Foxes Carrying off and Killing Cats -time for a chat

It is as predictable as the sun rising. Every single year since the 1970s I have heard the same things. "Foxes attacked my cat"/ "Foxes attacked and killed my cat"/"I saw a fox grab a cat and carry it off"

Firstly, if you own a cat (at one time I had eight rescue house cats) think about the struggle to get that worming tablet in its mouth. Even wrapped in a thick bathroom towel the teeth or claws will get you. It was very much a case of "will you be using the entire bottle of surgical spirits on you scratches this time around?" Cats have four sets of claws and teeth you do not want to mess with. Foxes have teeth so are very ill equipped to  take on a cat.

Again, on five separate occasions over the years I have had to rescue adult foxes cornered by different cats. All the foxes could do was make a noise (stress) and try snapping but the cats have legs and claws at the end so... Now a fox picking up a live cat in its mouth (consider that the cat will be similar in weight to the fox) and carrying it off with no fuss from the cat?  It would be akin to lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite and casually walking around with it.

My neighbours (a week after the fact) told me that they had found a dead cat in their garden ripped up. Their son who had no interest in animals told them "a fox would have done that". There is this ill educated belief that we have wolf sized canids wandering around our gardens tearing up whatever they can find. These are cat sized canids. I asked what they did with the cat's body because I could have checked it out but was told "we put it in the bin" -the bin had been emptied that morning. Why did they not tell me this at the time since they know my interest and what was really angering is that someone's pet had now "mysteriously vanished" -the vet is not that far away and if they could pick the cat up to take it to the bin they could have taken it to the vet to check for a microchip.

The description of the dead cat's body wounds showed it was not a fox at work but a large dog and if I could have proven it the owner would have been reported. People up the road own a greyhound and it often wandered about -and I caught it chasing cats (instinct on its part) and even chased one into my garden one night. I even had images and video of it skulking around my garden. This greyhound kept getting out as, allegedly, their son (in his 30s) was too stupid to close the gate. As others had "mentioned" t6he dog getting out to the owners but the message never sank in I posted photos of the dog in my garden at night and gave the location on to a local pet group's Face Book page. I explained that the dog had chased cats and was therefore a threat to other pets. I explained that if I was it loose again or chasing another cat the police and RSPCA would be informed and, obviously, they would be named publicly. Not seen the dog since. 

I asked two people about the cat and how it was killed and both had relatives -one a father the other grandfather- who used to go rabbiting with a greyhound and both said the cat kill sounded "about right" for a small furry thing a greyhound had caught.  So a "fox kill" became a  greyhound kill.

The woman who made the above posting to a local group is adamant that the foxes attacked and mauled the 'cat'. She is positive that it was a cat -so why did it get up and run off over hedges...like a fox? For a domestic cat that is very odd behaviour. Oh, someone chimed in with "my cat was killed by a fox a few weeks ago" -where is the evidence of any of this?

Every year at this time vixens move their cubs to new locations and we get the foxes carrying off cats stories. I was once talking to someone who told me that their neighbour's "little brown cat" was carried off by a fox and they saw it themselves. So I started asking questions and the person looks behind me and says "There it is now"  I turned expecting to see a fox but instead saw a large brown tom cat so I said "I don't get you?" and it was explained that this was the cat the fox carried off as it "is the only brown one in the street" 😫 It later transpired that a vixen had moved its only cub from one back garden to another but the house holders were not telling anyone there was a fox ("a lot of nasty people about").

A lot of these posts are from pro fox hunt supporters that are on most groups these days and in ten years of confronting them and asking for the video and photos they claimed to have taken or the vet's statement that a fox killed the cat (a vet is NOT qualified to make such a conclusion) -nothing. The people tend to vanish off the groups.

In many cases -as with foxes carrying off 'cats'- it is a genuine mistake. From 1977-2015 (and still occasionally) I was a UK police forces exotic animals consultant and I spoke to many witnesses and observers in that time. I use the phrase "People see woodlice and report armadillos" -I was asked to go to a house locally as they had found snake eggs which turned out to be privet hawk moth eggs -one leaf.  Another time someone's pet python had escaped and was in a garden and the householder was concerned about pets. It was a grass snake -absolutely nowhere near the size of a boa.  I was talking to someone late one evening and she complained about the cat that was shredding her plastic refuse bags and there was a noise of plastic tearing and she pointed; "There it is! There's that bloody cat again!" It was a fox and I explained and she responded "No. That small? IT's a cat" but it quite clearly was 100% a fox and I am quite sure that a DNA test would prove that it was a fox!

In the 1960s and 1970s when we still had aluminum dustbins (trash cans) you would often hear one being tipped over at night and the remark "Bloody cat's on the bin again!"  On one occasion a neighbour had his bin overturned and asked my gran if she knew who owned a "big fluffy ginger cat" in the area as he wanted to "have words" with them about their cat tipping over his bin. It was actually a fox but most people had no idea they were in towns so something that is the same size as a cat and acts like a cat (it's why the fox is described as "the cat-like canid") by jumping up and over fences and garden walls....it was a cat  and anyone who said otherwise was barmy (nuts).

Interestingly, the old hunt books written in the 19th and 20th century note that no fox would get the better of "even the most tame hose cat".

Another example of misreporting. W. Kay Robinson (founder of the British Naturalists Association in 1905) noted (Wild Beasts of Britain, 1949) the number of cases in which people claimed to have seen and also been chased out of woodland by bears. local naturalists explained that there were no bears living wild in England and some investigating found that the bear(s) in question were...badgers. How anyone could mistake a small badger for something like a bear seems ridiculous bu8t it happens. I have seen many (many) images and video footage of "big cats" in the UK. The sizes of the animals in question range from similar to that of a German Shepherd, Rotweiller and so on -all large dogs. There is even video footage and stills from a trail cam of a "big black cat with very long tail and very large in size" and I cannot see any big black cat with very long curved tail. In fact the clearest image is of the animal behind trees and you can only see it from mid torso back and it has the same anatomical shape as my old dog Sam -a cross greyhound. The animal is a greyhound in the video but it seems no one can recognise the difference between a leopard and a greyhound! As for the other "big cats" -all very quite clearly domestic cats from head to tail tip -NOT giant animals.

We have had schools trying to get rid of fox dens with cubs on site (Health and Safety inspected and declared no threat to anyone) and do not seem to realise that this is a good opportunity to teach kids about nature and wildlife -a trail cam would help them seer "wildlife on the doorstep" but, no. All well and good preaching about the environment and TVs Spring Watch or the latest David Attenborough wildlife series but actually educate kids with wildlife just outside?

At times I feel that I am the only person in the UK who is actually studying foxes and trying to educate people on the species because they are "just foxes" and who cares?  While kids are inquisitive get them interested and ask your local school to start up some type of wildlife education projects for classes. If I am still here in ten years time I do not want to have to still be going through all of this.