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I'm sure given the urge to dig around enough they'll find something. I'd bet I find somebody in the Poconos and upstate NY and WV and Maine who have kidnapped and tortured or eaten cats.
I can tell the story here anonymously: a "ritually tortured dog" story popped up in our town a few years back after a dog was found dead in a field... It was a coyote that a friend of mine had shot because it was sneaking around the chickens. They'll find something.
Today already I've made the joke "that's what happened to all our feral cats" and "can we tell that warehouse to hire some Haitians to deal with the geese in their retention pond?"
All through my childhood the stories of people supposedly kidnapping or mutilating animals were all, as far as I know, fictitious. But it was a common enough type of rumour that you'd hear it every couple of years - yeah my friend says that his older brother found this dog that was all slashed up with a knife. They think some kid in the neighbourhood is doing it.
That being said the next neighbourhood over from me in Toronto is currently dealing with an actual teenage catkiller at the moment, so this particular story has finally had a proven example for me.
I’m a bit more credulous of these claims given how recently animal torture was just a widespread form of entertainment.
Cats especially seemed to get marked for terrible deaths just for a laugh. Cat burnings, cat drownings. Politicians standing for election in England used to get pummeled with dead cats when the crowd turned against them.
To be fair, these laughs can be substantial.
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Our own little RFKII stories I guess.
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