SPANISH FORT, Ala. (WALA) – Several cats have been found dead over the past couple of weeks in the Spanish Fort Estates neighborhood, raising alarms among pet owners and prompting a police investigation.
Images shared on social media are disturbing – too graphic to show on television – of mutilated bodies.
Elizabeth Mathews said her family’s cat was missing for a little more than 24 hours. She said her concern grew when she saw Facebook posts about dead cats near her street.
“If it rains, he’s always on our back porch,” she told FOX10 News. “He has access to come in the house anytime he wants. So if it’s raining, he does not like to be out. He does not like to be wet. So the fact that we couldn’t find him when it was wet outside was very concerning.”
The cat came back Tuesday, but others have not been as lucky. One woman told FOX10 News that she was heartbroken to find her dead cat’s body near her home last week. She said the cat had a clean cut and no blood – almost, she added, as if someone killed the animal somewhere else and moved it to that spot. She said she believes it was the work of a person.
“I’ve seen some pretty disturbing things,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified because she fears retaliation if it was a person. “I can tell you this was not an animal that did this.”
Spanish Fort Police Chief John Barber said the department did not receive a formal report but began investigating because of the social media chatter.
“We handled it like we would do any other criminal investigation,” he said. “If somebody’s out there killing cats in the neighborhood, it’s a crime.”
But Barber said he reached a different conclusion after consulting with an Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources biologist.
“Their opinion on the pictures that we sent him were that it was a bird of prey that actually caused that,” he said. “And so, you know, that was good for us to hear that. Now one thing I think we can clearly establish talking to everybody is that there are a number of cats that have been killed in a very short period of time in the Estates.”
Mathews said that explanation makes sense to her. She said she one time saw an owl “scoot down and run into the window and leave an imprint the size of the whole back bay window trying to get to our dog” on the other side of the window.
Another time, Mathews said, an owl got into a scuffle with the cat.
“We heard screeching and some loud noises,” she said. “And we came around the fence to see our cat grabbing something from an owl that was escaping our cat, actually. And it was a squirrel that had been completely dismembered, no blood.”
Others have suggested coyote might be responsible. Mathews showed FOX10 News video clip from her home surveillance system showing motion-sensor lights flicking on and off – and indication, she said, that something big set it off.
Monde Donaldson, who has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years, said she saw a dead cat a couple of weeks ago less than two blocks from her home.
“Never seen anything like this before,” she said. “But it’s almost like the cat wasn’t touched. It’s a big, beautiful black cat. It was not like it was touched.”
Barber said if anyone has information indicating that a person is responsible for the cat deaths, they should call police. But he said officers did not find evidence of that.
“We got a bunch of whispers about, ‘Oh, we think it could be somebody in the neighborhood. We think it could be this person,’” he said. “And then as we were running that down, like anything else, you know, did anybody hear this person admit to killing the cats? We could find nobody that actually heard it.”
Copyright 2024 WALA. All rights reserved.
