Un articolo pubblicato su The Atavist Magazine ripercorre la storia della caccia a un curioso, ipotetico serial killer che avrebbe agito negli ultimi anni in Inghilterra accanendosi su particolari esseri viventi: i gatti. Quando decine di gatti assassinati vengono ritrovati in giro per Londra, una coppia di detective improvvisati appartenenti allo SNARL (South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty, ma anche “ringhio”) si mette alla ricerca di “Jack the Rippurr”.

It was the body on the south London doorstep that got everyone’s attention. On the bright morning of September 23, 2015, a woman walked outside her home to find a cream-and-coffee-colored pelt, like a small furry Pierrot. It had dark forelegs, and its face was a smoky blot. It was a cat, slit throat to belly; its intestines were gone.

The woman rang the authorities, who came and disposed of the body. Three days later, she looked at a leaflet that had come through her mail slot, asking whether anyone had seen Ukiyo, a four-year-old ragdoll mix whose coat matched that of the dead cat. The woman broke the bad news to Ukiyo’s owner, Penny Beeson, who lived just down Dalmally Road, a nearly unbroken strip of poky, pebble-dashed row houses in the Addiscombe area of Croydon.

Beeson was inconsolable. “I shook for the whole day,” she later told The Independent.

“R.I.P ukiyo I feel devastated,” her son, Richard, posted on Facebook. “Hacked to death and left on someone’s doorstep. Some people are so sick!”

A few days later, Addiscombe’s letter boxes clacked again as another leaflet was delivered. This one warned that Ukiyo’s demise wasn’t an isolated incident—there had been a troubling spate of cat deaths in the area. The leaflet was printed by a local group called South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty, or SNARL.

Immagine da Flickr