Shortly after moving into their home in the town of Carver last year, Tammy and Barry Erickson were given a friendly warning: Their new neighborhood wasn't very cat-friendly.

The couple found out just how unfriendly last week when one of their five cats, Soon-Yi, was killed and its severed head tossed into the family's front yard, where it was found by Tammy Erickson while watering her plants on June 28.

The next day another pet cat, Louis, went missing and hasn't been seen since.

"We think the same person did the same thing to him," Tammy Erickson said Friday, wiping tears from her cheeks as she looked at pictures of her dead and missing cats.

The decapitation is being investigated by the Carver County Sheriff's Office, which reports no similar cases in and around the town.

"It's a terrible thing to do to a pet," Chief Deputy Bob VanDerBroeke said Friday. "We've been canvassing the neighborhood but have not come up with anything yet. We're taking it quite seriously."

The incident has become the talk of the town of about 1,850 residents. An e-mail was circulated to City Hall workers telling them about the situation. Also fliers were posted around town seeking information on the missing feline.

Though the Ericksons say a resident warned them about the neighborhood's bias against cats after the family moved in last September, they said that none of the neighbors have complained to them about the cats.

"That's why this is so shocking," Tammy Erickson said. "We haven't had any negative feedback from anyone."

As of late Friday, the family, the city and the Sheriff's Office reported no leads on Louis' whereabouts or who might have killed Soon-Yi.

"I haven't seen a case like that before," said Jim Elmquist, the Carver city administrator. "We've had complaints before about animals being run over or about traffic in some areas being too fast. But I've never run into a situation of [an] abduction or a severed head."

Early warning signs

The Ericksons said the decapitation, while shocking, was not a complete surprise in retrospect, considering some of the incidents that happened since the family moved into the home last September.

Weeks after the neighbor's warning, someone stuffed a copy of the city's pet ordinance in their mailbox. The sections on cats were highlighted, but city officials say the family was not in violation.

"I didn't think anything of it," Tammy Erickson said Friday. "There are other cats in the neighborhood."

She also didn't think anything of it when on June 27, the day before the decapitation, a dead raccoon was tossed onto the Erickson's front yard.

"The thought that this was a warning crossed my mind but we didn't make a lot of it," she said. "We're from the farm, from the country, a dead raccoon isn't too unusual."

Tammy Erickson said the raccoon appeared to have been freshly killed, possibly poisoned, because it had no obvious signs of trauma.