Ludicrous Professionals

Strange Shavings

Professionals who value their own opinion over facts have the incredible gall to brush away challenging problems with the public willing to accepting their word as gospel. When mutilated cats began to appear by the dozen in London and the south-east, there was talk of serial killers and black magic. Now it seems that the case of the mysterious `cat-ripper' has been solved - but not to everyone's satisfaction.

UK Animal Killer

POLICE
Officers now seem to favour the theory that the cats are already dead when they are mutilated. Police hunting the so-called Croydon Cat Killer appear to now be favouring the theory that the pets are already dead when they come into contact with a human who they suspect is then mutilating the animals. Police and SNARL, the animal rescue group which has been helping with the inquiry, now differ in their views on how the cats are dying. SNARL have been adamant that the cats are being killed by a human. Police say the allegations are almost exclusively of mutilations of dead cats, not of cats being killed by a human. "It's a leap of faith that all cats are being killed by accident and then one person has found them and mutilated them."

Back in 2016 Detective Sergeant Andy Collin had told the Advertiser he favoured the theory that a human was to blame. He said: "Until I get firm evidence to suggest it is cars then I'm exploring that it could well be something else. We are leaning towards deliberate. There's not evidence to say they were deliberately killed. They appear to have been. But until we have got further evidence we can't really commit to definite but I can say they appear to be.' This seems to be a deliberate change of direction from the force.

There was no formal announcement, but journalists who had been assigned to cat-ripping duties were quietly informed that the alarm was over. If the bemused journalists were unsure if this was good news or bad, their editors had no such doubts: this was good news, to be confined, if published at all, to a couple of paragraphs on the inside pages. And so, for sharp-eyed readers, the mystery of the mad mutilators reached its conclusion.

Except that it didn't. You can't whip the public into a frenzy of wild imagining and then expect it to return to earth at a moment's notice. Three months later, many cat-lovers still feel - if not robbed, exactly - somehow shortchanged by the story's anti-climactic ending. "It was such a glib explanation," says Chris Fairfax. "Suddenly everything's all right - it doesn't ring true to me."

PROFESSOR STEPHEN HARRIS
"This professional is not and was not a forensic pathologist, whilst it is true that he tried to put a stop to Operation Takahe in the early days, it is also true that he refused to meet with the investigation team and the pathologist when it was clear that the killings were not the result of fox predication and due to his perceived eminence, they felt they should at lease pay him some respect by explaining their findings, he is not and never has been part of the forensic team. The professor blames foxes for the killings."

Comments

"What absolute rubbish. How on earth can one person find so many dead cats? There is no way my cat was dead before this "person" got near her, mutilated her and left her in our back garden to find. I have been alive for 40 years, in that time I have never seen a dead cat. This person must be incredibly unfortunate."

"It sounds like a cover-up story to me," says David Cayton, a UFO investigator who is currently looking into an "epidemic" of animal mutilations around Britain, "because it's not the sort of thing that the authorities want the general public to know about." Cayton believes that such mutilations, together with crop circles, "show that we are being visited by advanced beings from other worlds". He recently engaged the services of a professor of pathology to help him in his quest for "tangible evidence", but has so far come up with nothing conclusive."

Even a West Country lawyer and animal rights campaigner, Chris Fairfax, an intelligent and down-to-earth man, is reluctant to give up the possibility of an unnatural explanation for the London cat-rippings. "You keep getting these reports of cats going missing," says Fairfax. "And when you see what people do to other people, I have little doubt that there are people out there who take great pleasure from mutilation. There are some fairly scary people out there."

In America, an exhaustive, year-long investigation of animal mutilations by ex-FBI agent Kenneth Rommel conclusively debunked the "mystery" nearly 20 years ago. That hasn't stopped animal mutilation ("mute") becoming an established sector of the paranormal industry there. Outbreaks of cat- ripping come and go like clusters of UFO sightings. Recent years have seen cat-ripping scares in Vancouver, British Columbia; Lee, New York; Plano, Texas; Falls Church, Virginia; Ahwatakee Foothills, Arizona; and Los Alamos, New Mexico, where cat-owners were warned by police to keep their pets indoors. In several cases, road accidents and coyote maulings were subsequently declared responsible; but those who follow these matters view any such declarations with deep distrust.

In Britain, the London cat-rippings are already becoming established in the hearsay archives of the Unexplained, and those who insist that they were explained are liable to be dismissed as Establishment stooges. Indeed, Paul himself has already fallen out with at least one valued contact by ruling out alien abduction as an explanation for missing pets.

SHAVED CATS

In 2016, at least 12 cats returned home with shaved patches on their legs and stomachs. Cat owners fear that the mysterious 'Cotswold cat shaver' has returned, two years after a bizarre spate of attacks left 12 cats clippered in incidents across Gloucestershire. The most recent cases of shaved cats have occurred in Nailsworth, but there have also been reports in Minchinhampton and Brimscombe.

Tabby, an 11-year-old rescue cat, had been missing in Walkley Wood for over 24 hours, before returning home, appearing nervous and aggressive. After carefully examining the formerly feral cat, two 'shaved' patches on her foreleg and stomach.

But one veterinary nurse has dismissed the theory that there is someone stalking the county's cats and grabbing them off the streets for unwanted haircuts. Emma Green, manager at Companion Care Vets, has suggested a more innocent explanation. Emma said: "In my opinion, that cat has overgroomed rather than been shaved", she said. "Obviously having not actually seen the cat in person it is very difficult to say for sure. But the leg patch isn’t where we would shave for an IV. It’s on the wrong side of the leg. There is still hair in the bald spot, just much thinner. Clippers would remove all of the hair.In my honest and professional opinion, as a qualified vet nurse of almost 15 years, this looks like overgrooming rather than shaving."

But not all pet owners are convinced by the expert's theory of overzealous grooming habits. Tabby's owner maintains that her cat's temperament changed dramatically after she returned home. She attributes this sudden shift in Tabby's behaviour to the traumatic experience of being forcibly shaved. She said: "On her stomach it looks more like clippers than overgrooming. She came home last week with what looks like a shaved leg and stomach. Cats in Minchinhampton, Brimscombe, and Stroud have also returned home bearing the mysterious bald patches.

Source

What absolute rubbish. How on earth can one person find so many dead cats? There is no way my cat was dead before this "person" got near her, mutilated her and left her in our back garden to find.