Big Cat Prowling Detroit Neighborhood Shot Dead, Thrown in Trash

A large cat that was reported to be prowling the streets of a Detroit neighborhood was shot and killed and its body was thrown in a garbage can in a grim and unnecessary ending to a case roiled by mixed identity and false alarm.

What has been confirmed as a Savannah cat -- an exotic-but-legal hybrid of an African serval and a domestic cat -- was found dead earlier this week after news of the animal's presence made headlines over the weekend.

A video made last week by the Detroit Free Press (below) shows several residents of the neighborhood where the cat was seen expressing alarm over the animal's size and appearance. Savannah cats are marked by leopard-like spots and can be almost three times the size of a normal house cat.

Regarded as dogs of the cat world, Savannah cats are not dangerous, though their size and coloration may startle some people.

The body of the 25-pound, 3-year-old Savannah cat named Chum was found Monday in a trash can in east Detroit, the Detroit Free Press reported, adding that the cat was killed prior to some reports of it setting the neighborhood on edge made the news.

"I think people can't just go around shooting things they don't understand," Laura Wilhelm-Bruzek of the feral cat rescue group Paws for the Cause told the Free Press. "I think we need to be a little bit more respectful of the animals and human beings around us. I'd love to see someone look into it and investigate it. But I'm not holding out a lot of hope. This whole thing from the beginning has just been a mess."

Wilhelm-Bruzek said volunteers from the rescue group had been looking for the cat since Saturday. She said the cat got out of its owner's home through a window about a month ago and has been missing ever since. Upon getting in touch with the cat's owners, Wilhelm-Bruzek said they were "hysterical" over the loss of a pet they raised since it was 4 months old. The owners reportedly plan to have their cat's body cremated.

When news of the "big cat" story broke, many online commentators were quick to suggest that the animal was a serval or a Savannah cat. Servals are medium-sized wild cats native to Africa. Though small compared to cheetahs, leopards of other cats of the same ilk, servals are significantly larger than a typical house cat. Savanah cats are a crossbreed between servals and domestic cats. F1-type Savannah cats, where one of the parents is a full serval, can cost thousands of dollars.

Chum was reportedly an F2-type Savannah, meaning it was one generation removed from serval parentage.