Originally by: Hutchins

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Health officials mystified by feline deaths throughout the EVE cluster

Hutchins, Goonfleet cub reporter 2nd class -
Beloved family pets, animals awaiting adoption in shelters, and even strays all throughout Empire and 0.0, none seem immune to the wave of baffling feline mortality that has been sweeping the EVE cluster.

The first indications of this bizarre epidemic were spotted in the Verge Vendor region of the Gallente empire. Animal control specialists, both planetside and in station habitats have been inundated with disposal calls. Gutters and alleyways in Reblier and Harroule were carpeted with a layer of deceased felines. Scolluzer Animal Control agent Byzant Janizar was one of the workers who bore witness to the first of the calls.

'We got a call from a slum hab on Scoll III about a huge number of unexplained felines found dead in an alley way. At first we suspected they'd gotten food poisoning from the garbage dumpsters of a nearby eatery, but soon calls were just pouring in from all over the system', Janizar said. 'We've thouroughly tested a random cross section of the animals, and can't find any concievable cause for this. Poison, disease, everything comes up clean.'

Fearing a cluster-wide epidemic, CONCORD officials banned transport of felines throughout the Gallente empire, but these measures did nothing to stem the tide of mortality. Federal Navy medicae Patience Kys is equally baffled with this strange turn of events, stating 'We've never seen anything like this. The spread of this phenomenon has defied all known laws of epidemiology. We are simply powerless to stop it. It's quite bizarre, as the deaths seem limited only to infant and juvenile felines. Adults remain as healthy as ever.' Kys stated that the epidemic shows no signs of jumping to other species, or affecting adult felines, but she is still quite disturbed by the lack of headway the scientific establishment has been able to make in finding an explanation.

While the officials of CONCORD and the empires search for a conventional explanation, others have turned towards the realm of the spiritual to explain this phenomenon. Ammarian cleric Frater Bress believes he has found the answer to this mysterious occurrance, stating; 'Anyone with even a rudimentary acquaintance with the scriptures can see plainly the cause of this. I refer you to the Book of Emperors, Chapter 8, Verse 16;
'And lo, the emperor spake, 'Make not jokes about the only named system in the lands of Syndicate. For every time you do, the Almighty shall slay a kitten'. Bress was unwilling to comment on if he felt the recent deaths had any connection to a bizarre incident in which a cargo container full of dead horses was found in orbit around Poitot V. Each carcass bore the marks of repeated and savage bludgeoning, but it appears that the beatings had been administered postmortem.

More on this story as it develops.

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