Recent studies highlighted by the American Bird Conservancy show that cats make up a significant portion of the diet of Coyotes. Want your cat to survive? Keep it indoors!
In related news, Universal Orlando’s Loews Hotel should be lauded for deciding to take action to remove a feral cat colony from the hotel’s grounds. Unfortunately, the shelter where the animals were taken will likely have the animals moved to other colonies, a misguided approach that means the death of more native wildlife and a short miserable existence for the cats.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
While I appreciate the fact that ABC is trying to give cat owners a self-motivated reason to keep their cats indoors, I’m not sure this tactic is going to produce the kind of results they’re hoping for. Yes, it would be nice if people read this and thought: “Oh, I should keep my cat indoors”. But in reality, I think people are far more likely to have reactions along the lines of: “Those evil Coyotes are trying to kill my poor helpless fluffsy, we need to embark on a coyote eradication program” (a la Rick Perry).
In other words, I fear that raising the spectre of coyotes as a threat to household pets is quite unlikely to change cat-owner behavior for the better, but has a very real possibility of creating more animosity toward another native species (the coyote).