Forest Hill cat owners have suffered multiple bereavements due to the “Croydon Cat Killer”
Police have found fox DNA on corpses and now believe the cause of death may not be a human serial killer after all:
Discussing this last year: Forest Hill's Foxes - #15 by anon5422159
Hmm not sure how much I believe this. What of all the incidences where cats/body parts were left in plastic bags on owners’ doorsteps?
Unless Foxes have learnt to nip to Sainsbury for a 5p carrier, there’s definitely some human involvement here. Seems like a bit of fobbing off 
Am not taking a stance on this but I did read this last month so wasn’t surprised at the OP news story:
It is interesting to read about fox behaviour in this regard.
From the ES report:
“In a statement the Met said: “Following a thorough examination of the available evidence, officers working alongside experts have concluded that hundreds of reported cat mutilations in Croydon and elsewhere were not carried out by a human and are likely to be the result of predation or scavenging by wildlife.””
The Met Police seem firm in their statement that these incidents were “not carried out by a human”.
Backed up by a lot of conclusive evidence.
It’s time to go after the Croydon Bird Killer. Oh wait that’s just all the cats decimating the bird population 
Inspired by SE23Nic’s poll: who or what do you believe is most responsible for the 500 cat deaths?
Foxes
Cars
Human serial killer0 voters
I wonder what your fox feeding friends will make of this @anon5422159 ?
Given they own a lovely cat, I hope they’ll reconsider their anti-social behaviour.
Police have released a new e-fit of a suspect:
NewsShopper’s roundup of today’s bombshell:
I wonder if a small number of killings WERE by a person, but the publicity led to many fox-related incidents being rolled up in the same data set. I assume the researchers also took into account that foxes are arch-scavengers and in many cases would have picked the bodies of cats already dead or injuried due to being hit by a car.
Sounds like a very plausible suggestion.
If I read it correctly it suggested they were basically all roadkill then scavenged by the foxes…
I think @RachaelDunlop has a point - this could be a mixture of a human killer, human copycat killers and fox scavenging of roadkill. And perhaps some fox “killing frenzies” (based on their tendency to remove heads but not actually eat the prey):
I don’t think that foxes eat chickens is wildly a surprise.
What was a surprise is how according to the article banning hunting has increased the urban fox population. I miss the days of the hunt Tally-hoing down Dartmouth Road…
There appears to be a lot of public commentary concentrating on cat bits hung in plastic bags on their owners door, and people saying that foxes can’t do that therefore it must be a person. I don’t recall reading about such a case until now (and as hearsay), but I wasn’t and remain not an avid reader of cat mutilation stories.
It seems most likely to me that a cat was hit by a car and the remains returned to the owner by a well meaning member of the public in a bag.
Cats hit by cars don’t usually end up in several pieces, though.
No, not usually, but there were over 500 cases investigated and those that were investigated were done so because they were suspicious in some way.
Article about the controversy of the case in Wired:
What probably happened was that top brass at Scotland Yard and participating forces collectively agreed behind closed doors that there probably has been some deliberate human involvement but they’ll shelve it until a similar M.O. appears on their radar. And do what I’d do: blame it on foxes.
Boudicca Rising and the South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (Snarl) group continue their campaign as reported in the DM.
Cats are getting their revenge (or at least I assume that’s who’ll get the blame)
Heartbreaking
The police said it was most likely cats killed by cars then part eaten by foxes.
The press went FOXES!!! and then slightly mentioned the road kill that the police actually said deep within the article.
It’s not foxes or road kill. Bodies on owner’s doorsteps. Decapitations and the rest left. The truth will come out eventually when they catch the psycho.
Note: if it was foxes in general, there’d be no cats left. If it’s a rogue nutter fox, what’s it got - an Oyster Card to travel around Greater London of a night on it’s murderous surgical vivisection spree?
It’s nonsense
London has more than one fox I believe. Decapitation is fairly standard for foxes, a head is pretty hard on the teeth. Its a terrible thing for owners to lose a cat bit I would be really surprised if the police took three years, lots of money and decided to blame it on cars and foxes.
The police have no resources. Brushing this aside with a ‘it’s probably cars and foxes’ is par for the course to allow them to close it.
