TV review, To Catch a Cat Killer: A fascinating insight into unusual detective work

Vice's documentary sheds light on a grisly subject. Plus: Back to the Country (BBC2)

All that’s left: the ashes and image of a victim of the Croydon Cat Killer (Vice TV)

Strange to say, but by the end of Vice TV’s To Catch a Cat Killer, I found myself wanting more. Not more slaughtered cats, of course, on top of the astonishing 361 (thus far) that have fallen victim to the so-called Croydon Cat Killer, plus, if you’ll pardon the expression, various possible copycat killers, or even colluders.

Rather, I wanted to know more about the fascinating detective work being carried out by the police and RSPCA to try and apprehend this bizarre sadist but, more particularly, the dedicated amateur sleuth work of the impressively named Boudicca and, rather less imposingly named, Terry of Snarl – the South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty group. Vice rightly made these two, the catman and catwoman of south London/Surrey the focus of their attention.

Boudicca and Terry, who incidentally are in a relationship with each other as well as many, many cats, started out as two average feline eccentrics. Tony lives with 18 cats and Boudicca tries not to get too lonely surrounded by 14, and their lives used to revolve around the worthy but routine tasks of rehoming abandoned and maltreated moggies. Until, that is, cats started to be killed – perhaps murdered is the right word – all over south London, Surrey and then nationally. Now, as Tony puts it, “in reality, the cat killer seems to be dictating a large part of my life at the moment ... What the f*** has my life become that I spend more time collecting dead cats than live cats?”. The stress has put his relationship with Boudicca under strain.

The cat-killing pattern was broadly the same for all the cases. A cat would be killed around its owner’s home; then it would be taken offsite, presumably dripping much blood, to be ritually mutilated. The head would be removed, and the tail, and often a limb. Then the carcass would be returned to the home, often dumped on the patio or the like. Sometime later the rest of the grisly remains would also be retuned, to the obvious horror and upset of the doting owners. It appears that in some cases a front foreleg is completely stripped clean to the bone, but with the paw itself left intact. Like I say, bizarre.

What sort of nutter does that? Luckily we had a “forensic psychologist”, Dr Caoimhe McAnena, on hand to explain things: “It’s safe to say it’s unlikely to be someone with a fulfilling social life, a happy relationship and would seem to me to be sometime with deep seated psychological disturbances and needs and they’re meeting that in a very extreme and very unusual way”. So all those years at university and medical school weren’t wasted, then, eh, Doc?

More insightful was Tony. Noting the way the cat killer mutilated the bodies and then prolonged the agony and disrupted the grieving process for the pets’ parents by leaving bits of body around their gardens as nasty surprises, he shrewdly saw that we were not dealing with someone with a grudge against cats so much as someone who wants to attack humans.

He and Boudicca noted, again wisely, the way that many a serial killer of human beings starts out as a torturer of animals, and how at least one cat killer graduated to become a killer of his fellow humans. The retention of bits of the cats as “trophies” has an unnerving parallel with what we know about some infamous mass murderers in history: Without wishing to be sensationalist, what we have on our hands here is a cat “ripper”. Tony was right in suspecting that this cat killer or one of what may well turn out to be a group of killers, “is going to step up, at some point”.

A group? The veterinarian interviewed said that while the basics of the mutilation were common – tail amputation, decapitation – the skill and style of them varied wildly, which, along with the huge geographical area covered, suggest that there is not one single obsessive at work. On the plus side, there is much evidence, albeit grisly, left behind by the killer(s), and at some point mistakes will be made that will lead to an arrest (indeed one may well already have occurred).

But I would have liked to know much more about the background to the cases, how similar cases ever get solved, and who on earth the police/RSPCA/Snarl think they can end the cruelty. At least it gave Vice TV another to add to the famous “101 uses of a dead cat” – to make an excellent and involving documentary about an under-reported and frightening phenomenon.

For those concerned about the future if British farming post-Brexit, I have two words: duck sausages. Yes indeed, though you may not yet have tried them yet we are assured by Kate Humble, presenting a new series of Back to the Land, that they are “incredibly juicy” and have succeeded in revitalising at least one small Cornish farm, thanks to the creative flair and lively “duck you” attitude of owners Roger and Tanya.

Elsewhere in what Jeremy Corbyn calls the low-wage capital of Britain (though also with some inflated property prices), Kate discovered other genuinely inspirational “rural-preneurs” making a novel living from harvesting seaweed and growing top-quality flowers for posh wedding receptions.

These represent a fine example for many other rural businesses when the subsidies from the common agricultural policy dry up, and UK farming is laid wide open to the cheapest imports of produce from anywhere on earth. Britain will, we must fondly hope, be doing very nicely out of world-class kelp, flower arranging and tasty domestic waterfowl. Duck Europe, then.