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Wild coyotes are becoming a scourge in Mountain View’s Waverly Park neighborhood. In recent days, neighbors say coyotes have mauled at least four house cats, and they believe the attacks could explain why several other pets have gone missing.
“Why is this happening all of a sudden?” said Gina Madigan, a Waverly Park resident for about 25 years. “This raises a lot of concerns for us because there’s many people in our neighborhood who don’t know this is going on.”
Last month, Madigan found the remains of her cat in a neighbor’s backyard. The attack was so brutal that she would have struggled to identify her cat if not for a microchip tag, she said. She is disturbed at the thought of the pain her cat must have endured.
The next day, a neighbor came across a coyote eating another cat. Since then, the neighborhood’s Nextdoor page has exploded with comments on the attacks. Many neighbors believe the coyotes are likely coming from the Stevens Creek corridor, which runs adjacent to Waverly Park.
Incidents involving wild animals in Mountain View are handled by the Silicon Valley Animal Control Authority. Reached for comment, the SVACA could not immediately provide statistics on coyote incidents within the city. Throughout Santa Clara County, there have been 172 coyote-related public service requests since September 2017, according to Santa Clara County Vector Control.
Despite that number, coyote sightings are relatively common, especially during the late spring and summer, said Janet Alexander, SVACA’s outreach manager. At this time of this year, the wild canines are raising their young and they need to scavenge or hunt for extra food, she said. Coyotes are omnivores, so everything from backyard fruit trees to open garbage cans can attract them to an area. The loss of open space habitat drives coyotes and other wild animals to push into human neighborhoods, she said.
“Unfortunately, some small pets and animals tend to be targeted by them,” Alexander said. “If there’s coyotes sightings in a particular neighborhood, people shouldn’t be keeping their cats or dogs outside.”
All the more reason to not cats roam freely. We live in an area that borders habitat to MANY pet eating critters. When I lived in Montana, people understood this and took precautions. I think a campaign reminding people that the area contains wild animals and caution should be taken would benefit the population. As the owner of 3 small dogs, I understand the risks of coyotes and cougars in this area and I’m very prudent when it comes to where and when I let them roam freely. Allowing a cat to roam freely in the night is unthinkable to me.
Cats don’t have to be roaming freely to be attacked. These cats have been in their back yards. The coyotes are the problem, not the cats. Coyotes are not native to the area and they thrive off leavings from humans. They also feed off all the rats, who also thrive off leavings of humans.
There’s nothing NATURAL about it. It’s all due to what people do.
@Coyote Explosion claimed “Coyotes are not native to the area and they thrive off leavings from humans.”
I’m not sure where you get the impression that coyotes aren’t native to this part of California. They have been found here for hundreds of years. Maybe you mean they aren’t native to areas of suburban or urban development? But that’s also not true.
What is true is that they can adapt and survive in places where humans leave plentiful food for them to eat.
“Hundreds of Years” Nope. Before 1880, no Coyotes in California. They came with
the settlers, living off their garbage. Even before 1930, no Coyotes in Northern California.
See https://www.nature.com/news/rise-of-the-coyote-the-new-top-dog-1.10635
People reduced population of other wild animals, but the Coyotes actually thrived off the human activities.
So, Coyotes, they aren’t native to California. Get your facts stright.
Domestic cats aren’t native. They kill off many native species of birds, rodents, and reptiles. Protect the creatures under your care, keep them inside at night.
https://www.nativeanimalrescue.org/coyote-lore-living-with-california-coyotes/
People…. cats must be kept indoors. You’ve heard this before. You’ve heard it from your vet….
They live an average of 3 years if outdoors
They kill birds and wildlife
They get hit by cars or get preyed on by dogs or coyotes
If you let you cat live outdoors you’re partly to blame for anything that happens to them….
“These cats have been in their back yards. ”
This is an example where more information is needed by the pet owner. Many will think their pets are perfectly safe in their backyards at night since they’re in the fenced yard. As we know, this is never the case should never be assumed. Mtn lions and coyotes have been widely reported as fence climbers/jumpers. If you are out there with them you’ll likely scare away the predator, but if they can hunt, uninterrupted by humans, they will.
This is where a more informed pet owning public will help reduce future instances.
Regardless of any other issue, don’t ever expect safety from nature, and if your pet is a known food item for wild animals that are in our area, for goodness sake, don’t let them out lone at night.
Hawks and owls also think cats are very tasty and there are videos online to show the proof. The instant fix to this issue is to keep your pet inside, esp at night.
Hmm, just wait till the wolves come back, then we will have to worry. Not just for pets, but children as well.
We should worry about wolves?
I would think we would have to worry with fear mongers such as yourself.
Actually…we do have a jackal at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I would think that is a *much* greater threat…
A few years back I was woken up by three coyotes on my front lawn. They had surrounded my neighbors cat and were very quiet about the operation.
I’m not even sure how I heard them. Luckily my wife had the sense to urge me to go out and save the cat. I was able to scare them off after a couple attempts at waving hands and making noises. They ran off down towards miramonte. I do wonder what route they took down into our neighborhood.
