Family sent video of their missing cat with its head cut off

Mutilated ginger tabby had fur scraped off and tail removed in apparently random act of violence

A video of Caroline Prater's cat Morris showed his mutilated body. (Bristol Live / SWNS)

A video of a mutilated cat with its head almost entirely removed has been sent to its distraught owner.

Caroline Prater had put up flyers around her neighbourhood in Bristol when her pet Morris went missing earlier this month.

Despite a number of tips and possible sightings, she had no confirmed information about the pet until a neighbour sent her a video of the ginger tabby a week later.

In the footage, Ms Prater could clearly see Morris had been maimed, his tail cut off, and his head was only just still attached to his battered body.

The teenage girl who sent her the video said she had taken it when she stumbled across a cat’s body in an alley which she thought could be Morris.

“She asked me if I wanted to see it, even though it was gruesome, and I said 'Yes, of course I did' because I needed to know what had happened to Morris,” Ms Prater said.

“The video was absolutely horrible. The camera scans up and down Morris’s body showing injuries and then his head is almost completely off, it’s been cut off just so it’s attached by a thread - it’s disgusting."

The 49-year-old recognised the street where her neighbour had found Morris’s remains, but when she went to search she could only find a few tufts of his distinctive ginger fur.

Ms Prater said she desperately wanted to know where Morris’s body had been taken after the video was shot.

“It seems that his body has been moved, so someone would know where it is or where it has been dumped," she said.

But she added that she was no closer to figuring out why anyone would kidnap her tabby, let alone subject him to such a horrendous ordeal.

"Did someone capture him and keep him captive, so they could torture him? It doesn’t bear thinking about,” she said. “They have scraped all the fur off his back and then cut his head off. We’ve been told that this could be some kind of gang initiation, like a test someone who wants to join has to do.

“We don’t understand this vile behaviour. It’s horrendous, absolutely horrendous. I’m angry that people would do this.”

The footpath where his body was seen is a well-travelled thoroughfare, used in particular by families taking their children to school, she added.

“They’ve left this cat there and we don’t know what’s happened. It’s sickening."

Ms Prater also said she had been in touch with the police about the incident, and officers had come to her home to collect the photographic and video evidence as part of their investigation.