Cat wrestled from coyote
Published: June 3, 2005
The last things Melissa Bratvold considered were cost and safety when she saw a couple of coyotes about a dozen feet from her back door, one with her pet cat Abby in its mouth.
“I saw her eyes, and I could just tell that Abby wasn’t going to make it,” Bratvold said. “I didn’t think, I just went for her …
“It was a melee. I was screaming, they were biting,” she said. “I don’t even remember how I got the cat out of their jaws. I was hysterical.”
Bitten on the hands and arms, she pulled the cat to safety.
“I didn’t want to let my cat go. It wasn’t going to end like that,” Bratvold said. “When it was over, my porch looked like a `CSI’ crime scene - hair, blood and slime was everywhere.”
Eight weeks later, after surgery for a collapsed lung and other injuries, Abby is home again with Bratvold in the Horn Rapids area on the northern outskirts of this Eastern Washington town. Veterinary bills exceeded $2,000, and Bratvold’s medical bills ran about $10,000.
“Abby is back to her original self,” Bratvold said, “although she’s an indoor cat now.”
Cougar sightings in the area are not uncommon. Horn Rapids Golf Course workers say they frequently find the remains of house cats and other small animals killed by predators, and what Bratvold did was ill-advised, said Michael Livingston, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“At that point, I would have considered the cat a goner and taken it as a valuable lesson to keep my cat inside,” Livingston said.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
If you like this, you'll love Good Animal News:
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: