Coyotes Eating Cats!

Last week, the local paper reported that for the second time in four days, a domestic cat was found torn apart in my neighborhood, the victim of a wild animal, most likely a coyote.  My heart goes out to the people of these two cats.  The loss of a pet is terrible; I can only imagine the pain of losing a pet in this particular manner, of finding it, of thinking that its final moments were full of fear. Terrible.

Though I’m sorry, so sorry for the cats and their people, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there is also some thrill in knowing that we live in a place that actually has animals, out here in the wilds of Santa Venetia.  For a nature-loving kid who grew up in San Francisco reading about animals and seeing them pretty much only at the zoo, this proximity to wild animals has never gotten old.  Five minutes from my house, I can disappear into the woods, walk along the ridgeline for hours, binoculars in hand and on the look-out for deer, raccoons, squirrels, banana slugs, possums, wood rats, skunks, thousands upon thousands of birds, including once – big thrill – a Golden Eagle.

And naturally, also, coyotes.

I saw my first coyote in our hills in 2004, while hiking with Jasper, my beloved dog, now dearly departed.  We rambled and ran together up and down these trails for all of his almost 14 years.  That day, we heard the coyote before we saw it, loping along a road we could see from our trailside perch.  Its yips froze Jasper in his tracks, and it took a lot of coaxing to keep him moving so we could get home and I could get to work.  The coyote kept pace with us, emerging from the shrubbery just as we turned onto the last downhill stretch to home.  It was close.  It was wild.  We saw that same coyote, and a three-legged one, often that summer, on that same trail and in the meadow at the end of Oxford, now closed to human wandering. 

We’ve seen them in the neighborhood proper, too, of course, loping down the street at night or in the early morning hours.  It's always a thrill.

Truly, this coexistence with wild animals, whether deer or coyotes, is the thing – besides my immediate neighbors and my own house and garden – that I love most about living in Santa Venetia.  It's an unformed place, where there is a lot of room for self-expression, even if that sometimes just means a car on blocks or a boat where a lawn might otherwise be.  There are roosters and chickens at the house on the corner.  Once I saw goats in a backyard.  We’re on an edge, diverse both in terms of people, tastes and incomes, and in terms of the creatures who live here. 

That wildness and diversity is a really good thing, but sometimes, as with these recent cat deaths, it can be difficult.  And painful.

I think a lot about coyotes now that I am back to hiking these trails alone, without Jasper at my side as he was for years, walking along now with his ghost.  He’s been gone just over three months, but still I see him everywhere I look, remembering all that we saw out here together in our long time of companionship.  I watch for coyote, his wild brother, craving the sight of that wild dogness, slipping silently through the trees.  And think about how much it means to me, to know that they’re out here, the coyotes, that they live among us, that we share this dazzling little piece of the world.

It's a wild place, Santa Venetia.  Maybe too wild for house cats to be outdoors at dawn and dusk.  Can we live with that?