Kitchen Garden Forum

Re the "foxes love cats" in the Broad Bean thread, I'm surprised to hear this. My garden backs on to a nature reserve which has hundreds of foxes; indeed they often come into the garden and my next door neighbour feeds them every night. Over the past 20 years I've had 10 cats, none of which have been lost to a fox.

One old fox used to walk right up to Shadow (cat) and they just used to look at each other and move on. As the fox had mange I was always worried he'd give it to Shadow as they got so close.

Have I just been lucky?

In more urban areas the foxes have much more food available from our food waste to the rats and mice we attract. In more rural areas the foxes have to work a bit harder as they have less readily available food and thus cats are fair game.

As you point out that the reserve has many foxes, this points to an easy life as there will only be as many foxes as there is food to support and there is so much food that your cats (and rocky) havent really come onto their radar. Yet.

Dear Chantal, i think it is vixen's with cubs that are most likely to kill cats, i'm not sure if it's always for food, as sometimes they just take the head away. Maybe they see them as a threat.

I lost two chickens to foxes about 12 years ago but nothing since. Rocky and Selsey roam around the garden from about 11am - 3pm at this time of year. I work on the principle that they are very happy and if they end up having short lives at least they'll have had good lives. When the vegetation dies back and they are a more obvious target they will stay in the run, but right now the vegetation is still lush.

Rosie is now so old she doesn't venture out for days on end and certainly never goes further than about 20ft from the house. All my cats used to hunt over on the bank though...

Fingers crossed eh.

In the early 80s there was a report in the Southend press of packs of foxes taking cats of the doorsteps and breaking into rabbit hutches, but as piglet said it is the availability of food that is the deciding factor on what foxes will eat.

So, as long as my next door neighbour keeps feeding the foxes my brood should be safe.

We too feed our local foxes every night. Our next door neighbour's cat, and the two from across the road often visit our garden while the foxes are here and the two species largely ignore each other. But one night one of the cats was trying to trying to nibble a piece of raw chicken wing when a fox approached it. The cat snarled at the fox and the next thing we saw was the fox disappearing up the road like a bat out of hell, being chased by the cat.There was no doubt that the fox wasn't going to risk a fight with the cat and that incident dispelled the myth we'd always been told that a fox would be the winner in any battle.

Cats are canny street fighters, My oldest Cat Betty who is 15 had a run in in the front garden a couple of years ago with a nasty mongrel. It cornered her but Betty bless her jumped straight at its face and paddled for England. The dog with its face shredded, screamed off down the road and Betty just sauntered back into the houseas if it was nothing. I was amazed at how laid back about it she was. Bless the old girl.

Hi Chantal,
A couple of years ago a Fox had a crack at Fred, the only cat I allow into the house, and exactly as Primrose says the Fox felt Fred's claws and was off like the wind.
JB.