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Missing cats suggest coyotes on the prowl

A wildlife officer says pets can be food for hungry predators.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published October 29, 2006

County urban wildlife officer Rick Stahl always knows he's hot on the trail of a coyote when he sees lots of "missing cat" signs.

Cats, especially domesticated ones, make easy prey for a hungry coyote.

Beverley and Bill Mills are sadly aware of that.

They've lost four cats - Ricky, Roger, Jerry and Ren - to coyotes wandering Lake Seminole Park.

They almost lost Henry, their white peacock, too.

Luckily, Henry had just molted and lost his tail feathers. Otherwise, the coyote would have had something to grab when Henry flew out of the way. That attack was in broad daylight, around 10 a.m.

"Henry spent the next two days on the roof, honking," Beverley Mills said.

The Millses, whose home backs up to Lake Seminole Park, put up heavy wire around their back porch to keep their remaining 14 cats safe.

Stahl believes there are 75 to 80 coyotes wandering Pinellas County, from the Sunshine Skyway to Tarpon Springs. He keeps a map of where callers say they've seen coyotes.

Coyote sightings in Seminole are a longstanding phenomenon. Frank Bowman, who works with the county's Community Development Department, was in the War Veterans Memorial Park at Bay Pines more than a year ago when he saw two animals he thought were dogs.

"I went, 'Wait a minute, I've just seen coyotes,' " Bowman said.

It makes sense that coyotes would congregate in the park because there's a large expanse of undeveloped land with ample food, such as squirrels and raccoons, Bowman said. Soon, the county will have a better idea of the number of coyotes and their habits. After Thanksgiving, the county will begin a two-year study by capturing nine, fitting them with radio collars, and then releasing and tracking them. The coyotes will come from as far south as Boyd Hill Nature Park in St. Petersburg and as far north as the Pinellas-Pasco border at Tarpon Springs.

Currently, Stahl guesses at coyote movement patterns by following reports of missing pets.

Normally, a cat is not a coyote's preferred dinner, he said, but in a largely urban environment, there's not much choice.

"They're going to take the most easily available food source," he said.

Cats, especially pets, fill the bill because they're tame and tend to be more trusting and less alert to possible attack than wild animals.

But just because a cat has disappeared, coyotes should not automatically get blamed, Stahl said.

"There's a 20 times higher probability" that a cat or a puppy was killed by a dog, he said.

"We're talking a lot of domestic animal-to-domestic animal attacks," Stahl said. "Dogs kill for the thrill. Coyotes kill for a food source."

That's one way to tell whether a cat, or other animal, is a victim of a dog or coyote attack. Dogs tend to leave the body. Coyotes take everything, but sometimes leave the inedible parts, like the head.

That's what happened to Ren, the 14-year-old gray, white and "pinky orange" cat the Millses had since it was 8 weeks old. It was named after the cartoon character in the Ren and Stimpy television show. Bill Mills found Ren's head in the street.

"It was just horrible," Beverley Mills said. The other three cats simply disappeared earlier in the year.

She and her husband have so many cats because so many people abandon them in the park, she said.

"I only have one I purchased," she said. "The rest are throwaways."

When the Millses called Stahl to report the problem in Lake Seminole Park, he wasn't surprised. He had already received calls from other neighbors.

[Last modified October 29, 2006, 08:10:31]