Dead Bird

I was going around in the backyard making sure all the bird’s suet feeders were full and I came across the carcass of a dead bird in the back corner of the yard.  It was a small bird and at first I thought it was one of the baby robins that had just flown out of the nest last week.  But as I got closer I realized it was too small to be a robin.  The next thought was that it was a baby that fell out of a nest, so I looked up and there were no branches hanging over the spot where it was laying.  I went to get a small shovel to scoop it up (because I didn’t want to handle a bird carcass with my bare hands) and I realized that it was a sparrow.  As it was sitting in the shovel, I could see that the bird’s neck was turned around sort of ripped open and a little bit bloody.  Based on that, I thought it must have been a cat.  But it also makes me wonder, if it was a cat, why wouldn’t it have been torn apart, or half eaten?  Strange.  I’ll have to keep an eye out and see if we do have a cat roaming around, or if it might be something else.