The other half of a family cat feared to have been sliced in two has been found in a garden 100 yards away.

Last week the Gazette revealed how Sheree Miles woke to find half of tragic tabby Tinkerbell dumped on her front garden in Grand Drive a week after she went missing. It was believed she had been chopped in half in a sinister attack.

And Margaret Squires, of Carlton Hill, supported that theory after finding the other half in her garden on the same day.

She said: "I looked out of the window and thought 'what’s that on the grass?’. I went out in my dressing gown and soon scuttled back inside. I couldn’t eat my breakfast.

"It was the bottom half of a black and grey cat. I couldn’t go near it so I asked a neighbour to come round. He bagged it up and took it away.

"At first I thought a fox had got at it but it definitely looked like it had been cut clean in half. It was completely intact.

"It wasn’t until a friend showed me the Gazette that I thought much of it."

The police exhumed Tinkerbell’s body from Miss Miles’ garden and said it was likely she had been killed or dismembered by another animal.

But RSPCA spokesman Klare Kennett described the findings as "strange".

She said: "I spoke to our wildlife department who said it didn’t sound like an animal was responsible.

"A fox would only go for a dead cat and would usually bite the head off because the brain’s the tastiest part. It would only ever do it for food, so it’s strange each half was intact."

The cat has since been re-buried.

• We apologise for a technical error in this week's Herne Bay Gazette which resulted in some of this story missing from the page.