Sicko dismembers cats

WHO IS the sicko dismembering kittens in Philadelphia?

That's what shocked veterinarians and the Pennsylvania SPCA want to know after a Port Richmond woman found a pair of 4-week-old Russian Blue kittens - each missing a back paw.

And it might not be an isolated case.

"It looked like it was a clean cut with a nonserrated tool," said Janelle Dougherty, whose barking dog led her to the kittens last week in an empty diaper box near a trash bin at the Port Richmond Shopping Center on Aramingo Avenue.

"I could hear little screams," Dougherty said of the box.

She took the female kittens - since named Dori and Gandie - to an emergency center, where they were treated for dehydration, starvation and infection.

Later in the week, Dougherty took them to a Delaware County veterinarian, where one of the vets couldn't believe that someone would cut off an animal's paw. But a colleague said she had recently received a similar call about kittens discovered in South Philadelphia with missing limbs.

"I think this one here is still sore," Dougherty said in her living room, holding one of the recovering kittens. "She cries all day long."

Dougherty said the emergency veterinarians initially speculated that they might have been involved in some type of accident, but they found no crushed bones or torn tissue.

"Everyone was horrified," she said.

Dori and Gandie appeared to be in good health yesterday, rolling around on Dougherty's couch and playing with Bleu, the Italian Greyhound who led Dougherty to them. The dog attempts to groom them, but his legs are so long and the kittens are so small that it doesn't really work.

Dougherty now questions whether her neighbor's cats are safe when they go outside. Or if people in the area are safe from whoever is doing this.

"I don't know what's going on," she said. "A serial kitten-dismemberer would be horrible enough for me."

George Bengal, PSPCA's director of law enforcement, said that whoever is cutting the kittens needs to be taken off the street.

"That's disfigurement," Bengal said. "That's going to rise to an arrest, not just a summary offense."

Tipsters may contact the PSPCA animal-cruelty hot line at 866-601-SPCA (7722).