The cat rescue team who have made it their mission to hunt down the so-called Croydon cat killer, who has killed and beheaded cats across south London, have warned a few overzealous supporters to stop trolling comedian Ricky Gervais.

In a post on their Facebook page last week, South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL) requested that people stop leaving “abusive posts” on the comedian’s Facebook page in reaction to him not sharing SNARL’s posts.

The post read: “Mr Gervais is a celebrity who probably gets thousands of requests for helps and shares every day.

“While we understand that people may be frustrated as he hasn’t noticed posts about the cat killer, we cannot condone this behaviour.”

Tony Jenkins from SNARL told News Shopper: “I did not personally see the comments and I believe they were quickly deleted.

“We have been trying to get Ricky's attention and to share our pinned post about the cat killings.

“He is a well-known cat lover and animal rights campaigner with 4 million followers on his Facebook page.

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“If he shared and/or tweeted our pinned post it would greatly help us to spread the word about the cat killings and the advice to keep cats in doors throughout the London area until this killer is caught.

“Sadly the admin team handling his account seems to have ignored or missed our requests among the thousands of messages he receives.

“Someone made negative comments about this lack of support and we wished to make it clear that we were not responsible for any comments made by other people or that we encouraged any criticism of Ricky.”

In February, actor Martin Clunes came out publicly in a plea to the Met Police to catch the killer.

Victims have been found across south London, including in Croydon, Forest Hill, Petts Wood and Mottingham.

In January this year, animal charity PETA doubled its reward for information to catch the so-called “cat ripper of Croydon”.

The organisation is offering £5,000 to find the culprit and put an end to the killings PETA Associate Director Elisa Allen said: “It’s imperative that any community faced with such sadistic and violent acts take measures to find the culprit and bring him or her to justice.”

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