LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Someone is catching and killing pets in a small Lawrence neighborhood then leaving their mutilated bodies out for their owners to find them, the owner of a slain cat said.

The latest mutilated pet was Sugar, a white Manx that had lived in the 3200 block of Ninth Street for 13 years.

Early Monday morning, Sugar's owner, Mark McCanon, found the cat dead in his back yard.

The cat had been cut open with a knife and its legs and tail were nearby, McCanon said.

It was the third time in the last few weeks he'd found a cat killed and mutilated in the neighborhood, he said.

"My daughter, it was probably the hardest for her, because it was her pet. I gave it to her when she was 3 years old," McCanon said. "I buried (the cat) down by a tree that she planted when she was in first grade, at the base of that tree."