A Coyote Ate My Cat

[Celeste Stewart]

I'm so bummed. This morning when walking my daughter to school I noticed what I thought was a dead bunny or squirrel on my front yard which isn't unusual where I live. We have tons of wild rabbits and the hawks just love them. When I went to clean it up I discovered that what I saw was what was left of my cat, Priscilla. It had to have been a coyote. I'm just glad that the kids didn't see it. We used to have a lot of coyotes around here but the area has since built up and we haven't heard or seen any in a few years. My dog sleeps inside and I'm definitely going to keep that up.

[Ed]

Awful. I'm so sorry.

[Debbi]

Oh, Celeste, I feel so bad for you, your kids, and your kitty My granddaughters have lost a few cats to coyotes (they live right beside an irrigation canal, a favorite highway for wild creatures) and it's devasting for them every time.

When my daughter was here a few weeks ago, we saw a coyote running down the road in the outskirts of Albuquerque. Their natural habitat is shrinking so fast, I guess they have nowhere else to go. Also, I read somehwere that the more you try to eliminate coyotes, the faster they breed. They sure are good for keeping vermin down (and New Mexico has plague from time to time when the rodent population gets out of hand) but I wish they knew the difference between wild rabbits and cherished pets.

Debbi

[Celeste Stewart]

Thanks. She was a wild cat to start with and decided we looked like a nice family. We had her spayed and took care of her despite her feral side. She ended up being a nice cat to have around. I'll definitely miss her.

I wish I knew for certain that it was a coyote and not a sicko or a mountain lion. I don't think a hawk would've been responsible based on what little was left.

[Phil]

Wow, so sorry. It's rough to lose a family member like that. I firmly believe that animals go to heaven as well as people and you will be reunited in the fullness of time.

[audrabianca]

I am so sorry about your cat.

Your post reminded me of a good read I found at the library recently. Coyotes play a small role in the action. We used to have a wild fox living in the field across from us until a lot of houses were constructed on our street about 4 to 5 years ago. I felt safer when we had a dog, but now I am jumpy. A couple months ago we had a snake living in the garage for about a week.

Dean Koontz

Odd Hours

Enjoy!

[Celeste Stewart]

My old dog, a terrier mix, used to catch snakes in our yard all the time. She even killed a rattlesnake! She was tough, that's for sure. Man, it sounds like I live in the Wild West with coyotes and rattlesnakes running amok in my yard. Really, it's quite suburban where I live though I'm not far from the edge of town.

I love Dean Koontz, by the way.

[Lysis]

Oh my, I'm so sorry. I think I would seriously mourn for a while if something happened to my dog. I never understood the pet fanatics until I got my Corgi. It's like losing a member of the family. I can't imagine seeing that kind of thing. That's truly awful.

[audrabianca]

I'm thinking of Elliott's house in ET. That neighborhood. And that house in the Bruce Willis film called Hostage.

[eek]

Oh, Celeste. How horrible. I'm so sorry.

After reading your post I had to jump up and check on our kitties. I couldn't find any of them except one this morning, and the remaining kitty was acting strange, though his insecurity is logical since they're always together. We adopted a feral cat last year, who we fixed, but not in time. She had Bob, Moxie & Louie (now 4 months old & fixed), and we're sharing our porch & barns with them for as long as they'll have us. We live in a rural/farm area, but we can't bring them indoors. I initially worried about their safety, but after seeing them skitter off when a nearby hawk screeched one day, I felt better about their ability to avoid predators.

Lots of coyotes here. We can hear them howling around dusk, and they sound very close, but then so does the neighbor's cow and rooster a half mile down the road. Our mama cat loves to hunt rodents, and the kittens are very interested in the vole holes in the yard, but none of them have showed interest in taking out a snake. I wish they would, even though most of the snakes we've seen around here are non-poisonous rodent eaters. The snakes seem to love worming their way into our house. I had to remove one from the bedroom this summer, but the only reason I had the guts to do it was because it was a baby, non-venomous, and if I didn't I wouldn't have slept that night knowing there was a snake hiding somewhere...

We also had a terrier (Jack Russel) last summer, but only for a month. He was a stray, but he was a wonderful dog, and I'm sure he wouldn't have hesitated over a snake. We still talk about his antics, many of which were kind of gross... he ate a turtle in stages, and somehow got hold of a chicken-laced grocery bag that he carried around and loved on like a favorite toy. We never found out what happened to "Bo". I'm still sad that we lost him.

Sorry again for your loss, Celeste. Hope your kids will work through it okay.
(And I'm sorry for this overlong post, everyone - I was already worried about my kittens and thinking about the possibilities. Bob just showed up, but Moxie is still missing.)

[Celeste Stewart]

Feral cats seem to like my family. First, a feral black cat had kittens under my old house. They ended up getting sick and we took the whole litter to the humane society. It was horrible and I swore if I ever had to do it over again I'd do it differently. That's why when Priscilla showed up (also pregnant) I let her stick around. There was a feral cat program at the time in California where participating vets would spay the cats for free and then you let the cats return to their old haunts. The theory was that at least that generation of cats wouldn't reproduce and the feral cat population as a whole would go down. So, she and her kittens all got spayed and neutered, got their shots, and returned to our neighborhood. Back then, I figured they had a better chance of surviving in the wild compared going to the humane society where they would likely be put to sleep for being "unadoptable." I don't know what became of the kittens as all of them wandered off into the fields eventually. But Priscilla stuck around. At first, she disappeared for about six months. But then she reappeared and was with us for about eight or nine years.

[eek]

We found a similar program that spayed our cats for $5 each, and the shots & worm meds were also at a discount. Even though we've adopted the kittens, because they live outdoors they still qualified as "feral." I agree it's a better solution than rounding them all up to live miserably in a shelter or put down.

We have many, many feral cats hanging out around here, but only our Kit (mama cat) sought our help. She was somewhat exceptional for a feral cat - may have had previous owners - because she was tame and extremely affectionate, in spite of an injured tail. We socialized the kittens and litter-trained them, and I made efforts to find good homes we could trust. Still looking. But I won't take them to a shelter. I'd rather take the risk of whatever might happen to them here. And now we're all attached to them. Which is really ironic, because before Kit came along, my husband thought all cats were worthless. I'm very grateful these cats changed his mind - about them, anyway. Still not fanatics, mind you, but I agree with you Lysis, that loved pets have a way of working some kind of strange magic on a person's heart.

[Zabrina]

Oh my... how awful! I'm so sorry for you and the kids, and Priscilla. I can't imagine losing one of my two beloved babies (both approaching six years old now ) to a coyote. *hugs*

[Antonia]

Sorry to hear about Priscilla. I hope she didn't suffer too much. I grew up with cats everywhere...they were always drifting in from the wild and making themselves comfortable. They usually ended up dying of leukemia and that never got any easier to watch. Now I live in Nepal where cats are seen as pests, mostly...a few of my Western friends keep them as pets and the locals think they are crazy! It's a hard life for cats and dogs in Asia. At least your cat had a good life with you, Celeste...I know you'll miss her though, it's always tough to lose a pet and especially so suddenly like that.

[canywriter]

I'm so sorry, Celeste. Losing a pet is like losing a family member - I am really glad your daughter didn't see it. But I am sure the spirit of Priscilla is around to comfort you, wild creature of god that she was.