Mutilated Cats Are Being Found Across a Japanese City and Schools Are Terrified

Mutilated cat carcasses are being found across a Japanese city, prompting local authorities and elementary schools to bolster security measures to protect young students from a potential serial cat killer.

On Sunday morning, police in Saitama city—located in greater Tokyo—were alerted to a partially buried cat with its paws and head missing. The cat’s guts were found hours later on a nearby road. In mid-February, police also found a severed cat jaw in a school yard, tied with a piece of string and hanging from the playground bars.

Fearing that the killer of the cats could also harm young children, nearby elementary schools and local officials have increased patrolling in areas near where the carcasses were found. They’ve also been escorting children home and making them walk in large groups.

“It’s been a while since I’ve heard of a gruesome cat murder like this one in our prefecture,” Kazuhiko Noguchi, who manages resident relations at the police district of Minami, told VICE World News. The increased patrols also served to reassure the neighborhood, he added.

The grisly cat killings have shocked residents and animal rights activists in Saitama prefecture, where a man notoriously killed and tortured more than a dozen cats and posted videos of it online six years ago. The man was sentenced to 22 months in prison. 

Takuya Anzai, an official who has coordinated patrol efforts on behalf of the Saitama educational board, said some parents were especially concerned because of an infamous case of child murders in 1997 carried out by a 14-year-old boy in Kobe prefecture.

Before the juvenile killer slayed his victims, aged 10 and 11, he also dismembered cats’ bodies. “That was a dark time in Japanese history,” Anzai told VICE World News, adding that the education board is asking pupils to alert their teachers if they notice anything out of the ordinary.

Police are currently investigating the two cat murders as violations of Japan’s animal protection law. Killing or harming an animal is punishable with a maximum five year prison sentence or a fine of up to 5 million yen ($36,600).

In 2021, Japanese police made 170 arrests for suspected animal abuse—the highest since records began in 2010.

Yukiko Furuhashi, the head of a cat protection group in central Japan’s Aichi prefecture, called for better background checks for potential pet owners. “Animals should not be treated as though they are toys,” she told VICE World News. 

“This abuser went so far as to leave the cat bodies in public spaces, where there could be security cameras—clearly this is a purely evil act,” she said.

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