Croydon Cat Killer: London pet owners dismiss fox verdict
September 22, 2018
Police say cars and scavenging foxes, not a serial killer, explain the suspicious deaths of hundreds of cats. But pet owners aren't convinced. Decapitation and returned collars are just some of the reasons they cite.
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Cat owners and animal rescue groups in London have expressed pronounced skepticism after police determined that there was no sign of human involvement in the deaths of hundreds of cats over the past few years.
Since 2015, police have received hundreds of reports of mutilated cats, as well as some rabbits and foxes, with missing heads and tails, raising fears that a serial killer was responsible.
The mystery murderer had been dubbed the "Croydon Cat Killer" after the capital's south London borough where the mutilations were first recorded.
London police declared the investigation closed on Thursday, finding that the deaths were likely caused by predation or scavenging by wildlife, such as foxes, or that the cats died from blunt force trauma, suggesting they were hit by a vehicle.
"Officers working alongside experts have concluded that hundreds of reported cat mutilations in Croydon and elsewhere were not carried out by a human and are likely to be the result of predation or scavenging by wildlife," police said.
In some of the cases, foxes were caught on CCTV carrying feline body parts.
But pet owners and animal protection groups are not convinced, and believe the patterns seen in the killings point to a more intelligent being.
Patterns in the killings
South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL), a local animal rescue organization, said that the decapitated cats they had seen had had their heads removed in exactly the same manner and place each time.
"Where we have recovered both head and body, the same small part is missing from each," the organization said in a statement. "We find it difficult to understand how foxes can replicate this perfectly across a range of victims across a vast geographical area," it continued.
In another case, SNARL said a cat's collar was returned to the owner's home five months after the cat was killed, and in another case a rabbit's head was returned to the owner's garden six months after its death.
Jane Galloway, a resident of Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, found her Bengal cat Taz "chopped up" in her neighbor's garden in October 2017, a local paper, the Welwyn Hatfield Times, reported. She claims police told her not to tell the media about a "trademark" left by the killer.
Taz's "neck had been snapped, and his tail, ear and right paw cut off" and "his front left paw had been flattened, as if it had been held in a vice or some kind of trap," the paper wrote.
Jayne told the Welwyn Hatfield Times that Taz also had a marking on his stomach that had been "cut in" and many other killed cats had the same marking.
World Cat Day: Cult cats of pop culture
From Garfield to Grumpy Cat, these felines have proven they're the cat's meow in cartoons, books, musicals or films — even taking the internet by storm.
Image: Eve Goldschmidt/dpa/picture-alliance
Monday-loathing lasagna lover
Making his debut in 1978, Garfield was the titular character of what would go on to become the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world. This corpulent, cynical orange tabby shares his abode with Odie, a rather hyper slobbering dog, and Jon, his human with a lonely streak. Garfield's standard feline response to anything? "Feed me." The Monday-loathing feline has a weakness for lasagna.
Image: 20th Century Fox/Keystone/ZPress/picture-alliance
Grinning like a Cheshire Cat
The shape-shifting Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" can make part of his body disappear at will or vanish altogether — leaving only his trademark grin behind. He also ponders existential matters: "A dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."
Image: Glasshouse Images/picture alliance
Resistance is futile
He performs the most difficult tasks and nabs the vilest culprits. Of noble Spanish lineage, he's swift and his claws are as sharp as glass cutters. He's the unstoppable Puss In Boots — unless he must indeed stop to cough up a fur ball. After brilliant performances — voiced by Spanish actor Antonio Banderas — in Disney's "Shrek" films, he even became the main protagonist of spinoff flicks.
Image: Central Partnership/Tass/dpa/picture alliance
Kitty has spoken
In "Petterson and Findus," a children's book series by Swedish author Sven Nordqvist, a lively kitten named Findus adds a little action to his elderly owner's life. Findus has a mischievous streak, but nobody can stay mad at him long. He has the ability to speak with other animals, but with only one human: "his old man" Petterson. The Nordic cat epic has also been adapted into animated versions.
