Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada: There is a belief that global warming is causing bobcats to eat more domestic cats. The chain of events is pretty straightforward. Global warming causes more droughts and forest fires. These reduce the number of prey animals. In turn, this means the usual wild prey animals are scarcer for bobcats and other predators. They struggle to survive and are forced to risk coming into urban areas to hunt indoor/outdoor domestic cats.
That’s the speculative beliefs of some residents of the Joe Rich area east of Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. The reports don’t mention that they believe in global warming – I’ve added that thought – but they’ve had some small forest fires and a summer drought. Kelowna is about 200 kms from Lytton where they had an extraordinarily high temperature last summer due; a staggering 49.6C. It is believed that global warming was to blame.
Remarkably domestic cats are disappearing in unusually large numbers. The residents say that they are seeing a lot of wildlife. Two barn cats disappeared and the neighbour of the farm where they lived has lost five or six cats at the rate of one per day! It seems very strange that they didn’t keep the cats inside after the first two.
Eating habits of predators
The residents can tell which predator is responsible by the remains left behind. They believe that bobcats are more likely to kill domestic cats than pumas (mountain lions). Nothing of the cats are left behind.
Laurie Takoff, secretary of the Joe Rich Ratepayers and Tenants Society does not suspect coyotes (a major predator of domestic cats in North America) as she’s not seen coyotes inside her fenced property. She says that skunks just eat the guts while owls eat breast meat and leave the rest.
Chickens are also being killed. Laurie Takoff believes that residents will have to be more careful and keep livestock (and pets) inside.
Coyotes
It seems that coyotes ‘cut’ and mutilate domestic cats that they catch as if the cats were cruelly abused by a depraved cat hating person. Foxes can leave the same remains, it’s believed. In the UK the police decided that the Croydon Cat Killer was a fox or foxes.
The phenomenon of severed and mutilated remains of domestic cats occurs all over North America. One veterinary pathologist, Patrick Nation at the University of Alberta believes that the coyote is the perpetrator not psychopathic people.
It is believed that the coyote cuts cats cleanly as if with a knife. In one case there were no bite marks and no blood. The cat was cleanly separated into two parts, two block apart. It all pointed to human cat cruelty. That’s what the residents believed but Mr Nation believes otherwise. He believes it is coyotes.
Kelowna
Kelowna is a city in the south of Canada’s British Columbia province. It’s in the Okanagan Valley, on the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake, surrounded by provincial parks, pine forest, vineyards, orchards and mountains.
Note: this article is news and comment. The source is Info News Ca.
Below are some more pages on the bobcat:
