Living with coyotes in Almanac country

Spay your dog & keep your cats indoors. Sheesh, these were important things to do *before* coyotes became unsensitized to people. You live in the hills and have an outdoor cat? Crazy.

This is just one more reason people should keep their cats indoors. As much as we dislike cleaning litter-boxes, it prevents the suffering inflicted on our pets by predators, cars, bikes, parasites, diseases, and mean people. Indoor cats are generally healthier and live longer than those allowed outdoors. Love your cat and stop feeding coyotes, raptors, cougars, and feral dogs.

Cats in Woodside sometimes have two families that feed them and cats are prone to taking off when they feel like it. The key thing people need to do is keep pets indoors when they are not around and at night.

I take issue with the dogmatic (no pun intended) view (and one espoused by Peninsula Humane Society) that all cats must be indoor cats. We love our children, but we let them play on swing sets, get driver's licenses and accept that there are risks to them in the big bad world. I have had many, many cats. Some are content to live indoors and some would be absolutely miserable if they couldn't hunt gophers all day. It has nothing to do with litter boxes, it has to do with quality of life for each individual cat.

Comparing cats to children is silly. If your child was cat-sized, and carnivores were wandering nearby, you certainly wouldn't let your little kid roam about, would you?
Keeping rabbits outdoors, even entirely enclosed, is very stressful to the rabbits. The fear alone, from a predator even if they can't touch the rabbit, can cause the rabbit to have a heart attack. Keep your bunz indoors.

I forgot to mention that outdoor cats severly impact our native birds. Justifying that the cat "isn't happy" unless hunting - what about the quail chicks, baby rabbits, and other wild creatures? Domestic cats decimate the populations of our ground-dwelling animal and bird friends.

Yes, too bad the domestic cats kill happy gofers, visually challenged moles and cuddly field mice that have every right to co-exhist. But coyotes can be legally hunted all year long in this state for a reason. Darwin is shaking his head in heaven!

You guys have seriously got to be kidding. Cats are predators. They have sharp claws and teeth for a reason. We have some who are excellent mousers and they earn their keep. Yes, they kill gophers, rats, mice, and the occasional bird or wild rabbit (those animals are called "prey" and predators eat them sometimes, including hawks, coyotes, bobcats, etc.) We've got snakes in our yard, too, and they each rodents. Shall we round them up to rescue the poor little mice?

We have a thriving covey of quail who spend a lot of time in our yard. The existence of indoor/outdoor cats over the last 25 years does not seem to have made any impact on their numbers. They are fat and thriving (although they sometimes fly into our windows and break their necks - they are not the sharpest tools in the shed, after all.)

Where do you people live. Darwin, indeed, is shaking his head. Children have competencies, as do cats. Adult cats who learned to hunt from their mothers, are very competent in hunting and maintaining their own safety. Treating them like they are mindless balls of fluff is just as ridiculous.

Fortunately, we each can create the best situation for our pets, in keeping with our own philosophy. Too bad the Peninsula Humane Society would rather keep a cat in a cage and then euthanize it rather than let it live in a loving, comfortable home where it is well-loved and well-fed, AND allowed to go outside to hunt.

Cat Owner, keep on doing it your way. But don't expect sympathy from people if your cats die a nasty death out of doors. It all depends on the cat, like you said. PHS does a great job & if the jerkoff cat owners would spay/neuter their pets, PHS wouldn't have so many. Let's not even get into the feral cat problem because I don't have time for apoplexy today.

We all know how much damage outdoor cats can do - don't pretend otherwise. They might do some good, too, but that's hard to measure given how much damage they do as well. Kind of like coyotes, but worse - coyotes are wild & have that very reason to do what they do. Cats don't have a good reason because we're supposed to be in charge of them.

Dear "Hmmm":

If you want your cat to never go outside, more power to you. If your cat is healthy and happy under those circumstances, that's terrific. But do not, for one second, think that you are a superior cat owner or that you are a more sincere environmentalist. I have probably lived with at least 20 cats over my lifetime (and, btw, every single one of them has been spayed or neutered, has received all the recommended shots, and has been well fed and well loved.) Each one is different. The most dysfunctional cat I ever met lived its entire life inside an urban apartment. The happiest cat I ever met went outside every single day of his very long life. I've know cats who never go outside by choice, and cats who are completely miserable not being allowed outside. And I would never have an outdoor cat if I lived in a location where getting hit by a car was a possibility (I live so far out, it is not a possibility where I live.) Cats have better instincts about coyotes than they do about cars.

And, yes, I would expect as much sympathy from any decent, caring person if my cat was eaten by a coyote as I would if my cat died of kidney failure.

We are on the same page about the feral cat problem - which is why I've never had a cat (or dog) who was not spayed or neutered.

Please don't assume (as PHS does) that someone who does not share their philosophy about indoor/outdoor cats is a bad pet owner.

Finally - for those who live in unincorporated county, I'm guessing many share the attitude that the stupidest thing PHS ever advocated for was cat licensing fees. What a way to discourage folks from getting their (rural) cats vaccinated for rabies! (And, before you jump down my throat, yet, all my cats are licensed and vaccinated for rabies, but I know plenty of people who stopped vaccinating their cats after that law was passed because of the licensing requirement.)

Public policy regarding pet ownership needs to take in a broad spectrum of pet owners and build consensus, not hand down self-righteous decrees from on high.