Sixteen cats drowned in an abandoned garden pond in England, prompting an RSPCA investigation into how the cautious animals came to perish together in the same location. The incident raises puzzling questions, since cats typically avoid water and would need to have accessed the pond, whether by accident, coercion, or circumstance, in a way that defied their natural behavior. The RSPCA found no evidence of deliberate harm, yet the mass drowning remains unexplained. The case highlights the mystery of what sequence of events could have led so many independent animals to meet the same fate in a single place.