Posted on 06/12/2007 5:40:06 AM PDT by BGHater
A Bayside woman hearing a commotion on her porch Wednesday looked out the window to see the tail of her cat dangling from the mouth of a mountain lion.
“I heard a loud noise and went to the side door, and I saw what I thought was a tan dog trying to get something in his mouth,” said Kathleen Essa, a resident of Brookwood Drive, which is located off Jacoby Creek Road.
“Then the animal turned around, and I saw it was kind of long, with a long tail, and I saw a long black tail hanging out of its mouth,” she said.
“I knew instantly that was our cat.”
Essa said losing Prince, an approximately 12-year-old male cat she’d rescued when he was a kitten, was like losing a member of the family.
“He had been hit by a car, and he only had three legs. I shouldn’t have favorites — I have two other cats — but he was kind of my favorite.”
But it’s not just the loss of the cat that troubles her.
“What was so terrible about it is that the mountain lion came right up against our door to get the cat,” she said. “We’re really concerned about it. We don’t go outside anymore.”
Essa said she has a 6-year-old child, and her husband was working elsewhere in the yard at the time of the attack.
Wildlife biologist Jeff Dayton from the California Department of Fish and Game said sharing the land with mountain lions “is part of the luxury of living in places like Bayside.”
“The area has a pretty healthy deer population, and anywhere we have deer, we have mountain lions not far away,” Dayton said.
“I would say it’s pretty rare that we have mountain lions that are house-cat hunters, but they are opportunistic predators,” he said, naming raccoons, foxes, skunks and possums as other mammals of choice.
The cat attack at the Essa residence occurred around dusk, which Dayton said is prime hunting time for the big cats.
The best thing residents can do is try to minimize risks and liabilities, he said.
“Residents should have a kind of common-sense awareness that I do live in mountain lion country. My family lives in mountain lion country. My pets and livestock live in mountain lion country.”
Domestic animals should be secured at night, Dayton said, and he recommended not leaving pet food outside because it attracts other animals of interest to mountain lions.
He also noted that male mountain lions in particular have a very large home range — anywhere from 25 to 100 square miles.
“So a lion seen in Bayside one day may be in Freshwater the next.”
Essa said a depredation order had been issued to have the mountain lion killed, but a tracker was unable to locate the cat.
In mountain lion country is this really a surprise?
Then the animal turned around, and I saw it was kind of long, with a long tail, and I saw a long black tail hanging out of its mouth,” she said.
“I knew instantly that was our cat.”
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LOL
“He had been hit by a car, and he only had three legs.”
Darwinism at work
We need to pull out of Bayside.
That’s why little dogs are called “Gator Bait” in gator country. Outside pets take risks.
In Helena, Montana, the mountain lions hang around the north side of town close to an elementary school and a daycare center. No human attacks but plenty of sightings. No success in capturing the cats either.
ping
I'm sure that's featured in the Chamber of Commerce brochure, right next to "close to schools and shopping."
Better yet shoot, shovel, and shut up.
Ones fondness for large predators varies proportionally with one’s distance from them.
If the State of Washington ran a catch-and-release program where they let the lions go in Downtown Seattle, all this nonsense about hunting restrictions would end almost instantaneously.
I’m pretty sure our small blue russian cat was carried off by the big barn owl that lives in our neighborhood. The only comfort would be that Chewie’s last thoughts were, “I can fly!!!”
In mountain lion country is this really a surprise?”
Since the yuppies in Kalifornia voted to make it illegal to kill a mountain lion for any reason, ranchers and rural people with animals are in jeopardy. The reports of lost sheep, calves, and horses are not being handed over to the media.
The Kalifornia Fish and Game takes the position that even the Golden Gate Bridge is “lion territory”, and we should just learn to live with it.
The lions have multiplied to the point where they are decimating the deer herds, also, along with causing great losses with the ranchers.
The shoot- shovel- shutup policy is rising daily.
Oregon is finally working on legislation to allow hunting licenses for bear and lions or hiring “takers” to track them and eliminate them.
It is only a matter of time before the victim is a child instead of a lady’s cat.
If you can’t stand to lose a cat, it is better to keep him indoors. You have to be prepared for the possibility that any cat you let out might not be coming back.
That hair has got to stick in his throat....
Anything that kills deer is a good thing.
Mmmmm, Cat, the other white meat.
My Labradors have eaten several cats who foolishly entered their fenced yard. The hair didn’t seem to bother them.
The best thing a resident can do is keep a loaded 30-30 by the door.
They've been seen in places like downtown Palo Alto for quite sime time, as far as six miles from the nearest wildlands. It's a drought year in California. They'll be coming down into urban areas this summer, big time.
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