Image: Mfa film/dpa/picture-alliance
'I tawt I taw a puddy tat'
No guesses as to what this line, often uttered by the quick-witted canary Tweety, actually means. Targeted as a snack by tuxedo cat Sylvester, the feathered fella often outfoxes the feline, prompting the latter to exclaim in his trademark lisp: "Sufferin' succotash!" Both characters belong to the Looney Tunes lineup of animated characters.
Image: IFTN/United Archives/picture alliance
Playing cat and mouse
Meanwhile, at the house of Hanna-Barbera, Tom and Jerry swept the movie screens from 1940 until 1967 in a series of comedy short films, later becoming TV stars. The storyline couldn't be simpler: Tom the cat pursues the faster Jerry, a mouse. The wild chases have a low violence threshold, with detonations happening frequently. Seven Tom and Jerry movies won Oscars, with six more nominated.
Image: Eve Goldschmidt/dpa/picture-alliance
Rhapsody in pink
A staple of the kawaii segment of Japanese pop culture, Hello Kitty — whose full name is Kitty White — is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio, created by Yuko Shimizu and designed by Yuko Yamaguchi. In the 1970s, a small pink purse was the first product to bear the image of the kitty sporting a pink bow on her head. Pink remains her color.
Image: David Edwards/Dailyceleb/Newscom/picture alliance
Furry heiress
Choupette, a Burmese cat, was the muse of late designer Karl Lagerfeld. Wherever he went she wasn't far behind, in a custom-designed traveling bag with two ladies-in-waiting, a chef and a bodyguard. Choupette gained fame as a model, has 258,000 Instagram followers and has been living literally in the lap of luxury. After the Chanel and Fendi designer died in 2019, this cat inherited $1.5 million.
Image: Eventpress Kugler/picture alliance
The face that launched a thousand memes?
Her real name was Tardar Sauce, but she quickly became an internet sensation and rechristened "Grumpy Cat" after a picture of her permanently "grumpy" facial expression was shared online. Caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism, her (in)famous visage became the subject of an internet meme. Though she died in May 2019, Grumpy Cat arguably remains the web's most famous feline.
Image: Nina Prommer/epa/dpa/picture alliance
An antenna for aliens
Remember Jones — or Jonesy — as Sigourney Weaver's character Ellen Ripley calls the ginger cat in Ridley Scott's famous sci-fi film Alien? As an acid-spewing alien systematically kills off the crew of the spacecraft Nostromo, Jonesy and Ripley become the sole survivors who flee in a capsule, but not before Jonesy senses and warns Ripley that the beast was also trying to get on their getaway ride.
And while cats today are said to be "the unofficial mascot of the internet," they also rule onstage in Broadway and the West End. Well, at least with humans playing them. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" is based on T. S. Eliot's book of poems "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." The sung-through musical centers around the Jellicle Cats, a group of highly individual junkyard felines.
Image: Ingo Röhrbein/picture-alliance/dpa
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Experts support police
A number of experts have spoken out in support of the police's findings.
"I've been in hundreds of gardens helping people deter foxes and I've found cats' heads in gardens, tails and bits of legs," John Bryant, an expert in humane fox deterrence in the London area, told The Guardian. "They scavenge a dead cat from the road or even a dead fox, break it up and the cubs play with it."
Bryant told The Guardian of another fox crime that sparked fear in residents — a spate of car brake lines being cut in south London. The culprits turned out to be young foxes. "From July the fox cubs are all hooligans, jumping on cars, chasing each other around, and they get underneath cars and just bite anything," Bryant said.
Dawn Scott, a professor of mammal ecology and conservation at the University of Brighton, also told The Guardian that foxes were often mistakenly thought to have killed cats they were seen eating, but they had often been fatally injured by cars. "There are 9 million cats — 20 times more cats than foxes. Cats frequently get killed on roads and foxes are scavengers," Scott said.