Cat owners, be alert.

[rendelharris]

singalto Wrote:

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> The Streatham vets still reckon this is the work

> of a human.

They also said they had only seen "four or five" cases, they "did not perform detailed post-mortems" and "We would very much hope that it just turns out to be foxes preying on cats post mortem however some of the wounds we have seen would be difficult to explain in this way." Difficult - not impossible. Also, ordinary vets are no more trained in post-mortem forensic examination than a GP is in comparison to a forensic pathologist; they're trained to treat wounds, not forensically identify causation. The Head of Veterinary Forensic Pathology at the Royal Veterinary College would, one imagines, have rather more expertise in this area than a small-animal practice.

[MarleyLover]

Angelina Wrote:

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> Foxes very rarely attack cats - they don't see

> them as something to eat or a threat. Foxes and

> cats keep to themselves.

>

> So, as long as it's rubber stamped it's gospel? I

> am surprised how gullible people are.

I had a male cat that used to roam the streets with a pack of foxes for years! So I agree, not all these attacks can be attributed to foxes.

[rendelharris]

As has already been noted, nobody is suggesting that many of these incidents are foxes predating on live cats. 230,000 cats are killed in the UK each year by motor vehicles. Foxes are scavengers, and they will scavenge on any road kill, including cats. They will take the head and the tail first as these are easiest to detach. The argument that "foxes don't attack cats therefore there must be a cat killer" is a total red herring; nobody has put forward fox attacks on live cats as an explanation.

[Penguin68]

I think you have to recall the density in SE London of both urban foxes and domestic cats. The apparent number of incidents around us may be explained simply by that statistic. Lots of cats in built up areas with traffic and lots of foxes. And once the suggestion of 'attacks' was made incidents that would otherwise have gone unnoticed began to be aggregated as a pattern.

[Sue]

rendelharris Wrote:

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nobody has put forward fox attacks on live cats as an explanation.

It seems that regardless of this fact, people will still interpret what has been said or written to suit their own agenda.

[ianr]

There's a ?new Radio 4 short documentary programme, The Cat Killer Detectives, that might be of interest to some. It talks to the couple who ran SNARL, and provides something of their account of how the project began, developed and ended, and the effect it had on their lives then and subsequently.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002j5nr

Edited 6 hours ago by ianr

[GooseGreenGoods]

Personally, I think the death sentance should be brought back for anyone found to be harming animals. 

[Penguin68]

So your remedy for anyone harming an animal, amongst which I assume you include at least all insects, is, well, to kill an animal. Good and logical call. Hyperbole only gets you so far, you know. 

[David Peckham]

5 hours ago, ianr said:

There's a ?new Radio 4 short documentary programme, The Cat Killer Detectives, that might be of interest to some. It talks to the couple who ran SNARL, and provides something of their account of how the project began, developed and ended, and the effect it had on their lives then and subsequently.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002j5nr

Christ.

When the licence fee is under such scrutiny, this doesn't seem like a great time to spend cash exhuming this pair of swivel-eyed loons, even for comedy value.

Spoiler alert: Boudicca Rising (!) left Tony.