Cat Lovers Are Concerned, Saddened and a Little Scared

This is a neighborhood of cat lovers, or at the very least cat tolerators. Felines stroll down the sidewalks, loll on balconies, mess around in the bushes.

This is Huntington Beach, a pretty laid-back slice of downtown funk. Neighbors call each other to ask what the surf looks like.

Now they are talking about Ichabod, about what happened to him the other morning, his last, when nobody was supposedly watching, but when Rob Mawn was.

Rob, 29, came home on his lunch hour at a collection agency to tell what happened.

“I was coming down the stairs about 5:30, quarter to 6,” he says, pointing to the stairway leading from his house to the street. “It was pretty lit up because there was a full moon that night. I was going down to Bolsa to surf. Then I heard some chains.

“I was behind my van, with the back up because I was putting in my board, and I look over and I see this man. He was about 5’10”, with a big down jacket, and I look and see he’s got two pit bulls leashed.

“Then one of them just goes over, up on the porch, and clamps down on the cat. And I go, ‘Whoa. What is happening?’ Because I see absolutely no reaction from this guy. The cat is just screaming. And all I hear is this growling and the cat screaming, and the guy just walks calmly with the dogs down to the end of street. Then he saw me.”

Ichabod, a little white and gray cat, 8 months old, was killed. The man with the pit bulls reportedly threw him in a trash can in an alley after running away.

Ichabod belonged to Angela Guidi, 26. He would follow her around. He almost always slept in her bed.

Angela, who lives across the street from Rob, figures Ichabod got out when she let her puppy out briefly a half hour earlier. Angela got up again and ran outside when she heard Ichabod’s screams.

“It was the worst sound I have ever heard,” she says.

Angela had known Ichabod from the time he was 2 weeks old, when someone found him in a dumpster, emaciated, flea ridden, with ringworm and an abscess on his cheek, and brought him to the animal hospital where she works.

One of the veterinarians there, Lisa Maillard, took it upon herself to nurse the kitten to heath. It took three months of intensive care.

“We all took turns taking care of the kitty,” Lisa says. “He had a pretty good life, for as short as it was . . . .I love cats. I was brokenhearted yesterday. I couldn’t talk about it without breaking up.”

“Because I work with animals, I look at things differently,” Angela adds, fighting back tears herself. “I was really proud of Icky. He had so many obstacles to overcome.

“When I first brought him home, he would just stay under the bed, purring. Then he started venturing down the stairs. Then he started hanging out with the other cats. He was still very skittish about loud noises, quick movements. But he had really come a long way.”

So now this neighborhood of cat lovers is concerned, saddened and a little scared. They would like to know what kind of person would watch impassively as his animal killed somebody else’s pet. They would like to know what happened to other neighborhood cats that have disappeared.

The animal control officer who visited Angela called the suspect a name that I cannot print. She wants Angela to find out where he lives and then turn the matter over to her.

A lifeguard said he saw the guy running the dogs on the beach. A jogger said he sees him every day. An elderly man who walks his own dogs passes him often. Lots of people have reportedly seen him. Lots of people are on the lookout now.

“I got up at 5 this morning, put on long johns and got on my bike,” says neighbor Suzie Bridger. “I got a tennis racket and put it on the front, in case the pit bulls started coming at me, and I had my camera and ear muffs too.”

But Suzie, after reconnoitering the neighborhood for 1 1/2 hours, did not find the man and his pit bulls. Neither did Angela, who went separately with her own camera, or Angela’s boyfriend, Solli Coleman, who also went on his own.

“I am going to get up every morning before work and try to find him,” Solli says. “I’m not stopping until I I.D. him. It was totally malicious what he did. To kill something on purpose is not happening.”

Mike Alger, Solli and Angela’s roommate, says, “I want to have the guy put to death and have his dogs watch.”

Angela smiles at that, and then gets seriously sad once again. She would like the pit bull owner to do some community service time, perhaps at the ASPCA or at an animal hospital.

“He should see what’s it’s like, these little creatures suffering,” she says.

“I don’t think people should have pit bulls,” says neighbor Liz Hubner. “That’s really screwed up.”

But Angela and other neighbors say they have nothing against pit bulls per se. They say it is pit bull owners who can lead the dogs astray. That’s why they are worried about the one who walks their neighborhood before dawn.

“One of our best friends has a pit bull that I adore,” Angela says. “Then I had this other friend with two pit bulls who used to teach them to fight. The dogs killed each other.”