Sure.

Or, any new Oriental restraurants open lately?
(Kidding!!)

Could be. I definitely have owls in my neighborhood, and there is only one cat that is allowed outdoors at night left. The others have disappeared. The one left is very stealthy and quite large. We don't have much else in the way of predators here, being in a subdivision in Durham. But I have seen great horned owls at night, so I think that's where our cats are going. Most of my neighbors have indoor only cats, a few have cats that are out during the day but inside at night, and then there's the one outdoor only cat (I think she's allowed in the garage when it's really cold). I haven't seen our hawks taking cats, but all we have are Red Tails and Red Shoulder hawks- probably not big enough to take adult cats, maybe they can take kittens though.

Don't rule out coyotes just because you don't hear them. We often see loners come thru our area. I believe it's only when packs are hunting together that you hear the calls.

Friends of mine in the Santa Clarita area have lost cats to owls.

My uncle lost a dog to a bald eagle.

I almost lost a dog to a bald eagle, I was able to scare it off, just as he was dropping his legs down over the dog...

But really, I think coyotes are responsible for more small animals disappearing than birds.

The dogs and cats would have to be pretty small for an owl or eagle to confuse it with their normal food.

Our neighbor saw a hawk grab a rabbit so we were very careful with our dog when he was a puppy.

Sammy

I've wondered about this myself, especially when our very elderly 9 lb. kitty used to sun herself on the patio.

I suppose it's possible, but I'd think of coyotes first. And owls are nocturnal, so unless a kitty is out at night, how could it be an owl?

I think it's unfortunate to keep a cat inside all the time because they are denied all the pleasures and stimulation a cat can find outside, but in order to keep a cat safe, they need to be in.

petaloid and joepyeweed seem sure that a B O P would actually take a cat.

and then annz jumped in with the lone coyote
this could be a possibility......we're fairly close to a wilderness area....but still, I think his buddies would within earshot---(there should be others somewere close, if there's one around)

so, i'm leaning more towards blaming a big bird.

and We do have an oriental take-out place nearby
----(just kidding)

The largest raptor, a Great horned owl, can kill a small cat, but it cannot carry off something so heavy. Horned owls weigh max 4 pounds, so the can carry about half their weight.

Unless the cats are incredibly small and stupid, it is probably not a hawk, as the largest hawk in the ares (Red-tail) is too small to carry off such a large kill.

Most likely it is someone taking the cats and rehoming them (figuring if they are left out no one wants them), or a coyote, or car accidents, or poisoning.

All the more reason to keep the remaining cats inside.

ODD doins...3 cats return....what's goin on here?
4 of the 5 regular visitors-(cats)- had vanished one by one over the last month.
It's been a week since the 4th one dissapeared.
Last night about 2:30 AM 3 of the missing cats all showed up together.

If the missing cats are intact toms who were all courting the same in-heat female(s), the toms would be likely to return home after the female(s) became pregnant.

OR ...

If the same person "rescued" all three cats and then changed his/her mind and released the cats, the cats would be likely to return home together.

Maybe aliens have moved on to taking a more intelligent life form to study. ;-)

I don't know that it matters *what* is taking pets;
if pets are disappearing, keep yours indoors.

In a rural/wild/even a wooded or creek lot in an urban or suburban area, I'd think it's more likely that a hungry animal took missing pets rather than a human being went to the trouble of "re-homing" them (buying/borrowing a trap or carrier, putting out food, taking the animal to a vet or shelter or taking it further out into the country), but it doesn't matter *what's* taking pets;

if you value your pet at all, keep it indoors if it's less than about 40 pounds (coyotes can take a Sheltie in a heartbeat) or at least inside a fenced area even if it's a bigger dog-
*anybody* could take my 80-lb Lab mix by opening their car door & saying, "Let's go for a ride!"

Owls start hunting at dusk & return to their roosts just after dawn.

They're mostly feathers (so their prey won't hear them), so the actual bird inside that huge fluffy mass is really pretty small, but they can take kittens.

When my neighbors' kitten was taken by an owl (they saw it), they called Animal Control in hysterics, only to be told that animal control couldn't help them;
the owl was doing what owls have been doing for a long time.

