Pretty good. Doesn’t seem derivative or like anything I’ve read before.

The line “and even they were shot for that now” seems like it could be phrased better, but I’m not sure how many spare characters you’ve got left.

That’s nitpicking, anyway. It gets the point across well enough.

This story plays on the fears that we all have at times, I think. Sure, they look cute and have soft fur, but deep down they have no respect for us.

I agree with Olivaw on that line. It was confusing the first time I read it.

The line “It was history” was a great tap into the primal ancestry of cats, and phrased well. Good choice to go metaphor and not simile. “It tasted like history” wouldn’t resonate the same.

This might just be me, but I’ve never heard a cat described as howling. Yowling, maybe, or wailing…

The last line adds another, unexpected dimension to the story, but a small, rational part of me thought, “What, the cops couldn’t identify any signs of predation?” And I don’t even watch CSI.

Overall, a grisly but good story.

I have exactly one spare character I believe, I pared this down considerably beforehand. So I’m not sure how effectively I could fix that. I agree though, it does sound off. It was a longer sentence before.

And I know cats that howl. Definitely heard that one used before, generally about cats during mating season.

And yeah, probably should have been a noticeable sign of it to the police. Just call it small town cops or something.

Mating season … fair enough.

I pictured it about the time that there was Jack the Ripper (and lots of poaching of big cats), so they didn’t have the technology to tell that it was eaten.

Well, I didn’t really attach a time period to this on purpose. I mean, clearly, newspapers, so relatively modern, but given the point of view it seemed wrong to try to assign a date.