After successfully introducing our newest little kitten to the household just over a week ago, on Thursday evening his bigger adopted “brother”, Diego, went out about 7:00pm and didn’t come home, like he usually does about 9:00pm.
Now we’re pretty sure that something is getting neighborhood cats….a fox, coyote, hawk, something. I talked to the neighbor across the street and her dog that stays inside was really upset one night last week, she said….maybe the night Diego disappeared. She told me she’d heard reports of other neighbors hearing coyotes howling in the woods near us.
Once again, we’re saddened by the loss of a sweet companion. But now we have a decision to make about our newest young feline addition. Little Bit is far too small to be allowed out for a while and keeping him inside all the time doesn’t seem practical in the long run. We’re just baffled about what we need to do. We certainly don’t want to be setting up a situation where dangerous wildlife is stalking our neighborhood. Our two older (and significantly larger) outdoor cats are much more leery of noises, people, and, I assume, predators, than our little Dora and Diego were. Neither of them ever met a stranger or ran from anything – their downfall, I’m afraid.
We’ll probably be overly protective of this little guy and he’ll wind up running away just to escape the smothering…….