This morning my neighbor knocked on my door to tell me that while walking her dog she saw something black and white on a lawn across the street. She knew we have a black and white cat. I came out, saw the black and white object and thought “that’s way too small to be our cat” but crossed the street to check it out. Sure enough, it was the head, front legs, and upper torso of our cat. There was no sign whatsoever of the back legs, tail, or lower torso.
A) What could have happened?
B) Where’s the back half?
He was 17 years old, so dying of natural causes and being scavenged by wild animals is a possibility, but I would expect to see bones or strewn pieces. That would also explain how he got on the other side of the street, which he usually never crosses. We have raccoons, skunks, opossums, and big-ass crows in the area. Although that would be quick. I last saw him around 10 last night. The neighbor came by around 7:45 this morning.
If he’d been hit by a car, I’d expect him to stay intact. No blood visible on the remains. Plus he was about 15 feet from the street, which is a bit far to be thrown by the impact.
Attacked by a dog(s)? Again no blood, puncture wounds, or maiming on the part that was left.
Neighborhood psycho? <shudder>
The back half is still inside Schrodinger’s box?
Speculation (and sick jokes, cause I’ve been on this board long enough to know they’re coming) welcome.
My mom “lost” her cat a while back. A neighbor alerted her to the upper half of the remains, just like you. Conclusion: coyote. They’re known to prey on cats and small dogs, and they’ve been sighted in her neighborhood. Looking at your locale, that’s what I’d guess happened to yours.
Half a dead cat in the road!!!
Seriously though… I’m so sorry for your loss. At least he made it to a ripe old age of 17. In all seriousness, I’d say he got scavenged and the animal then got scared off by something so it left the other half.
First of all, I’m sorry that happened to your cat. You’re made of sterner stuff than I am. If there was a possibility that I’d have to look at half my cat I’d provide a photo for someone else to ID her from, I think.
Before your location was pointed out I was thinking about the St. Bernard that lives over my back fence. She killed the downstairs neighbors’ cat. I think there was blood though. I stopped my son from telling me the details.
Coyotes are definitely a possibility in your area, and seem most likely.
If there was no blood near the front-half remains, I’d guess a coyote had killed your cat elsewhere and had been carrying the front half when it got spooked and dropped it. Or maybe it crawled there with its front legs like that zombie on Walking Dead.
Probabaly coyotes. I lost a cat to coyotes a few years ago, and they’re are still a regular problem in that neighborhood (out by the Riverside/Orange Country border).
Please accept my condolences on your loss.
Yup. Coyote sounds plausible. Very common in Toronto now, even; coyotes aren’t just creatures of the far southwestern deserts anymore. There have been a rash of predations of small dogs in the eastern suburbs, for example. Part of me is wondering what happens when a coyote meets a raccoon, and part of me is going, “Yay! That’s one fewer yap-dog!”
I am so sorry that happened to your cat. What an awful thing for you to have to see.
My guess would have been coyotes too. This sounds consistent with other stories I’ve heard about coyotes attacking cats.
You may want to warn your neighbors that their small dogs and cats could be in danger from coyotes too.
This summer my FIL and I had to work on the house, and we tore up the floorboards on the sun porch with a dirt crawl space underneath.
We found the mummified remains of a cat, actually half a cat. It had a head and the right side intact. The entire left side was missing. So how did half a cat get under the house?
I found a cat like this in a school field years ago.
I’ve always wondered, and if it is coyotes, why was the kill so clean looking? For years I thought it was caught in one of those giant lawn mowers our school uses. Would an animal attack be more messy? The cat I found was cut perfecly in half, with intact organs sitting in a neat little pile beneath its top half.
Sorry to hear this. It’s happened a few times out here in Albuquerque this summer and coyotes are the suspects, though with the drought we’ve got bears and mountain lions in town grabbing people’s pets.
A coyote makes a lot of sense; more so than a bear. And much more so than Purina accidentally reformulating a bag of dry food to contain pinto beans & Immodium (if they did, the back end could be spread across 3 states. But you would have heard the bang.).
I like those b/w ones.