A Florida Cat-tastrophe

When my wife and I moved to the Orlando area in 2010 there was one thing we didn't like about our condo -- cats. We had a small feral cat colony near us that had free rein of the complex grounds at night. They fought at night and the wails would frequently wake us even with the windows closed. And feral cats take a toll on the local small animal population. Small mammals, reptiles, and birds are all on the menu. Even well fed cats still have the biological imperative to hunt and kill.

But over time the cats disappeared. Not all at once but gradually the feral cats that regularly hid in the woods near our house were no more. By 2013 we never saw feral cats.

Debary Coyotes

I thought about that when I read this piece about coyotes in DeBary, FL. At the time I didn't realize that the disappearance of cats in my neighborhood coincided with an increase in the number of coyotes. But coyotes numbers are still increasing throughout Florida.

Coyotes don't only prey on cats for food. They also kill them as a way of reducing competition. This is called intraguild predation. Most predators will attack a slightly smaller predator because it helps keep the number of prey animals high.

Fluffy and Tasty

My neighborhood wasn't the only place this was happening. Here's a story from Pinellas County about coyotes moving into a neighborhood. A feral cat colony there completely disappeared after the coyotes showed up. They've also been tough on housecats that occasionally roam outside.

So what are the wildlife implications? Probably generally good. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FFWC) says of cats in Florida:

The adverse impacts of cats in Florida are best documented for threatened and endangered species, especially endangered or already extinct subspecies of beach mice and cotton mice and the endangered Lower Keys marsh rabbit. However, predation by cats also has been documented for the Florida scrub-jay and for shorebirds, terns, and other ground-nesting species of birds, as well as for sea turtles.

Of course, this was written all the way back in 2003. That was a time when spotting a coyote in Florida was a memorable event.

The probable impact of the increase of the number of coyotes and the reduction in feral and owned outside cats differ by prey species. Small birds and mammals that live near people will probably see less of a predator threat as outside cats become a thing of the past. Larger animals that rarely see themselves under threat from cats will probably be more threatened as the number of coyotes increase. In particular the number of sea turtle nests destroyed by coyotes is now far above any threat they had from cats.

Now the FFWC says that the coyote is a naturalized species. They're here to stay and the FFWC won't take steps to eradicate them in Florida. So doing things like making sure your cat or small dog never goes out alone is something you have to do now. Feeding stray cats only brings them together so they're easier for coyotes to kill.

So I'll end with a small clip of video that I shot in about a year ago. I was standing beside a trail under a tree when a coyote started toward me. I could tell he couldn't see me clearly because I was partially hidden under the tree. Coyotes don't have particularly good eyesight. They depend on a keen sense of hearing and smell and you can tell exactly when he caught my scent.