A Twin Cities couple is struggling to understand how anyone could attack and kill their helpless cat.
�I'm sure she was being really friendly to them when they attacked her. It's just a sorry thing it's terrible,� said Peter Schulze who owned the cat.
Minneapolis Police said two teenage boys took a baseball bat to Miss Kitty Thursday morning.
That accusation has some neighbors on edge.
�She would fall asleep every night and rest her head on my arm,� said Schulze.
"It's wrong and it's cruel,� said Jilda Mastrey who owned the cat for 15 years.
Jilda Mastrey and Peter Schulze loved their cat Miss Kitty. They planted these flowers in her memory. They believe she was beaten to death with a wooden bat by a couple teenage boys. In fact, a broken off piece of wood lay beside the dead cat's body.
The couple was sleeping in a front room just a few feet away from where this happened. They did hear some noise out here but they thought someone was just playing around banging on some rocks.
�I came out and they were poking my dead cat, and I looked at them and I wondered are they the guys who did it,� said Schulze.
�We came out here and she was dead and they were on bicycles and rode away. It's like they wanted to see our reaction to the death of our cat,� said Mastrey.
Peter chased after them when he noticed they'd taken a bicycle from the house. Police did catch the boys. It turns out they're also accused of breaking into a car around the same time. Now people in the neighborhood are fearful.
�I'm suspicious. I don't trust people and it shouldn't be that way,� said Schulze.
Mastrey�s turning her grief into action, warning the neighborhood with a flyer that describes what happened to Miss Kitty. Mastrey is urging folks to organize and fight the growing nuisance crimes in the area.
�Right now there's a dead animal," said Mastrey. "What's next? I'm angry and somebody has to stand up."
A boy in the neighborhood who says he knows the suspects told Bridgette Bornstein that he wondered why anyone cares that this happened.
He said things die every day and you can buy a new cat.
People in law enforcement tell us that young people who abuse animals often grow up to commit serious crimes, even become serial killers.
The boys accused in this case are out of jail, but prosecutors will consider charges, perhaps even felonies.
Neighborhood MapFor more information about the Interactive Animal Cruelty Maps, see the map notes.
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