I didn’t talk about it, but last month almost to the day, we lost Neville. He was our little kitty from the Mountain Farmlet.
Neville was aloof
This morning almost a month to the day Lil’Bit has vanished. If she does not come home we will not be getting another kitty.
Lil’Bit required much attention
Some sort of Boogie Beast is making the circuit in its nightly hunts and none of us on our little street can keep kitties anymore. I am guessing fox or coyote as there is never any evidence left behind. This will be the fourth kitty to have vanished and as you may recall Smoky and Clause just disappeared overnight too.
Life on the Farmlet 
Likely coyotes, they’re killing cats on our road too and small dogs are kept in at night and not allowed out of the yard during the day without supervision. Sorry for your loss!
I’m sorry you are having the same troubles. We keep our dogs in at night for this very reason. I don’t want him to be free food for a wild beast. Kitties would have been in too, but they cried ALL NIGHT in the mud room even with access through the pet door to come and go as they pleased. 😦
I’m so sorry, you must be very sad… Round here, we have to keep cats inside as they are all too ready to become feral pests and predate on the local wildlife. There’s nothing equivalent/ competitive in the local fauna ecology, so they do a lot of damage if allowed to hunt unchecked.
We fixed all or ours to keep them from wandering too far and reproducing, but it isn’t the best solution for keeping them from catching the birds. Ours seemed most happy to keep the rodents under control. Mice, rats, voles, etc. Why sneak, jump or climb when you can go into trance mode by a hole in the ground and wait for them to come to you. I guess I will be resorting to poison . . . not my favorite 😐 now that the danger of the cats being exposed to it is gone. Neville and Lil’bit were terrific rodent control.
I would say coyotes,as they love a kitty dinner.😳 sorry , to hear that though!
I am certain you are correct, Deb. Thank you.
So sad. But some cats are born wild and locking them up for their short lives would be cruel. She had a great life with you I am sure. Love love
Thank you, Celi. We have always felt that way about cats. She was rescued from a dumpster at McDonalds by the staff of our vet when she would just fit into your palm. I think we did right by her… I just would have liked to do it a bit longer.
The way of the world- we all want a little longer.
We do.
so sorry to hear that Lynda. The worst part is not really knowing for sure what happened to them, isn’t it?
It is, Claire. When we had suburb cats we actually had them return to us. One came back after 3 months! She was living in the basement of an abandoned house and being fed by someone daily – along with about 10 to 15 feral cats. Another kitty was gone for a week and I went out for a walk and saw her in someone’s apartment window! We had to call the authorities to get her back because the woman insisted she was hers! Ha! Apparently she had done this before the policemen found her collar in her apartment too. There were also the random overnight stays in a garage and they would return to us when the person went to work the next morning.
The short lived country kitty syndrome is too much for us.
I am sorry to hear this news. It must have been very distressing.
It is, Tom. We just can’t keep kitties here in our wooded area.
We’ve gone through that here, too. For a good while there were multiple cats roaming the neighborhood. Then, they began disappearing, one by one. Eventually, I went out one night and was nearly nose to nose with a coyote loping down the middle of the parking lot. Once the cats were completely gone, so were the coyotes. No one’s seen one of those for some time. Eventually, the kitties will come back, and the cycle will start over.
Dixie never was an outdoor cat, so I didn’t need to worry about her, and the rules are that dogs have to be leashed when outside, so most of my neighbors aren’t at risk of losing a pet. Still, there are times when one makes a run for it, and it’s always a little nerve-wracking until they’re found. I grew up around barn cats, and it’s a shame that they can’t roam as they used to — at least not around here, and apparently not in your woods.
Sightings are rare here, Linda, but I think it is because we are so wooded. I have seen lots of fox on the road (dead) but only one coyote and it was in an empty field in the fall. Not fooling myself, I know there are many of them out there! We are very overpopulated with deer here. I guess that the coyotes are overpopulating too?
I drag my 2 cats in at night …… when everyone is night at night I sleep well. When I cant get the cats into the mudroom I worry all night. Too many predators coyotes to owls out there.Terrible loss.
We tried, Connie, but Lil’bit had some Siamese in her. Her yowling all night gave us no rest. 😦
So sorry to hear about Neville and L’il Bit. We’ve lost one cat to an unknown fate and we are in a small hamlet and would have found him if he’d been killed on the road so I can’t help my imagination running riot. I still think cats have a happier life if they can go outside though so, if the alternative is keeping them in all the time, I think you’re right to decide on not having one at all. Easier said that done though – I only chose to have two of my cats, the other four just turned up and didn’t leave.
Thank you, Lynn. Yeah, our cats were usually rescues, but we have been known to take in strays when they’ve shown up. 😉
And, unless the cat has been declawed 😯 we’d never consider keeping them in.
I’m sorry to hear of your loss, Lynda. We have the same problem here since we have many wild things in the area. Fox and coyote are common. Now we have wild hogs visiting. I’m not happy about it but there isn’t much to do about it either.
Thank you, Lori. (Sending you an email later today…)
Q: Aren’t you allowed to hunt them? They do it here in Alabama.
Incredibly sad. To lose them but also to not have any more. Feel for you.
Thank you, Annie. It was Bob’s decision as these last kitties were his fur friends (Claus was mine). I am sad about them, but he is having a hard time when he opens the door on his way to work and they aren’t there waiting for their “luvin’s”. He said he didn’t want any more cats to be lost to the thing in the woods, because just imagining it makes him so sad. I have to agree with him.
Sympathies for both of your losses. 😦
No judgement here, but that’s why we keep our cats indoors. We did that initially when we lived in suburban NJ because there were ordinances that you couldn’t let your cats roam free. Best thing we ever did. Despite what most people think, the cats are quite content to be indoors, and they are safe from all of the nasty critters that roam our fields here in NY. We still allow our chickens to free range, but at least they willingly go into the coop at night where we can lock them up. Even so, we have lost quite a few over the years to the boogie beasts…
Thank you, Katy, I totally understand keeping a house cat. We did too when we lived in the city. But these kitties were barn cats that we totally loved as pets. Truth to tell, Neville usually preferred to sleep in the barn, but when it got really hot here he no longer wanted to be locked in at night. He was near to feral and had spent his whole life up on the mountain as an outside cat and roamed the woods there. He did allow Bob to pick him up and pet him, but no one else could get near him. I think things are changing here. Huntsville is growing and pushing out in all directions. All that construction is pushing the wildlife further and further out as their hunting grounds are plowed down. The first six or seven years here there wasn’t so much of a problem, but now no one can keep a cat on our street. They have all disappeared.
So sad! Life outside is just not easy for any animals, but we can’t bring them all indoors! 🙂
Happily we are in an area that is not “growing”, and we have a conservation easement on our property. Wildlife has plenty of room to roam here, but that just means they are close to us and can appreciate a nice fat free range chicken every now and then. We have barn cats on the property next door, and across the busy road (2 different barns). One of our indoor cats came from one of those litters across the road. My dog found him in the weeds when kitty was only about a pound and a half. Here’s this fierce little kitten hissing and scratching at a big black barking lab! We just had to take him home! Plus, it was late October and he definitely would not have survived the winter here in Upstate NY.
Best wishes to you, my friend!
And to you as well, Katy. 🙂