I’ve lived in SE London amongst hundreds and hundreds of cats and foxes for 20 years and never seen any interaction between the two apart from them regularly occupying the same garden and completely ignoring each other or a cat chasing one off once.
Collars and severed heads suddenly appearing on owners doorsteps months after the body was initially found - just freakish bad luck right? Some people just don’t like or are irritated by foxes and then they get blamed for all sorts.
Or, as a result of the press more people started taking note.
An update - three pawed fox has turned up: The Wildlife Lodge report is quite upbeat.
Sorry, but I prefer to believe SNARL and the vets that they’ve asked to do post mortems. I live not far from Croydon and it’s too close for comfort. Cats, rabbits and even foxes have been killed. Decapitations have been clean cuts rather than gnawing/biting of a fox. Tails have been cut off. The vast majority of these deaths are down to one or more sick human beings and they need to be found before they move on to larger victims.
Urban foxes aren’t a problem limited to just parts of London. And cats have been domesticated since the ancient Egyptians…
So if this 'cat killer’s is a fox, surely it would be happening in lots of cities and countries, and have been happening with such a history that it shouldn’t be a surprise or unexplained today.
On the other hand humans are suspitible to mass hysteria, which can be localised and amplified by the press (see .https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Swansea_measles_epidemic as an example of press irresponsibility with consequence). With few, if any, actual sightings of a potential human culprit, maybe there is nothing to it.
Not doubting you but can you show your source for these suggestions?
Take a look at South Norwood Animal Rescue’s Facebook page. Posts on there from local vet surgeries who have dealt with the corpses. Quite a few cases of human intervention.
About eleven years ago my dear sweet Anya, a small black female moggy, went missing. We found her a day later in a local church yard, missing her head. The cut was clean and clinical.
I don’t know if it was the Croydon cat killer and part of some dark decade long effort to kill our kitties. Or perhaps it was some religious cult that see black cats as purveyors of evil. Or maybe it was just kids, some really bad kids. And according to the vet it wasn’t the first and I doubt my dear sweet Anya was the last.
But it wasn’t any fox.
Police didn’t care then, so I’m not surprised they don’t care now.
There are a few reports from vets saying the have seen suspicious cases. I found this from 2005 so cat killing has been going on for a while. I have no doubt that there are people who are sick enough to kill cats, but not all of them.
Another one in Carshalton in the last few days. Local vet has confirmed that the cat was mutilated using a tool.
According to the following article, it sounds like the Croydon cat killer may have killed a kangaroo in Australia some time around May 2014.
The “cleanliness” of the kill (whilst the head and shoulder had been removed, the carcass showed no signs of an attack - no claw marks, cuts, etc) indicated an efficient lone hunter
Full article here, but be warned it is quite graphic and includes a picture:
http://www.ndlg.org.au/go/was-it-a-fox
Perhaps it is possible that vets aren’t familiar with how foxes kill and at least some of these deaths are being misattributed.
Here’s the latest one.
Sadly, I can still easily believe there was/is some guy or group of people systematically killing cats. And given the fame or notoriety of the Croydon Cat Killer now, copy cats (no pun intended).
According to the article, the vet allegedly said: “with injuries consistent with the ‘cat killer’”. The vet isn’t saying that a cat has definitely been killed and mutilated by a human, just its injuries are consistent with the others in related reported cases.
People are reading the same reported facts and interpreting them to fit their preestablished beliefs. The cat killer is officially a conspiracy theory now.
Personally, I think there is someone going around London, murdering and dismembering cats. Also, the royal family are space lizards.
From the article.
The business believes the cat was killed by a human before he was taken into its surgery.
I’ve heard similar.
This appears to be a conclusion drawn by the journalist, who has an interest to make the story, but I don’t want to be drawn into a debate as I’m busy writing my dissertation on camouflaged grassy knoll shooting positions.
This is Local London has another dead cat report from SNARL from 26 November 2018.
The South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL) group said a cat was found to have injuries “consistent with the UK animal killer”, the one which the group have been investigating since 2015.
The link (sourced from This is Local London but appears to have a Newsshoper banner).:
The cat killer as moved
Very sad, and clearly a human attacker in this instance. I hope they’re caught soon.