To suspect my neighbour killed my cat

[Mani2024]

Three years ago we moved to our new house. Day one we met one of our neighbours and he asks whether we have a cat because he hates them. We didn’t at that point but we had planned to get one as we and our children really wanted one. neighbour begged us not too even though there are many many cat in the area. We reluctantly agreed to keep the peace but after a terrible year with lots of heartache we decided it was non of his business and got two kittens.

When he found out we had cats he made a passive aggressive comment to my six year old child about how one of the cats in particular had been in his garden and on his bird table. Some months later I heard our cats squealing. I thought they found themselves in a fight with another cat so called out to stop it but turned out to be my neighbour doing something to them to get them out of his garden. He said they were stalking his bird house.

We tried to settle things down with him, said feel free to spray them with water if they come over, we would look into a fence with a slope and if they ever mess in his garden (which they doubt they had as they still used litter trays) he could put over the fence with a spade. That conversation went well but he did say he’d killed a cat previously because it had chased a bird and that the killing had been unintentional.

fast forward some weeks and one of our kittens was found at the end of the road dead in the road with a sever head injury. This is the cat that both neighbours had said was the main culprit of jumping on their bird tables. Initially I was extremely upset and couldn’t think clearly but after a week or so I remembered that morning I had heard a cat scream that was worse than you would usually hear and had looked out my window to see what was going on. My husband saw my neighbour around that time walking up the road away from where she was later found and when asked what he was up to today said he was going for a long walk. I saw the neighbour in his garden briefly a week later, when our eyes met he went straight back into his house which is unusual as he usually chats to me. Generally he has been quite friendly apart from the issue with the cats.

i have spoken to my husband and a few friends about this and generally the consensus is that I’m overthinking and that this theory is just generally wild. Im
absolutely convinced he killed her and placed her at the end of the road to make it look like she got run over. Then again, I’m so desperately upset by it all that I’m not sure if the grief is clouding my judgement

Because she heard a horrible sound from a cat and then saw the neighbour walking away from where she found the cat and now he's avoiding her. Bit of a coincidence and unlucky for neighbour he made comments before that would make him no 1 suspect.

It does sound like it could have been your neighbour who was responsible. I'm sorry about your poor cat. We had a few cats die in my neighbourhood a few years ago. A neighbour putting out uncovered poison outdoors in plant pot trays, was strongly suspected.

I hope you manage to find some evidence. In the meantime keep your remaining cat in until you can escape proof your garden (companies do this, it involves overhanging fences).

Agree. Loathe them. You need to keep them from being a nuisance to anyone. You chose the cat, so keep it in your garden.

@Fluufer cats are a higher animal than birds. They bond with us and communicate with us. They feel more and have personalities

Reading things like this I'm not sure I should let my cats out now. I've been feeling guilty about them not having better lives and whether I should move to a house at some point to let them go out. I don't know why people can't just scare them away

Bullshit.

@Mani2024 In your shoes I would move house. I would not risk the life of my other cat. I would also do my very best to make this cunt's life a misery, in whatever creative way I could find in the meantime.

@MintyNew don't be so silly. A cat is a roaming creature. Unless you box them in with one of those ridiculous catios then you can't just 'keep them in your garden'. They are allowed to roam by law. You might not like them but frankly it's tough.

Your first sentence is ludicrous.

It's an old article but interesting all the same.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kill-birds-wildlife-keep-indoors

If you drove your car around your neighbour's back garden, leaking engine oil all over the flower beds, damaging their property and killing random wild animals, would that be acceptable?

Would the neighbour be entitled in getting pissed off? If the neighbour smashed your car to pieces, would that be unreasonable?

What a load of claptrap.

If you want to own cats, you need to take responsibility for them - i.e. they should never be allowed to roam. If you can't manage that simple task, don't get a cat.

If you don't really care about your cats, and consider them to be nothing more than disposable pets (which is the only logical conclusion), then let them roam near roads, crazy neighbours, aggressive dogs, etc.

Same happened to my old cat, guy nearby rehomed racing greyhounds (worked with them so they could be pets, a very wholesome thing to do) & would thoroughly check his garden before letting the dog out. One morning he missed my cat & so my cat (who was incredibly special to me & had saved me from a guy looking to get into my house whilst I was alone) was dead within seconds. One single bite to the head. He was DEVASTATED, as was I!

But I wasn't angry! Not his fault, certainly not the dogs fault.

Conversely, my cats sister was nearly killed by some teens - very deliberately & horribly. On that occasion, 3 members of my family went out to find the teens, luckily for them they didn't find them.

This situation is the second example, not the first. Cruelty to animals, by humans, is lowest of the low

Well it depends on the law in your particular country doesn’t it.

In the U.K., letting your cat roam free is a legal right. So they are allowed to roam and whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant.

in the UK, it’s illegal to kill someone else’s pet and in the future, the laws on animal cruelty and harming pets are only going to get stricter with even tougher penalties.

In the U.K., driving your car around a neighbours garden without permission and causing damage is illegal.

In the U.K., taking the law into your own hands and smashing up your neighbours car even if they/it’s trespassing on your property and damaging it, is also illegal.

the latter 2 scenarios will likely both result in a criminal record and will affect the rest of your life very negatively.

Laws are there for a reason, if we don’t agree with them is it acceptable to just do what we want anyway. People that do that are breaking the law and are generally called criminals.

Your analogy isn’t equitable or relevant. Perhaps where you live, but not in the UK or many other countries. A better one would be;

If you drove a polluting car still within legal emission limits, would it be acceptable for someone who doesn’t drive and who gets asthma and other respiratory health issues who lives nearby smash up your car? If you really don't care about others health you shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

I read the last two posts and while quite aggressive in their anti-cat stance why were they deleted? I'm not as au fait with mumsnet rules as perhaps I should be. Is blind agreement the MO on here?

I agree @yumyum33

Guess there's no free speech on MN now

I certainly don't think YABU in thinking the neighbour might be responsible, OP, but I would focus on protecting the cat you still have.

Someone who lives near me has valuable pedigree cats and they have had this stuff fixed to the top of their fence so that they can't get out of her garden: Cat fence . She says it works a treat.

I wish my neighbours would get some. I'm fed up with finding cat shit in my garden, and utterly sick of their cat leaving dead or mortally injured birds on my lawn (I'm bird phobic, and even dead birds freak me out.)

I'd never dream of harming the cat though, or any other animal, for that matter.

@ScrubbedCauliflower Well said. Excusing criminal violence is abhorrent.

I agree. There was nothing untoward about those posts.

Cruelty to animals is a major red flag and to openly brag about it is abhorrent. Please keep your other cat in and have nothing more to do with the psycho.

What on earth do you mean by 'higher' and how on earth could you know that a cat feels more than a bird or think that birds don't have personalities? Corvids are very intelligent and can solve puzzles.

You're talking absolute shite.

Keep trying to get evidence as I'm sure your neighbor is responsible. You can report him for animal cruelty. He deserves to be punished. Killing animals is not acceptable behavior.

Tractive do an excellent pet tracker attached to a collar. We've used one for nearly a year now and the history generated seems to remain on the app indefinitely. There's an annual fee to pay for the service, but in my opinion it's worth it for peace of mind. BTW I'm not on commission.

But why, when they are pets and can be kept indoors. One of our neighbours once said she would never have a litter tray in her house bcos it was disgusting, I think it was far more disgusting that her cat was shitting in our garden that our children were playing in.