ARE NEW ZEALAND’S CATS BEING SHAVED?

Last year, it was reported domestic cats were disappearing in Hawke’s Bay. Some were later reappearing but with shaved fur.

In March this year in the United Kingdom, London and Kent pet owners were warned to keep their cats inside at night after more than 50 appeared to have been buzzed by hair clippers.

In April, Stuff reported on cats in the Tasman district who had returned home with shorn underbellies.

And in May, one Tokoroa cat left home for just 20 minutes before returning with a large patch of fur missing.

The culprits remain elusive. So what’s going on?

What we found

Most of what we know about this ‘trend’ has come from social media posts.

Journalists in New Zealand and overseas have followed up in-person to verify some of the claims. They found distressed owners (and cats) but little else to go on.

Official reports relating to cats being shaved are lacking.

A spokeswoman at England’s RSPCA told Stuff despite the high numbers of incidents quoted in social and news media, the majority of them haven’t been reported to the animal charity.

The few incidents that have lacked sufficient information for an investigation.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s SPCA hasn’t received any complaints this year about the matter, a spokeswoman said.

Scientific officer Christine Sumner, however, expressed concern for the affected cats’ welfare, acknowledging “the catching, restraint, clipper noises and sensation could be very distressing experiences for a cat”.

The owner of a shaved cat in the Tasman district took the “violating” case to the police.

The owner, who Stuff agreed not to name, discovered her cat had been shaved when he came home on March 24. He was missing fur over his groin, up his legs and under his tail.

“Someone has deliberately done it, and it wasn’t a hack job – they’ve known what they’re doing because he didn’t have any razor burn, and he didn’t have any nicks on him,” she told a reporter at the time.

Police were unable to “substantiate an offence”.

Stuff checked in with the owner again for this piece. She hadn’t heard anything further from police, though she had seen – via social media – other local cats had since been targeted.

Police told Stuff local officers weren’t aware of other, similar incidents. A search for related jobs nationwide returned zero results.

One UK newspaper quoted a woman saying cats were being shaved as part of a cruel TikTok trend.

The woman, whose cat was shorn, said: “They’ve shaved it, left its head, its paws and its tail. My daughter said there’s this trend going around on TikTok where they shave it, and then they kill them. They shave them and that’s the mark to say that’s the one they’re going to kill.”

While there’s little evidence of such a trend existing some cats in Tokoroa do appear to be victims of cruel pranks.

One cat returned home with “cuts all over his legs” and the fur around its anus trimmed.

In other cases, it seems possible someone is mistaking the cats for strays and capturing them as part of what’s referred to as a trap-neuter-return (TNR) exercise.

Anne Batley-Burton of The New Zealand Cat Foundation said it can be hard to tell whether a cat has been desexed.

Some of the photos of shaved cats on social media suggest the perpetrator was a deft hand.

She “wouldn’t be surprised” if some of the cats had been captured with the intent of spaying them.

However, Community Cat Coalition’s Bridget Thompson said in the photos she’s seen, more fur than necessary has been shaved.

Volunteers occasionally trap a cat that’s desexed but any with a microchip are “immediately returned”.

One of the volunteers anonymously responding to Stuff’s query said: “A quick look tells you if it’s male or female. Balls or no balls. The only time shaving would be required is on a female to check for a spay scar on the abdomen and possibly flank.”

In summary

Given the lack of official reports, without social media and its ability to facilitate the “contagious spread” of information online it’s unlikely these incidents would have come to public attention.

Essentially, an event or experience can rapidly spread throughout a group from one member to others. Making an issue seem bigger than it is in reality.

It does appear, however, a few cats have been shaved, mysteriously.

It’s possible some are being captured and shaved mistakenly, as part of an exercise to neuter strays.

It may be others are unfortunate victims of animal cruelty.