30 Dead Cats Found Hanging From Trees Near New York City

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In this April 24, 2014 photo provided by the SPCA of Westchester's Humane Law Enforcement Division, plastic bags containing the remains of about 25 cats are hanging from a tree in a wooded area in Yonkers, N.Y.

Image: SPCA of Westchester's Humane Law Enforcement Division/Associated Press

By Brian Ries2014-04-25 16:48:02 UTC

Well, this is a terrible way to start off a Friday.

Dozens of dead cats were found hanging from trees in a suburb of New York City on Friday, in a case that the authorities are calling “strange.”

At least 30 cats, some of which were badly decomposed and hanging from tree limbs in black bags, were found by public works employees who were cleaning up trash in an abandoned lot.

“Many of these cats were already decomposed, where there was only a skull or a skeleton and then you had some fresher ones where they had only been there three days,” said Ernie Lungaro, director of humane law enforcement at the SPCA, according to the New York Daily News.

“It’s something that’s strange,” he said. "It's something very odd," he later added in an interview with lohud.com. "It's a lot of cats to be disposed of in a year."

The good news, if there can be any good news here, is that the cats appeared to have been dead before being placed in the bags, Lungaro reportedly said. Any living cat could have clawed its way out.

While officials have no suspects, the macabre finding could be tied to a $1,000 reward that was offered in May 2013 for a suspected cat killer on the loose in northeast Yonkers.

Lungaro said at the time that authorities had suspected that three dead cats found in the area had been deliberately fed rat poison. Two others were found walking disoriented and uncoordinated, according to a Yonkers Daily Voice story. “We can’t say for sure but it’s a real possibility,” he said.

People are wondering if there's a cat serial killer on the loose in Yonkers.

Mashable reached out to the Yonkers Police Department and the Westchester APCA for more information and will update when we hear back.

Topics: crime, U.S., US & World