Cats and Hedgehogs -Victims of Fox Predation?

 The question keeps being asked: "We have a fox visiting and I am worried about my cats' safety"

Let me answer that one (again). Things that kill cats are listed by various surveys and of course cars are high on the list. Foxes, on the other hand, are right at the bottom of the list and they are just there -as the survey people note- "just in case".

I am going to give you the gist of my experience watching cats and foxes almost daily since 1976. I also have the benefit of hundreds of trail cam stills and videos of my own plus the hundreds I have looked at and viewed online. I also have over 40 years of reading about foxes from both sides -hunts and naturalists.

The fox is no danger to your cat -even sick foxes do not take on cats as a food source.

A fox can snap -I have seen them do this when pushing for dominance or over food. In one instance the winning fox backed off when a cat moved in on the food. The snapping is why you see foxes with bits of ear missing or facial injury. A fox can lunge and snap which puts it at a disadvantage when it comes to cats. A cat has four sets of sharp claws as well as a rather scary set of teeth -all of which can cut anyone or thing up (I confess to still feeling the wounds of "worming time" or giving meds). A cat attack and facing a stronger opponent will go onto its back and to keep attacking then is equivalent to suicide!

The cat has all the advantages over a fox. I've lost count but I think on five or six occasions now I have had to step in to rescue foxes cornered by aggressive cats and we are talking dog foxes -about the same size as a domestic cat. This is something people forget: foxes can be smaller than or roughly the same size as a domestic cat and I have seen plenty of cats that are far bigger than any fox. Foxes may be called "the cat-like canid" but in a fight they are not cat-like.

When we had foxes I noted how the semi-feral cat living in the gardens stalked them and even lunged at them. The same cat had to be grabbed by someone after it chased and jumped a dog fox and tried to sink its teeth into the fox's next to twist it. I've seen more than one fox back away from food when a cat struts over to it.

During spring the vixen will move cubs for their own safety. People see this and report "a fox carrying a cat in its mouth". This is also jumped on by pro hunt supporters to justify why foxes need killing. Think about it logically. A fox and cat are roughly the same size so how could something small enough to be carried away quickly by a fox be a cat?  I have heard of foxes supposedly scavenging road-kill cats but this is always what so-and-so told someone after hearing about it. Foxes may move a dead cat but really killing a cat for food is far to risky -there are rats, mice, insects and plenty of free food in the form of food put out for hedgehogs or pet cats. 

And that is before I mention feeders. Urban foxes do not go hungry and if they do it is because of (as we have found out with post mortems) underlying health conditions. Even in the countryside foxes are not going to seek out cats for food -there are rats, mice, insects and millions of wild rabbits and rabbit is a main prey item.

Hunts used to kill badgers or cats to carry out drag hunts in which the main purpose was to get foxes to follow trails. Humans kill cats not foxes and that is a fact proven over and over again.

Then we come to some claiming that the decline in hedgehogs is down to fox predation. I have so much footage and so many images -and there are more online- of foxes and hedgehogs eating together and neither pays the slightest attention to the other...well, the fox tends to be wary. I have seen a medium sized hedgehog sit in the middle of a food dish as a vixen and dog fox sit back waiting permission to get some of the food -and I have seen the dog fox try and be bitten by the hedgehog. I even have footage of a hedgehog chasing a fox that dared try to eat from its dish.

I even had one run straight at my cross greyhound dog in the garden; a dog eight times its size. A fox is nothing.

I used to monitor hedgehog deaths (obviously) and the biggest killers in 40 years? Drowning in ponds -so I design ponds and advise others to do so with escape ramps of stones-  falling into uncovered household drains, rat and mouse poisons, slug pellets and the ever present car. Fox predation or evidence of such...zero.

Above: the fox had been eating next to the hedgehog quite happily and as both were taking some water the hedgie obviously did not appreciate the fox's lapping up -you can see by the blurring that the fox decided to move...quickly! Note the size of the hedgehog compared to the fox's head. (c)2022 T. Hooper-Scharf/British Fox Study

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When the hedgehog allows it there is nothing like watching a fox and hedgehog cheek to jowl eating and then you can see how big some hedgehogs are. I did get a fright looking back at some camera footage at one time: a fox with a hedgehog in its mouth! The next few frames showed the fox placing the hedgehog on the ground away from food, nudge it with its nose then go back to the food. Now that, I thought, was rare footage...until someone posted video footage of a fox doing exactly the same thing. In 40+ years I had never witnessed this.

Even foxes and badgers tend to nonchalantly move about the same garden, often eat from the same feeding station and the only time they get wary of one another is when they have young. It is worth noting that the only aggression between the two that I have had reported to me is on the part of the badger but this is very rare and I know of at least three locations where foxes and badgers share the same earth.

Foxes are no angels and that is clear from their fight wounds but those come about from territorial or dominance disputes. They are, after all, wild canids not pet dogs.

Those are the facts and I hope that they answer some questions.

Badgers, foxes, hedgehogs, otters, pine martens and many others are all victims of cars including birds.