One Chandler family didn't think much of it when two of their cats disappeared. Then they heard a similar story from another neighbor. Then another. And another.
In total, neighbors around the Clemente Ranch neighborhood near Queen Creek and Dobson roads say at least a dozen cats have died, or gone missing, in the past six months.
They are trying to figure out what's going on.
"It's too many cats to be eating some poison and for coyotes, if they picked up one, two we would find carcasses, and we're not finding that," said Christine Northrop.
Several neighbors fear someone is poisoning cats in the community, saying the cats they've found dead have not shown any indication of falling prey to another animal or hit by a vehicle.
"You think these are your neighbors, how could they do that, these are our pets but when we start putting all of our stories together that's when we realized something is going on," Northrop said.
Several cat owners told ABC15 they want to figure out what, or who is behind the deaths. They believe someone might be going to extreme lengths to get rid of feral cats in the community.
"We're going to find them, and we're going to solve it," said neighbor Jane Zacharias.
Another neighbor told ABC15 she found her cat dead behind her house just this past weekend.
"Yeah he was definitely poisoned, definitely," said Maddie Brown, who feels there is no other explanation for what happened.
Chandler police told ABC15 they only have a single police report, so they can't confirm or deny anything suspicious is going on. They encourage anyone who believes their cat was poisoned to report it to police.
Neighbors told ABC15 they are banding together to try and solve the problem.
"We're going to get together and talk about strategies that we can do," Northrop said.
"By myself, I can't do anything, but if we've got all these other families that have lost cats and we put our brains together, we can stop this."