The officer did recommend that they keep their pets inside in future.

As he put it, when a fisherman finds a good spot, he comes back there rather than looking up or down the river.
Once a predator has found food in a place, he'll return to that place again.

Funny that you brought this up. I live in So Cal, BTW. I was just asking DH is I need to worry about letting our old kitty out- this after we overheard one neighbor warning another neighbor to keep their rabbits hutched because of a hawk that's been hanging around. DH said the hawk was big enough to pick off small rabbits, but not cats and not to worry about that.

He went on to tell me about a coworker who lives up in the hills and had a small dog picked up (and dropped, but was okay) by a large owl. So owls may indeed try to pick up small pets, but how far they can go may be another story.

I agree that you would probably be unaware of a lone coyote prowling through your neighborhood at night and they are extremely common here in So Cal, even in tracts where you wouldn't think they would turn up. Bobcats can also turn up in residential areas of So Cal from time to time.

I also wouldn't rule out a nasty neighbor who traps cats. We've probably all heard that more than once.

It's all those threats we faced when I was a kid that led me to not let my kitties out unsupervised as an adult. I just couldn't take the stress of worrying about them.

I also wouldn't rule out a nasty neighbor who traps cats. We've probably all heard that more than once.

Well, if your cat is wandering through my yard, I wouldn't have any qualms about trapping it. I'm about this :: close to trapping my neighbor's cat right now. If it walks on the

I'm with rivkadr on this one...

I don't let my dogs roam unsupervised through the neighborhood, and I expect my neighbors to show me the same courtesy with their pets.

I do trap cats and drop them off at the local pet shelter. I think people who allow their pets to roam unsupervised are nasty neighbors.

Thanks all for the input.....The long-n-short of it all:
keep cats and other small critters inside at night.

I'm in a very metro coastal area - and last week I saw a fox! In broad daylight. Running up the driveway to my complex and down the street. There are lots of critters here who can hurt our pets. Especially at night.

I had a cat that was terrified of ceiling fans all of his life because he was attacked by a hawk when he was a kitten.
Never got over the fear of something moving overhead.

Owls can't lift a cat. They've adapted to prey on rodents. But natural predators are just one of the many reasons that I'm against people letting their cats roam free.

Owls are very small, but they can lift a kitten, & a larger bird of prey (one that isn't mostly feathers) can take a cat or a small dog.

If a bald eagle can only lift 3-5 pounds (animal designed to eat prey larger than rodents), an owl certainally can't lift more than that (an animal designed prey on rodents).

If you notice, owls don't soar like diurnal birds of prey. Their wings aren't built to be powerful, they're built to enable them to fly silently.

A bird of prey cannot carry something that weighs as much as it does. So yes, a Great horned owl at 3 pounds and carry a 9 ounce kitten. But hawks and owls have search images for their prey, and their search images do not usually include cats, although a hungry GHO can kill and will kill an unwary cat. Rare, but it happens. Does not mean they carry them off if they are too large.

All the more reason to keep your cats indoors, if you are worried about their demise.

The cats that disappeared for a few days, then returned - did they have the tips of one of their ears missing when they returned? It could have been someone doing trap-neuter-release with them. Usually when this is done, the tip of one ear is snipped off to identify the cat as having already been trapped and neutered or spayed. I got a neighborhood cat neutered a year or so ago, and paid them not to notch the ear, cause DH was strongly opposed to that part. We didn't know who the cat belonged to, but thought he might belong to someone. Anyway, we had him for close to a week before re-releasing him. We actually didn't even trap him. He came into our house when our son left a door open. I found him curled up on my daughter's bed when I got home. There are 2 more tomcats in our neighborhood I'm tempted to trap and get neutered. I know who one of them belongs to. I've given him all the information about where to get low cost or even free neutering, but so far he hasn't acted on the information. But anyway, I digress. The fact that the 3 cats disappeared at the same time, and returned at the same time, makes me think that someone got them fixed.

By the way, predators can live pretty much anywhere. Cities have creeks and rivers that run through them, and all kinds of critters live in these areas. There are foxes, coyotes, and bobcats that live in the heart of Dallas and the surrounding suburbs.

Sally