There is a mysterious figure prowling the streets with a seemingly harmless but bizarre intention: The Cat Shaver of Coventry.
A number of cats in the West Midlands city have been targeted by the unknown perpetrator since 2021, who shaves large perfect squares into their fur.
The latest victim, six-year-old Tallulah, is the first in more than a year.
Her owner Bonnie Towe, who lives in the suburb of Radford, said she noticed the bald patch when her daughter picked up the beloved pet.
‘I thought maybe she licked the fur off her stomach or she had itchy skin,’ she said.
‘But once we lay her back we noticed it is quite a big patch and it was a perfectly cut square. It felt prickly like it had been shaved off.
‘It had been done quite carefully as well, as her stomach didn’t look sore or cut.’
Her concern is Tallulah may have been ‘marked’ by a criminal who could set out to attack her in the future.
Bonnie added: ‘Did someone take her and bring her back? Or did they do it in a car? It doesn’t make any sense as nobody has hurt her.
‘At first we didn’t suspect anything different, we don’t carry her often, she doesn’t like to be carried. She wasn’t missing or anything.
‘We did notice she wasn’t going out quite as much, she mostly sits at home and looks out the window.’
There is no indication previous targets of the cat shaver have come to any harm.
The last time the shaver struck in Coventry was October 2021, when Andrea Wilson’s pet Daisy came home with a significant amount of fur missing.
Her shock was compounded by confusion when her Facebook post about the event drew out a number of other locals who said similar things had happened to them.
Nearby resident Rebecca Keogh said her cats Shelby and Smudge were targeted, with one of them left ‘completely shaved apart from his head and feet’.
At the time, a spokesperson for charity Cats Protection warned: ‘Shaving and cutting the fur or whiskers of a cat can make a cat feel very stressed.
‘The physical restraint required and the use of unfamiliar objects such as scissors or clippers can leave a cat feeling threatened and unsettled.’
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