Side of a House in Limerick.")

Later on August 21, 2010, forty-five-year-old Mary Bale of Coventry in Warwickshire was out walking when she picked up off the sidewalk a four-year-old cat named Lola and stuffed her inside a trash can before merrily continuing on her way. Thanks to a surveillance camera that was mounted on the outside of their house, Lola's guardians, Stephane and Darryl Andrews-Mann, belatedly learned fifteen hours after the fact what had happened to her and immediately freed her from her would-be tomb.

Bale subsequently was arrested but she was anything but contrite. "I don't know what the fuss is all about," she told the Daily Mail on August 26th. (See "Greyhaired Bank Worker Who Dumped Cat in Wheelie Bin Could Face Court as RSPCA Prosecutors Review Case.") "It's just a cat."

When the case finally came to trial in Coventry Magistrates' Court, District Judge Caroline Goulborn cried out her eyes for Bale. Arguing that she had been vilified by the media, was under stress, and had a sick father at home, she let her off with an insignificant fine of £250 plus £1,171 in court costs. She was, however, fired from her job as a cashier at the Royal Bank of Scotland in nearby Rugby.

"Nothing will happen, while too many people feel like Mary Bale. 'It's only a cat', said she," Michele Hanson wrote August 28, 2010 in The Guardian of London. (See "Cat Litter Episode Shows How Our Pets Are Both Protected and Persecuted.") "It's the only that's the problem: they're only animals, and we're the only species that matters. But we're not."

Neko Has Gone to Bed for the Last Time

That type of thinking and the hideous crimes perpetrated against cats that result from it are bad enough in their own right, especially when they are perpetrated by the likes of Irish drunkards and Bale, but they most assuredly do not have any place in the thinking and policies of France's national railroad. Deplorably, the country's politicians and jurists not only have miserably failed to hold the SNCF accountable in any meaningful way under the anti-cruelty statutes but, tant pis, they have laid the groundwork for untold numbers of additional cats to be subsequently killed and mistreated by the authorities and other miscreants.

That is in large part all that there is to this story, but not quite. There is more and it is even more disturbing. For instance, after the members of the crew of the TGV had scooped up Neko's remains from the voies they placed them in a plastic bag and offered them to the Mylonas but they, unforgivably, refused to accept them.

"Can you imagine if I carried that bag with the body all the way to Bordeaux?" Melanïa is quoted by Reddit of San Francisco on January 24th as stating. (See "Animal Rights Group to Sue French Rail Service after Cat Crushed by Train.") 

Consequently, his remains sans doute wound up in a trash can. He thus was denied a memorial service, a proper burial, and a tombstone.

The Mylonas' callous indifference to what ultimately became of the remains of the cat that they supposedly loved so dearly shines an entirely different light on his killing. Most notably, it once again raises serious questions as to how that he got out of his sacoche in the first place.

Secondly, through their unwillingness to have accepted receipt of his remains, the Mylonas have graphically demonstrated that they, in spite of their protestations to the contrary, did not care very much, if anything, at all about him. After the SNCF had perpetrated its heinous crime, his remains were all that was left of him and no owner who cared so much as a sou about her cat would ever under any circumstances have allowed his killers to have deposited them in the trash.

That which transpired on both the platform and tracks of Gare Montparnasse on January 2nd is every bit as sickening as it is infuriating. Above all, by refusing to have accepted the return of Neko's remains the Mylonas have convincingly demonstrated that the employees of the SNCF are not the only ones who believe that he was n'est qu' un chat.

That kind of moral and intellectual rot which is so pervasive throughout France also extends to its capitalistic media and even to its animal rights groups and this can clearly be seen in the short shrift that both groups have given Neko. For instance, both of them have been conspicuously silent as to his age, his personality, his likes and dislikes, where he came from, and what kind of life that he had in Bordeaux.

As far as the capitalistic media are concerned, they never have cared very much for cats or anyone else for that matter so their total lack of moral outrage over his death is nothing new. In respect to 30 Millions d'amis and its fellow animal rights groups, their appalling lack of interest in Neko as an individual cat lends a certain amount of credence to the SNCF's charge that they have been using his killing as "une instrumentalisation." They therefore are guilty of practicing the same brand of speciesism as the Irish drunkard in Limerick, Mary Bale, the SNCF, and the vast majority of civilization.

Neko has been intentionally robbed of his precious life by the SNCF in the most horrible, callous, and painful fashion imaginable and he is gone forever and will not be coming back. Moreover, absolutely nobody involved in this abominable affair seems to care that something irreplaceable has been lost and their profound indifference to that constitutes their greatest crime. 

Their second greatest oversight is their inability to distinguish between the moral and the immoral, just acts and unjust acts and, above all, the beautiful and the base. In that regard, saving Neko's innocent life was a million times more important than the SNCF's getting its TGV into Bordeaux on schedule but even after all these months neither the railroad, the tribunal de police, nor the French people are willing to accede to that moral imperative.

Never a shining beacon to begin with, modern man seems to have exhausted whatever reservoir of morality and compassion that he originally inherited from nature and evil now hold the upper hand in just about all of his dealings. That is a development that Voltaire would have understood only too well.

"'En un mot, j'en ai tant vu et tant éprouvé, que je suis manichéen,' Martin said. 'Il y a pourtant du bon,' repliquait Candide.

"'Cela-peut-être,' disait Martin 'mais je ne le connais pas'." That is especially the case when it comes to man's cavalier mistreatment of cats and all other animals.

 

Photos: Le Parisien (Neko), BFM-TV of Paris (Georgia and Melanïa Mylona), Le Point (entrance to Gare Montparnasse), the Limerick Leader (Fifi), Stephane and Darryl Andrews-Mann (Lola and Bale), and 30 Millions d'amis (Neko on a bed).