PETERBOROUGH, England — Postal workers refused to deliver letters to a house in central England because they are afraid of a tiny cat that lives there.
The Royal Mail stopped deliveries to Ian Wilkinson because his three-year-old cat Snowball “attacked” a postal worker, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph reported.
The delivery service sent a letter to Wilkinson stating that one of its postal workers was left with “quite deep” cuts to a finger and described it as the “third such incident.”
It said that letters would no longer be delivered to the computer analyst’s home, as there was an “unacceptably high” level of risk to their workers.
“It’s ridiculous,” according to Wilkinson, 46. “You have to stretch to even get your hand through the letterbox. At worst, this is just a cat wanting to play with someone wiggling their fingers through it.”
He added, “I have never seen her attack a person. Sometimes she sniffs people’s feet when they come over for dinner.”
Wilkinson put a cage around the letterbox on his door in a bid to get the Royal Mail to resume its service.
A Royal Mail spokeswoman said, “There are around 4,000 animal attacks a year on Royal Mail people. These attacks cause great distress and, in too many cases, serious injuries.”
She added, “If we feel that there is a risk from any animal, we are committed to working with the customer to agree simple steps to ensure that we can deliver the mail safely.”