Fox = Dog hardware with cat software.

Besides rabies, mange is a terminal disease affecting fox.

3 S's:

Shoot

Shovel

Shut-up. Even better if you can shut-up while shooting (i.e. suppressed, air gun, cross bow, etc).

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

You can avoid shooting the fox and save your (oops, the wife's cat) by keeping the cat indoors.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
A good time to get rid of the cat, blame it on the fox.

I startled my wife when I laughed out loud at this. Couldn't share it with her though. Good humor always has an element of truth in it.

We live semi-rural. There is usually several fleets of quail resident, and numerous other bird species about.

Periodically we observe an ever growing feral cat population coinciding with decreasing quail density.

Last fall we observed gray fox den within 20 feet of our house. There was a remarkable trimming down of the cat bastards tormenting and eating the bird population, along with stinking up the various berry and flower beds.

Over about 4 or 5 weeks, we were left with gradually fewer fox sightings, ever diminishing cat population ambling thru the estate, and in recent days, a few quail bodies sighted returning.

I have a nice resident covey (thirty-ish) of quail in the brush behind my cabin. There are also squirrels, cottontails, jackrabbits, a few neighbor cats, mule deer, elk, bobcats, and wandering through pretty regularly, cougars.

It seems the foxes keep the squirrels, rabbits, and hares in check. The bobcats (verified on camera) & cougars keep the foxes in check. The cougars get a deer pretty regularly, as well. What no one seems to manage are the quail. There is a lot of ground cover so I guess that explains it. Aside from the covey by my house, there seem to be similarly sized groups every few hundred yards all over the area.

Additionally the neighbor had two cats go missing recently. Who knows who got them.

Strangely, I've only ever seen one coyote up there, a couple of years ago,

Yeah, I had a small dog that used to routinely tree bears in our yard. Never had a problem, but..

If the day came that a bear got really pissed off, then the dog would have just been dead. And so will your cat. “Game”ness isn’t going to save it from a wild predator, and if the fox backed it onto your porch, then your kitty probably doesn’t want to play.

I’d keep the cat indoors.