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June 25, 2009
Do Foxes Kill Cats?
Wendy told me recently that she watched her cat go nose-to-nose with a fox in her yard neither one blinked and there was no fight. They just went their own separate ways.
After watching the foxes around my house fairly closely for a while, I've about come to the conclusion that house cats are not something that a fox would normally consider a meal. The reason I say this is that foxes around my house are fairly small - not much larger than a house cat - and generally appear to eat smaller game, like mice, voles, birds, and rabbits. A house cat is a much more difficult prey to tackle, and could probably only be safely attacked by surprise.
So, tonight I decided to google 'Do foxes eat cats?' and this is what I found:
"...foxes do occasionally attack and kill cats and [a] study looking into this, led by Stephen Harris, questioned more than 5,000 householders in northwest Bristol about the number of pet cats that were killed by foxes each year. From the results, it seems that each adult fox kills about 0.17 cats each year or, to put it another way, any given fox would kill one cat every six years and most of these were cats less than six months old."
So, this pretty much goes along with my thoughts. A fox will occasionally kill a cat, but it would be a very rare event. I think that cats up here are more likely to be killed my coyotes, mountain lions, or cars than by foxes.
Posted by Rob Kiser on June 25, 2009 at 11:11 PM
Comments
There are no videos of foxes killing or eating cats anywhere on the internet. However, there are many clips of wild foxes and house cats, playing, chasing each other and foxes good naturedly trying to steal cat food.
I don't believe foxes kill cats. I think carnivores of similar size have a rule about this.
Posted by: Dean on June 5, 2011 at 10:19 PM
I recently watched a den of foxes fairly closely. I saw a fox kit eating a squirrel tail. I also saw them gnawing on a deer leg. I''m sure that they stumbled across this and just scavenged what meat they could off of it.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_a_fox_a_scavenger
Posted by: Rob Kiser 
on June 5, 2011 at 11:43 PM