Cat mutilated, left in owners back yard
Bothell, WA (US)

Incident Date: Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
County: King

Disposition: Open

Suspect(s) Unknown - We need your help!

Mark Steinway hopes the promise of $2,500 will entice an eyewitness or someone in the know to step forward and identify whoever is responsible for killing a cat named Murphy and leaving the cat's mutilated body for his owners to find in their Bothell back yard.

Steinway is a co-founder of the animal-welfare organization Pasado's Safe Haven, which was founded after the 1992 killing of a petting-zoo donkey named Pasado in a Bellevue park.

Today, he and a crew of volunteers will be posting reward fliers in Bothell's Canyon Park neighborhood and along Fourth Avenue West, near the home where Murphy went missing during a thunderstorm on Aug. 6.

"Murphy was sweet and trusting and would run up to people if they called him nicely," said Bothell veterinarian Tricia Gawley, who began treating Murphy as a kitten and performed a necropsy on the mutilated body of the year-old, longhair, brown tabby.

It would have been bad enough for someone to kill a stray cat, but to put a family's dead pet "back in the yard for the owners to find just shows that much more cruelty that is especially sick," Gawley said.

Murphy's owners, who have asked not to be identified, found part of the cat's body in their back yard on the evening of Aug. 7. The rest of the body still is missing, she said.

Before 1994, animal cruelty in Washington was a misdemeanor charge. But the beating death of Pasado the donkey by three young men ignited public outrage and prompted legislative action.

Now, animal cruelty is a felony charge, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A spokesman for the Bothell Police Department couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

Anyone with information is asked to call Pasado's Safe Haven tip line at 206-300-7217.

If you have information on this case, please contact:
Pasado's Safe Haven tip line
206-300-7217

References

• The Seattle Times

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