KENNEWICK — Buddy is the top cat in his house, and arguably the toughest feline in the Tri-Cities.
The muscular 17-pound bobtail cat, which belongs to William and Shannon Secolo, fought off coyotes inside its Kennewick home early one morning last week.
And while Buddy emerged without a scratch from the scrap, his vanquished foes left behind a trail of dung and fur as they fled into the frigid night.
“I think of Buddy as a little hero,” William Secolo said Saturday. “Those coyotes were twice his size.”
Bobtail cat. Coyote. The story reports that Secolo never actually saw the coyotes, but did step in one of their calling cards. Obviously, Buddy is one tough cat – the coyotes never laid a paw on him.
On a side note, we have at least one, more likely two, very large coyote packs running in our area right now. They’ve been here for years, but they have been growing and getting more and more active lately. (My wife saw one coyote run across our backyard in broad daylight a few weeks back.)We are being very careful about letting our animals out. But now we are also going to be very careful about making sure the doors are locked at night. This is kind of a creepy story.
We had coyotes around when I lived in Southern California, about 10 years ago. I surprised one once when I stepped out of the front door one evening to take some trash to the curb. There was a coyote who was attempting to get into the trashcan and I scared it and it fell into the can and panicked. It was kinda fun to watch. It finally managed to tip the can over and run away with a pal.
Coyotes like cat. One little town I lived in a few years back had a notorious “cat lady” whose house and yard contained dozens of cats. Then a pack of coyotes moved into the fringes of town.
It was actually kinda funny, if sad, to watch her complain at town meetings about the Coyote Problem…despite the fact that the talk at previous town meetings had been about the Cat Problem.
In Colorado: Used to worry about hawks when we had a small dog. Now we have a Golden, and there’s a .38 in the kitchen cabinet by the back door. After dark, the gun and I go out with the dog.
My family actually had an 18 lb. Siamese Cat named Pumpkin for 17 years who would have easily taken on those coyotes. During his lifetime we had 3 different dogs, all of them at least 50 lbs. or larger and Pumpkin ruled the roost. I have actually heard Charlie, our 60 lb. Greyhound mix, scream in fear after he ticked off Pumpkin and Pumpkin came after him. And Charlie is affectionately known to our family friends as “Cujo” – they’re all scared of him. We have to lock him up when anyone visits because he tends to try to eat anyone but the four of us. Pumpkin easily dominated him and all of our other pets. We used to call him the old man of the house. He passed away last year. We still miss him.
In Montana we had a telephone tree for the families with small children, following the game trail. If you saw a cougar or a pack of coyotes or a bear in close, you’d call the closest neighbor along the game trail and so on. Cougars especially have a liking for small children and barn cats…