Around 30 cat lovers gathered in a community in east Beijing this week to condemn a man suspected of a string of cat-killings.

The animal advocates were responding to a series of killings and mutilations in the community when they gathered on Aug 1.

And such incidents have not been isolated to the Kangjiayuan community in Chaoyang district. It was the third residential area in the capital to be hit with a spate of cat killings during the past week.

The cat lovers confronted a man they believed was behind the killings in Kangjiayuan community. They also scooped up the only four strays they could find in the neighborhood with plans to send them for sterilization and adoption.

A woman surnamed Yan, who lives in the Kangjiayuan community, said she started to notice the population of stray cats was dwindling and then heard that another resident, surnamed Bai, had been seen trying to hit a cat named Silly with a catapult.

She said she rushed to Bai's apartment and he admitted to killing cats before showing her Silly's body.

Yan said Bai told her he killed stray cats because they were ruining his quality of life.

She said he told her they carried diseases and made so much noise at night that they were disturbing his sleep.

"My individual efforts could not stop Bai from killing these innocent creatures, so it left me with no choice but to look for help from others," she said.

Yan took photos of Silly's remains and uploaded them online and called for help from others cat lovers.

The cat killings in Kangjiayuan community followed similar events elsewhere.

On the north side of the city, a cat was butchered a day before Silly was killed.

There, a chubby stray white cat was found hanging on iron railings outside the No 14 Shaoyaoju community. It had been strangled on July 31, Beijing News reported.

The story claimed a mother and her daughter killed the cat in revenge after it scratched and injured their dog.

Cat lovers in the community later buried its body.

Animal protection activists say the brutal killings underline the need for a scientific and rational response to the challenge of stray cats.

Chinese American Mary Peng, who is the manager of International Center for Veterinary Services (ICVS) told METRO that cat colonies were emerging in communities in recent years because people were providing them with shelter, food and water and because of the large-scale demolition of residential areas.

However, she cited the United States experience in saying the killing of cats was not an effective way to control the number of abandoned cats within a community.

"When one group is wiped out, another will form very quickly."

Peng said the best way to deal with the growing population of abandoned cats was to pursue the Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) method.

The system calls for members of a colony to be rounded up and neutered so they are not capable of reproducing. The cats should also be given vaccinations to protect them from rabies before being returned to the place where they were trapped.

"After the three steps, the number of cats in a community will not increase because the cats living there cannot reproduce. New feral cats will also be excluded from the original group," Peng said.

(China Daily Aug 3, 2010)