Great
cropped
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NEWS photo Nei! Lucents

WEST VANCOUVER SPCA board member Sandy Smith holds on to her cat Scruffy at her West Vancouver home situated near the Gleneagles golf

course. Cats have been going missing in the area since a number of coyotes moved in, attracted by a st

HUNGRY COYOTES are
devouring West Vancouver
cats,

By MICHAEL BEC

The domestic animals are disap-
pearing in the night, and grieving
owners searching for their missing
pets are finding only the feline
body parts left behind by the
coyotes, who are roaming several
of the municipality’s
neighborhoods.

The West

Vancouver SPCA

shelter has been receiving Unree or
four calls a week from distraught
Caulfeild and Eagle Harbor area
residents whose cats have vanish-
ed.

Said SPCA worker Heather
McRae: ‘We've picked up several
cat parts from the Caulfeild and
Eagle Harbor areas. To a coyote, a
cat looks just like a rabbit and it's
easier to catch. You can’t really
blame the coyotes.’

Two weeks ago SPCA manager
Debbie Gammon was called to the
Caulfeild area to pick up the bot-
tom half of a cat.

“They usually eat

the whole

thing and all you find are bits of
fur,’’ McRae said.

McRae and West Vancouver
SPCA manager Debbie Gammon
advise cat owners to keep their pets
inside during the late afternoon
and overnight and during early
morning hours. Pet food should
not be kept outside.

New residential development
cutting up the mountainside is put-
ting increasing pressure on the
natural habitat and food sources
of the local coyote population. The
displaced coyotes are adaptable
animals and tend to live well adja-
cent to an urban environment

well-stocked with a steady food
supply.

Sandy Smith, an SPCA_ board
member, lives in a Fox Street home
near the Gleneagles golf course in
West Vancouver. Her family has
three cats and at night, sometimes
as early as 5:30 p.m., she hears the
“yip-vip-yip-woo"’ of a pack of
coyotes.

The owner of a cat gone missing
from a Pitt Street home found a
cat head lying at the edge of the
golf course. A woman living on
Gleneagles Drive recently found
two cat heads near the golf course
while looking for her lost cat.

eady food supply of pets.

“The policy at the West Van-
couver SPCA is not to put down
animals, but | think some of the
coyotes should be put down,"
Smith said.

Tom Wood, Ministry of En-
vironment and Parks regional and
wildlife manager, said conserva-
tion officers will be evaluating the
situation at Gleneagles.

Wood foresees trapping the
coyotes with modified leghold
traps and then ‘‘dispatching" the
animals. ‘There really isn’t a
coyote Valhalla up in the moun-
lains where we can take them to,"'
Wood said.

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