The alarming case of a serial cat killer

Peter Kuitenbrouwer and Tanya Mok | 03/10/13 | 

Peter J. Thompson/National PostStouffville resident Connie Sima holds her cat Cleo near where 

The front door of Connie Sima’s 1858 brick farmhouse is not in use, choked as it is in bushes crowded with pink roses, plus daisies, forsythia and euonymus. A clematis vine has conquered a trellis and hides her home from the street.

Inside her front window dozes Cleo, one of Ms. Sima’s big cats. The other, Limerick, sleeps nearby. Normally on a delightful Indian summer afternoon these young cats roam the neighbourhood and hunt mice. But Ms. Sima locked them up tight Thursday before noon.

“My daughter texted me and said, ‘You’d better go put your cats in the house,’” Ms. Sima says, bringing out her cats one at a time to show off to a visitor — but keeping them firmly in her arms.
Ms. Sima and others in this historic farming community are living in fear of an apparent cat-killer on the loose. On Thursday morning, York Regional Police, who patrol the region north of Toronto, said that in a one-month period residents have discovered the severed heads of six cats in public places in town.

There were no signs of blood, said Const. Andy Pattenden, and no additional damage was done to the heads. They looked like they had been placed deliberately rather than dropped accidentally, and police do not believe the incidents were acts of a predatory animal. None of the cats’ bodies has been found.

“What’s of great concern to us is the pattern of it,” said Const. Pattenden, accompanied by Ontario SPCA officer Brad Dewer. “Six incidents all similar in nature, that’s what’s alarming to us.”
Ms. Sima, retired from selling real estate, says she has never worried about much of anything, least of all her cats, since moving to this historic street 20 years ago.

“It’s absolutely atrocious, a human being who does that,” Ms. Sima says. “I don’t know where they came from but I wish they would leave.”

York Regional Police TwitterYork Police spokesperson Const. Andy Pattenden said the six cat heads

were found in different public locations over the last two months, within a one-kilometre area of 
Tenth Line and Main Street

Police on Tuesday released a map of six locations where cat heads were found. On Aug. 12 a cat head turned up at Stouffer and Montreal streets, next to Ms. Sima’s home. Other heads appeared from Sept. 5-11, all within two kilometres of here. On Sept. 13, a woman found her own cat’s head outside her home at Stouffer and Montreal streets.

Peter J. Thompson/National PostStouffville cross roads Stouffer and Montreal Streets, where some of many severed cat heads have been found, Thursday October 3, 2013. 

Asked Thursday why police waited three weeks between the last head discovery and alerting the community, Det. Sarah Ridell says, “The information was given to York Regional Police just recently by the town of Whitchurch-Stouffville. I am not comfortable speaking about this to the media,” she adds. “Our phones are ringing and we are trying to put everything together.”

Nothing much ever happens in this historic town, founded in 1792, about 50 kilometres northeast of Toronto. New subdivisions crowd the historic area on all sides. Even so, the lead article in the Stouffville Sun-Tribune this week concerns the triumph of a team of four corn-huskers, who have landed in the 2014 Guinness Book of World Records after husking 31 cobs of corn in one minute at last year’s Markham Fair.

Stouffville does have a lot of cats, many of them, like Ms. Sima’s cat Limerick, born in the barns outside town.

Kelli Gillis, owner of GroomingTales, a busy pet grooming salon on the main drag here, has kittens available. “My bather lives on a farm,” she explains. “We had another litter dropped off at another groomer.

“We have kittens for adoption, but we are going to be pulling them, because this has freaked me out a little bit.”

Many locals dote on their cats, paying big bucks to groom them, sometimes every six weeks.

“The Lion Clip is very popular,” Ms. Gillis says. “You shave down the body, leave the elbows and feet and the head all puffy.” The average Lion Clip ranges from $71 to $82. The fee goes up “if we have to put on any battle gear or I have to call out another groomer,” she adds. Orange dye covers her hands; she in the middle of turning the mohawk on a customer’s terrier orange, for Halloween.

Until now, cats’ main enemy around here were coyotes, says Peter Archibald, who lives near where two cat heads turned up. Like others, he fears the perpetrator may not stop with cats.

Peter J. Thompson/National PostStouffville resident Connie Sima, viewed through her home's porch 
railing, holds her cat Cleo near where severed cat heads have been found, Thursday October 3, 2013.

“They say you start with the wings of a fly,” says Mr. Archibald, on sick leave from his job as health
and safety co-ordinator at the Magna auto parts factory. “Then ants, then mice, and then cats, and
what’s next?”

Mr. Archibald says six cats roamed this area a year ago. Now there is just one. “All the songbirds are back,” he says, “blue jays and cardinals and mourning doves. And there are lots more squirrels again.”

Back at Ms. Sima’s house, red leaves from a grand maple tree by her door carpet the flagstones. Even so, Ms. Sima dreams of moving to a farm where she can grow a larger garden — and her cats will be safe.

“They are outside cats,” she says. “They’d be so much happier on a farm. This will be a perfect motivator.”

Source: National Post