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.
When I was a kid my dog got pregnant from some random stray, and she gave birth to a litter of 9 puppies. They were cute, all black with white snouts. We loved them.
The momma dog systematically killed and decapitated every single pup. I have no idea why, and it still fucks with me. She let them grow up for about six weeks, then I come home one day and she's in the yard mangling them to death.
We buried 9 puppies in the forest behind our house, but that night I learned why you dig something six feet down.
Momma dog dug them all up, and ate their corpses. I woke up that morning and saw her munching on the last bit of the runt.
To this day I get sad thinking about it, because I had bonded with the puppies, given them all names and my favorite one was called Weasel. He was the runt. He was cute af.
My dad told me that sometimes the mothers can smell sickness or disease in their pups, and they will kill them off before it spreads to others.
Personally, I always thought she was an evil bitch for doing what she did. But I guess you never truly know.
Sorry to hear about your cats. I wrote this so you can maybe have another way of thinking about it. It could have been the momma cat that did all this, not some owl.