Hoochie Pooch Rescue

Domestic cats aren’t part of the natural diet of coyotes. Modern coyotes thrived without them for over 10,000 years and, in natural ecosystems, coyotes do exceptionally well on a diet of squirrels, rabbits, rats, raccoons, opossums and occasionally fawns. Coyotes also scavenge carrion and eat fruit!

Coyotes help to prevent disease and control populations of native animals that can be damaging to ecosystems. Their natural diet is good for them, good for us, and good for North American ecology.

However, coyotes are also opportunists and will eat any easy food that is left outside for them. Domestic cats, which have been bred for thousands of years to be less fearful than wild animals and didn’t evolve in North America, are very easy prey for a hungry coyote.

So, if you feel like your local coyotes need easier prey than what they can find in the wild, you can help support them by letting your cat go outside. It’s a great way to ensure that coyotes are well-fed. Letting multiple cats go outside, or having a “colony” of outdoor cats, is an even better way to feed coyotes. They will learn that your house is a great place to go for free food and will keep coming back as long as you continue supplying it to them.

Feeding cats to your local coyotes will come at the expense of other wildlife, of course. Your cat will kill countless songbirds before your neighborhood coyotes find it. It could be very lucky and might live several years. But if you want to make sure that coyotes have something to eat, leave your door open for your cat! 🐈

keep kitties indoors for the health of you, kitty, and our native ecosystems. real rescue means caring about the life and well being of ALL animals. need outdoor options? catio & leash!

Outdoor cats are a hot button issue, at least for pet owners. We wanted to pass along new research that might help folks in making the decision to commit to the indoor kitty lifestyle. The researchers analyzed data from 604 studies covering more than 174,000 cats across 88 countries. They compared data from indoor, feral, and outdoor-owned cats. Researchers found the cats surveyed carried 124 pathogen species, nearly 100 of which can infect humans. They also found that OWNED cats allowed to roam outdoors carry infectious diseases at rates comparable to feral cats even with regular veterinary care. Vaccines and worming are not enough to keep an outdoor-owned cat safe from infection because they don’t address many of the potential infectious agents they are exposed to. Not only is kitty at risk, but the humans interacting with an outdoor cat are exposed to those infections. And it’s not just the owners. If an infected cat defecates in public areas, it is a public health issue, as well. So why does a wildlife rehab care about outdoor kitties? Domestic cats are a NON-NATIVE, INVASIVE SPECIES documented to kill over 2,000 wildlife species worldwide. About 10% of our admissions every year are from cat attacks. Only about 1 in 10 of those admissions survive. Annually, they kill about 3 BILLION birds in the U.S. alone. Small mammals, common carriers of disease, are among their most frequent prey. Since owners only see about 20% of the wildlife their cats kill, they are often unaware of the number and types of wildlife their cat has interacted with.
(Source: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1014160)