A neighborhood momma cat brought her kittens to live under my deck. Sadly, the town I live in sees little value in altering their cats and leave them to roam and reproduce. When I can, I catch any feral kittens, socialize them and put them up for adoption through no-kill shelters.
This little momma cat brought what we had thought was her little brood of three little fuzzies; we bedded them in a warm clean "den" and called it a night.
Woke up this a.m with momma cat sitting in a different den box with a dead decapitated kitten, it's belly open...an unbelievable site....head and body lying there...Christ Almighty...
We have a lot of birds of prey such as large owl species in our area now that big box stores are developing all the field and farm areas surrounding the community. I guess Great Horned owls are known for decapitating prey and we do have those f*kers all over the place.
We've had to bury kittens before because of raptor attacks but never nothing like this. Ever.
I used to live on an island that had an 'eagle season'. There were no predators on the island except at that time.
The eagles would occasionally snatch a cat. The results were never pretty. Fortunately they didn't eat cat often, and never ate mine.
Instead of catch and socialize, have you considered catch, fix and release back to the wild?
That is often the best way to keep feral cat numbers down. You can't stop ferals from attempting to breed, but you can cut back on the results when there's a few shooting blanks.