Girl raised by cats and dogs removed from negligent family

A five-year-old girl is thought to have been raised by cats and dogs after her parents neglected to take care of her at her home in Chita, Russia’s Baikal Region. The girl can barely speak, but barks and hisses at people in apparent imitation of the dogs and cats she grew up around. Like them, she laps her food from her plate.

Chita’s children’s rights commissioners were alerted by neighbors and found that although Natasha shared the apartment with her father, grandparents and other relatives, she only received attention from the family’s numerous pets, Interfax reported quoting the local police press service.

The child is relatively healthy, although clearly undernourished and small, a police spokesman said.

Natasha’s relatives were unwilling to give her to the police, in spite of being unable to look after her and the “enormous dogs and cats” that the police said the apartment was packed with.

The girl’s mother reportedly lives somewhere else with her three other children. The girl’s father was not at home.

Natasha has been placed at a children’s rehabilitation center while the police search for her parents.