Coyote Kills Resident’s Cat Outside his Home

By: Sharon Aron Baron

A resident who wishes to remain anonymous wrote to me about his experience losing his cat to a coyote last week:

On November 26, at 3:30 a.m., I was awakened by the screaming of our cat followed by a single weak scream in her death struggle with a coyote alongside our home. 

In reenacting and timing my getting out of bed, turning on the lights in the back, opening the door and stepping out it took seven seconds, and I was awake. I saw the back side of a coyote running away from the house through the neighbor’s yards towards hole five on the golf course. 

I immediately checked the area, and many times since then, looking for our cat, I have found no trace of the kill. We have friends and family on the golf course and they have reported nothing. It was a quick predatory kill and my research tells me was done to feed the coyote’s young. 

Our cat is gone, a stray that adopted us about years years ago.

My research has also shown that we most likely have a population of ten or more coyotes, but they are hard to find and impossible to eradicate. As their population grows, as it has in California and Arizona, attacks on humans will begin and increase.