Not too much longer after that a neighborhood cat was killed as well as our local free roaming guinea hen. Keep your pets safe folks!
I suspect they came down from Rancho San Antonio area via Permanente Crk. We used to live along the creek in the 70’s and would see deer and coyotes walking down it in the mornings. It wasn’t a regular thing, but I wouldn’t say it was rare either.
Again, more attacks in Mt View and Los Altos, these dangerous predators must be removed to establish public safety, we should not be prisoners in our own homes. There are weekly reports (google this) of serious human attacks and daily news reports of pet attacks on bot a local and a national basis by these carnivorous predators. These urban vermin are reproducing rapidly and in urban areas live a safe and food rich environment where they roam neighborhoods stalking and killing pets with no repercussions. Urban coyotes have NO urban value and questionable value in rural wilderness where they kill vast numbers of baby herbivores and ground birds. OF COURSE coyotes can be completely and permanently removed by USDA Federal Trappers from urban and suburban areas and this is happening now in a number of states. “Co-existence” is an idiotic PETA scam to get donations to protect the “poor little coyotes”. Remove them from your neighborhood before someone is killed or badly injured again. In many locales, elderly people, old ladies, are fighting off coyotes with their bare hands while walking their pets on city streets and parents are being savaged while their children are being mauled by attacking coyotes. Meanwhile, city officials, animal control and police are suggesting that people protect themselves with squirt guns and banging pans. This is an obscene disregard for public safety and boggles the mind, coyotes need to be removed and kept removed. They are not Disney cartoon characters, they are dangerous predators.
Birds spread disease and must be killed, Google it!
Cats kill too many birds so must be killed, Google it!
Cougars kill goats so must be killed, Google it!
Drivers kill scores of pedestrians each year so we must kill them too, Google it!
You can choose to live in fear of everything around you, or not. You can be a prisoner in your house based on self generated fear, or not.
The only good coyote is a dead coyote. Am I right? Or am I right?
Yes, the only way to rid yourself of feeling afraid or anything that bothers you in this world is to kill it. That’s simply the way things are. What’s wrong with trying to sanitize the world? If you don’t agree with me, I have lots of inflammatory language that I can use to try to instill irrational fear where reasonable fear does not exist.
I had a raccoon eat my pond turtle, so really, the only way to purge ourselves from this obviously rampant and out of control infestation is to kill the raccoons. We are prisoners! Heeeelp! Heeeelp!
Please keep on keeping Mr. Pie safe. He’s adorable.
Outdoor cats provide a valuable service by controlling the rat population.
@Skeptical
Wild coyotes perform the very same service, for free! Plus they clear the neighborhood of cats, saving the lives of countless songbirds.
Owls control rat populations. Invite an owl family to live in your neighborhood by putting an owl box in a tree.
see it on youtube. Then they’ll scream we need to kill the owls.
Owls hunt at night. Cats have to be kept indoors at night, especially with the coyotes around.
Let the indoor-outdoor cats outside to hunt rats during the day. Then bring them inside for the night shift (coyotes and owls) to take over. That’s what we in the business call win-win!
People bring their cats in at night and this becomes a non issue.
Cats live longer if kept indoors, as do birds and other wild species if cats are kept indoors. Back in the day, my cats at the time were indoors/outdoors, with a cat door. Mt BCE (Best Cat Ever) died at age 10 fro FLV contracted from a bite from another outside cat, despite the fact that he was vaccinated against against FLV every year of his life. My next cats was adopted from a veterinary clinic that required that I keep the kitten/cat indoors, which I did. That cat made it to a bit more than 22 years. The cat that raised by my BCE was indoors after about age 11, and not only made it 18 years of age, but showed absolutely no ill effects of being kept inside, or any interest in going outside (although all of my cats like looking at birds outside the windows). Current feline is also indoors her entire life, is fat & sassy, and very healthy at age 10.
Cats face death from many predators outside, including coyotes, dogs, raccoons, and raptors such as hawks. If you love your cat, keep her or him inside. Outside cats also kill millions of wild birds and small mammals every year in the US, so if you love birds and wildlife, keep your cat inside.
@Reader – I assume your comment is tongue-in-cheek. If serious, the answer is “No, you are wrong.
@carol meschter – before advocating killing all wildlife, you might want to consider common-sense approaches such as keeping cats indoors, not letting food waste be vaialble outdoors, and not letting your young kids walk the trails unaccompanied at dusk without either an adult or large walking stick plus awareness/instruction of what to do if confronted by a cougar or bobcat. The knee-jerk reaction to simply kill all wildlife predators (mountain lions, bob cats, coyotes, racoons, opossums, skunks, hawks, owls, etc.)is rather stupid, as most people, I expect, would not want their children or grandchildren to grow up in a sterile world. I certainly don’t.
Respectfully,
David B. Karpf, MD
North Whisman (very close to the Stevens Creek trial, for which I am thankful)
Pet cats ravage wild birds.
@Bill H – I agree with you in spirit, but the culprit is not “pet cats”, it is both feral and domesticated cats with access to outdoors.