The National Police found last Monday afternoon at number 5 of San Cugat del Vallés street in the Fuencarral district (Madrid) the rotten corpse of Clara Inés Tobón, a 79-year-old Colombian.

She had been dead for at least three months and had her upper body eaten by her seven cats

, five of which had also died. In principle, the woman died of natural causes, although the results of the autopsy that the anthropologist from the Institute of Legal Medicine will do with the help of hepatologists are awaiting.

A necropsy has also been ordered on several of the felines

to confirm that the body was nibbled by their pets.

Clara Inés lived alone in this IVIMA apartment since 1996.

She had no children and was not married.

His family resided in Colombia and he had no relatives in Spain.

Her best friends were the neighbors of the property.

For several weeks some of the tenants of the building were very worried about Clara, since last year she was ill and some neighbors suspected that she could have been infected with Covid.

They did not see her, despite the fact that she used to go out every day to feed stray cats, and it

was

also

common to see her on market days collecting the remains of fruit and food that the vendors left in the garbage boxes.

The friends rang the doorbell, but the woman did not answer.

His mobile phone was also turned off when his Orange company number was called and

the letters no longer fit in his mailbox

.

In the absence of news from Clara, the neighbor of the first thought that she could be admitted to the nearby hospital in La Paz.

"One day when she went to have a test at the doctor, she asked for her at the reception and they told her that she was not admitted there," says one of the residents.

Neighbors also report that they called IVIMA unsuccessfully in case they knew anything about her and that the farm administrator did some management without getting any answers.

Facade of the building where the woman's body was found.

The uneasiness exploded when the neighbor in room A commented that there was

a strong stench coming from the house

and that he was beginning to see many flies.

"Sometimes it smelled bad from the cats and the boxes of food that came up, but this time there was a very strong stench," said a neighbor.

Last Monday afternoon the neighbor on the ground floor decided to call 091 to warn them that Clara had died inside the house.

The agents of the Fuencarral police station came to the warning and, due to the smell of the landing on the fourth floor staircase, they immediately suspected that there might be a dead person inside.

The neighbors told the police at first that she could have been dead for a month and that she had no family.

By not being able to open the door, the firefighters of the Madrid City Council were notified that they

deployed an autoscale to enter through one of the windows of the house

, according to Emergencias Madrid.

In one of the rooms, they found Clara's corpse in an advanced state of decomposition and with part of the body bitten by cats.

The Sevemur (Municipal Emergency Veterinary Service of the City Council) found

five dead cats and two alive cats

in the house

.

The two who were still breathing were in very poor condition and were taken to the Animal Protection Center, a municipal spokesman explained.

A neighbor pointed out that one of the officers told her that the woman was eaten waist up by cats.

"A national police officer told us that it

was the worst thing he had seen

since he worked," said another woman.

A spokesman for the former IVIMA, now the Social Housing Agency, said yesterday that "everything was normal and that there was nothing to suggest that he had died since everything was normal."

The neighbors are now very restless, as there are many flies in the building and there is a foul smell in the upper parts.

They want someone to clean it up.

At the moment, the door of Clara's house is sealed and no one has entered the apartment since the police left last Monday.

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