Who killed my cat?

Marylin Christian found Cody under the tree in front of their Loudoun County home, his white fur covered in saliva. She scooped up the lifeless cat whose friendship she had counted on for 13 years and sat under the tree, sobbing, for two hours.

The next day, Christian set out to discover what, or who, had killed Cody. When a veterinarian said the culprit had to be a dog, she canvassed her rural Lovettsville neighbourhood in search of a suspect. After she spotted a bouncy 4-year-old German shepherd mix named Lucky, she asked authorities to declare him dangerous.

And when Loudoun animal control officials dropped the case, she took a cue from television's legal dramas: She hired a California DNA laboratory to analyse evidence ? dog saliva and fur ? that ultimately linked Lucky to the incident.

Free

Yet despite the strong forensic evidence, and a five-month saga that has tested the fragility of neighbourly relations and pitted motherly instincts against carnivorous ones, Lucky remains free.

County officials say they need an eyewitness to make a case.

"All I want is to protect my family," Christian, 35, said as she sat in her family room with her infant son, Denison, and Yo Mama, one of her four remaining cats. "I'm trying to get my neighbour held responsible for a dangerous dog that they let roam in the neighbourhood."

Christian said that since Cody was killed, she has repeatedly asked Lucky's owners, Sean and Janet Daryabeygi, to return the dog to the local animal shelter, where they adopted him in the summer. The Daryabeygis think she is asking too much. They said Lucky would never harm a human, though they do not dispute that he could have been a cat killer.

'Obsessed'

"He probably did it. We don't know that. Nobody saw it. It's the nature of the dog, chasing cats, squirrels and small animals," said Sean Daryabeygi, 62, an engineer who lives in a cabinlike home across an unpaved road from Christian. His neighbour, he said, "is obsessed with something natural".

Christian and her husband, Eric, moved to their five-acre farm a year ago, in part so their animals could roam free. Cody and the other cats spent a few hours outside a day, and Christian said she kept a watchful eye on them. But on August 19, the Christians, hurrying for a dinner engagement, did not herd the cats inside before leaving.

When they got home, Eric Christian, 39, discovered Cody's body.

Necropsy

The next morning, the Christians spied tan hair around the scene. Anguished and wanting to know the cause of death, they put Cody in a box and went to Blue Ridge Veterinary Associates in Purcellville for a necropsy.

In a letter provided to the county, Ross Peterson, the veterinarian, concluded that the cat's punctured lungs, broken ribs and frayed claws indicated that he had been pulled off the tree by a larger creature, likely a dog, and "fought back intensely prior to his death".

She then went door-to-door. Eventually, she and her husband approached the Daryabeygis, who had recently moved in.

No welcome

"We thought she was welcoming us" to the neighbourhood, said Janet Daryabeygi, 53.

Christian was, sort of. But she was on a mission. "We knocked on their door and said, 'I'm sorry that we're having to meet under these circumstances, but we wanted to let you know that our cat was killed ... and, by the way, can we meet your dog?'"

Out came Lucky, whom Sean Daryabeygi chose because he grew up with German shepherds in his native Iran. Christian took one look at Lucky's blondish coat and saw a killer.

Knew

"We sort of knew because of the fur," Christian said. She asked Peterson to compare the fur Lucky had shed on her hands that night with that found by the tree. He concluded both samples came from the same dog.

Still, authorities said nothing could be done. No one had seen Lucky do it. Then the veterinarian suggested DNA analysis.

Christian said she asked animal control officials about it, and they acted as though she had been "watching a little bit too much CSI."

Undeterred

Christian, undeterred, found a lab in California that would do it for $500 (about Dh1,850). There was one hitch: She needed some of Lucky's slobber. The Daryabeygis consented.

"We didn't have anything to hide," Sean Daryabeygi said.

Peterson sent the evidence, which included foreign hair found in Cody's mouth and claws, and a saliva sample from Lucky, to the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California at Davis.

Comparing the DNA of the hair in Cody's mouth and claws with Lucky's DNA, the lab found that it was almost certainly a match. The odds against it? One in 67 million.