On Monday, a volunteer at Whisker City Cat Rescue in Shoreline called the police to report a missing cat. And by the look of things (the cat's shelter had been broken into), the cat might have been stolen. Not long after the police arrived at the scene, a blanket with writing on it was found in the missing cat's shelter. The writing on the blanket said: “The homeless need a home… just not my backyard, not Richmond Beach.” The mystery was not cleared at all by this writing. Indeed, it had only thickened.

There is Richmond Beach Road and Richmond Beach Saltwater Park in Shoreline. This park is not far from Boeing Creek Park, one of the most beautiful and feral parks in the Seattle area (it even has a small lake that reflects the clouds, the surrounding evergreen trees, and a modernist house on its eastern shore). Richmond Beach Saltwater Park is not that impressive but it does have a splendid view of the Puget Sound, picnic tables that are almost charming, and some old logs on its simple beach—Richmond Beach. There is also a trellis next to a shelter on the top of the park. When the sun sets between the stone pillars of this trellis, one sees for a moment something like the ghost of an ancient civilization, now long dead, that worshiped the sun as the giver that just gives and gives with no return.

The officers handed the volunteer a card and then left Whisker City Cat Rescue. They could make no sense of the missing cat or the writing on the blanket. But later that day, the police received a second call from the shelter. They were informed that the cat had been found in a nearby dumpster. It was dead. It's head had been crushed by something hard. The police were soon back at the scene, and they carefully examined the cat and its head. It looked like murder. The officers decided to hand the case over to a King County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes detective. The Shoreline police officers were informed by the detective that only one animal cruelty case was known to the department, but it happened in Edmonds, in August.

The King County Sheriff’s Office detective contacted with the Edmonds Police Department about that particular case but was unable to find links between the case of the murdered cat and the crime of animal cruelty in Edmonds. According to Sergeant Cindi West of the King County Sheriff's Office, this is where things stand so far in the investigation. The name of the cat was not released by the police.

UPDATE: The cat's name, which is not in KCS's press release, is on Facebook. It's Quixote. There's also a GoFundMe for the justice of this unfortunate cat.

There is also new information about the blanket. It may not be a blanket, as the KCS's press release states, but a "yellow rain slicker" that has this written on it: "Homeless people need homes but not in my backyard - Richmond Beach".