Kitty Dahlia, Take 2

Some of you may recall that our early days in the new house were marred by the finding of a dismembered cat under our biggest apple tree. Hal found the front half of a cat, very neat and clean, without any trace of blood or guts, lying in the grass. He was reminded of the Black Dahlia murder at the time.

Initially, I was pretty creeped out, but I had pretty well convinced myself after the fact that the cat had to have been killed by a coyote that was perhaps startled from its kill before it could finish eating. The police were unimpressed with our report, concluding that as there were no overt signs of devil worship around the cat, it wasn't likely the work of people. Animal Control were too busy to come out to collect it the same day, and, as far as I am aware, never showed up. Obviously, they weren't very concerned. Between that and the fact that the rest of the cat was eaten by wildlife the next night, I decided the original corpse was just the work of coyote, probably killed elsewhere and brought to the shelter of our yard for a quiet meal. Now I'm wondering if I rushed to a comfortable conclusion.

The other night I caught a bit of the local news on KOMO, and saw the story of a Point Defiance neighborhood, where someone has mutilated at least two cats. Mutilated them in exactly the same way as our find. The two found in Tacoma had undergone a veterinary post-mortem, and the vet said the severing of the cat had definitely been done not by a dog or coyote, but with a blade, and the blood drained somewhere other than the spot where the corpse -- the front half of the cat -- was dumped. I never closely examined the cat for how it was bisected, but this sounds entirely too similar to the cat Hal found in our yard. And Tacoma is less than 30 miles away.

Hal originally sent pictures of the cat we found to the local police, so he should be able to send them to the investigators in Pierce County as well.

The thing that bothered me most initially, and keeps ringing in my head now, is an observation Thomas Harris makes in Red Dragon: Someone who starts out mutilating animals may well move on to doing unpleasant things to people. I wonder if that's true? It would be seriously easy to creep myself out about now.

ETA: The News Tribune has an article on the Point Defiance cases. I think I'll pass our information on to the contact at the paper tonight, for whatever good it will do.

I Am Still Not A Birder, But...

This bird identification quiz is kinda fun. In particular, it's interesting to me to go through the older quizzes at the bottom, where they include the correct ID and a fair bit of exposition on what to look at to identify the bird. The Bird Guide main page looks like it will also come in handy.

Still not a birder, though.