Cats

Cats have a double place in the story: they are ordinary companions whose absence signals danger, and animals whose bodies are later incorporated into the Trawler’s staged killings. Their recurrence connects the quiet routines of homes and pool houses to a pattern of violence that people initially struggle to understand.

Pets and the Warning Pattern

In the early home invasions, pets disappeared before attacks. The pattern extended beyond a victim’s own animal: pets in the surrounding neighborhood could vanish as well, and in some cases three animals in the same area were sacrificed before an assault. Cats were among the animals involved, alongside dogs, birds, snakes, mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs. At first, people did not know why the animals disappeared or what happened to them; the connection between the disappearances and the later treatment of victims became clear only much later.

The connection was discussed before it was understood. When Bret raised the renewed break-ins and missing pets, he told Susan and Debbie that cats and dogs were being stolen and wondered whether the incidents were connected to Julie Selwyn’s disappearance. The animal losses were a clue in a wider pattern, but they did not yet reveal what the perpetrator was doing with the animals or why.

Cats in Matt’s Household

A cat named Alex was part of Matt Kellner’s everyday life at the pool house on Haskell Avenue. Matt had named the cat for an unexplained reason. Alex sometimes wandered into the pool house and settled in front of the long aquarium, while Matt and Bret spent time there. In these scenes, the cat belongs to the unremarkable domestic world of the guesthouse, among its aquarium, television, stereo, and swimming pool.

When Bret later found the guesthouse empty, Alex was gone and the aquarium had been drained. The room also contained a newly marked pentagram on a Foreigner 4 poster. Because the cat’s disappearance echoed the broader pattern of missing pets, its absence made the changed room more ominous; the evidence did not establish what had happened to Alex at that point.

The Official Account and Its Contradictions

After Matt’s disappearance and death, Ronald Kellner showed Bret crime-scene photographs and recounted the official explanation. According to that account, Matt had taken drugs, suffered a psychotic episode, attempted suicide, and drowned in the pool. The account also claimed that he had consumed the contents of his aquarium. Bret knew the aquarium had been empty for weeks and could not reconcile that detail with what he knew of Matt’s circumstances.

Other photographs showed that Alex had been killed and displayed at the pool. The cat’s remains had been arranged with an animal carcass fixed to a column, and the cat’s head had been placed by the pool. The staged scene and the official account made Matt’s death harder for Bret to accept as a coherent explanation. The evidence raised questions about how the animals and their remains came to be there, without resolving them in that encounter.

The Trawler’s Alterations

The later discovery of Audrey Barbour’s body in a soundproofed room at the abandoned Benedict Canyon house revealed the broader role of animals in the Trawler’s crimes. Audrey’s body had been assembled with limbs from missing animals; a cat’s head and neck had been attached to her forehead, while the rest of the animal’s body was incorporated into the staging. The killing was part of a project the Trawler described through the terms alterations, assemblages, and remakings. The full extent of the acts was disclosed gradually, and the details became clearer only months after the body was found.

The repeated use of cats across these episodes changes their narrative function without making their losses interchangeable. Alex is a named pet tied to Matt’s private routine; the cats taken in the wider pattern become part of a trail that precedes attacks; and animal remains are finally used in the construction of a victim’s staged body. The progression makes animal suffering part of the crimes themselves, not merely a clue for human investigators.