Sad ending to a missing cat mystery
There’s a price we all pay for the chance to live. Last I checked, nobody was getting out of this world alive.
As I write this, Calvin, an orange fluff of a cat that adopted me when I was a stray myself a few years ago, is curled up in a ball, a paw over his eyes, hiding from life. He’s been like this for a week.
He misses his best friend, Sherman, a gray-fluffy rescue cat, who was born with a wild streak that took him on wild forays for days at a time. Except, this time he did not come back.
Then, in our backyard, just 100 feet from my office door, we found some fresh scat that looked as if it was from a freshly fed bobcat. I sent a photo to wildlife biologist Joe Hobbs of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the elk specialist at Grizzly Island Wildlife Area, and in turn, Joe shared it with DFW predator specialists. In seconds, they confirmed it was from a bobcat.
This is the second pet I’ve lost to predators. One night in the north state, coyotes ambushed Bart-Dog.
I’m writing this with the hope that all pet owners learn from my mistakes and don’t go through the same heartbreak. Keep your cats inside. Unless your dog responds instantly to your commands, keep it on a leash.
Rising populations of mountain lions, bobcats and coyotes throughout the Bay Area and Northern California, and out of state, wolves, put pets, wildlife and anything else they eat, at risk.
In our case, Sarah, a neighbor who spotted our lost-cat flyer, called to tell us a story. When contractors went to repair a deck of a nearby home, they found a bobcat den under the deck. Alongside were a half dozen or so cat skeletons and carcasses.
After managing a private wildlife preserve for 10 years, I learned there is no balance point between predators and prey. The predators will eat what prey is available until it is killed off or leaves, and after that happens, the predators will leave, too, for the next feeding ground.
In California, there are 10,000 to 12,000 mountain lions, a ballpark projection based on the last official count; that’s about 6,000 more than 25 years ago. According to wildlife biologists, a lion will kill an average of about one deer per week. That means 10,000 lions kill more than 500,000 deer (likely mostly sub-adults, much of each year’s crop), per year.
At the refuge I managed, on hikes with Buddy, the golden retriever with the magic nose, he found dozens of deer legs, mostly from fawns. Since lion populations expanded, the population of adult deer in California has declined from 2 million in the 1960s, to 850,000 in the 1990s, to about 500,000 now. There is no balance point between mountain lions and deer.
The same thing has happened with wolves and elk in Idaho, according to that state’s Department of Fish and Game. The Lolo elk herd had 16,000 elk at its peak, and then after wolves were introduced, now has 2,100 elk. To try to save the Lolo elk herd, Idaho has opened a wolf season in the region.
According to wildlife studies, coyotes do not impact deer populations. The packs are more apt to catch small mammals, such as rabbits and squirrels. If they’re in your backyard or in Golden Gate Park, they will hunt cats, and if near open space, dogs. In rural areas, farm animals are at risk. That is why Colorado, South Dakota, Virginia, Utah, Texas and some areas of Wyoming pay a bounty for coyotes.
In open space, what coyote packs can do is send in a young pup, which then trots up with a smile, to draw your dog away, as if to play. If your dog is not on a leash or under absolute voice command, it can run off, following the happy coyote. The pack, lying in wait, then ambushes from both sides.
This week, with no Sherman and a vacuum in the home, we adopted another rescue cat. I learned a long time ago to never save love for a rainy day. It is a 3-year-old tuxedo female, Roxy. She is so gentle and wants to love you so much, that if you smile at her from a distance of 10 feet, she will purr without being touched. Never seen that before. If a bobcat hid in a bush out the back door, lying in wait, she’d never see it coming. Roxy stays inside.
Calvin remains in his curledup ball most of the time, with occasional breaks to look in the closets and other favorite hiding places of his lost friend.
The other night, before wildlife experts verified the bobcat scat, Sherman came to me in a dream. It was so vivid that it felt like real life, where, in bed, he nuzzled up on my left shoulder and put a paw on my left cheek, like he was saying goodbye. I remembered that after coyotes killed Bart-Dog, I had a similar dream, where he licked my cheek, and then in the dream, walked off and disappeared into the woods.
I woke up in darkness and replayed the dream as if it were real. It felt like a hard rain after a dust storm.