Nightime activity

[Primrose]

We've had heavy snow here and in the middle of the night I looked out into our front garden. Normally it's completely dark although we have a nearby street light but the snow carpet everywhere provided such a lot of reflected light that I was able to watch an interesting encounter as if in broad daylight, between our visiting limpy fox and a neighbour's cat. We always put scraps out under a shrub for the fox who comes every night but last night the cat got there first. The fox wouldn't fight her for the food but kept anxiously jumping up and down and running round in circles trying to scare her off. Eventually the cat took the hint and our little fox was able to feed herself. I've often heard of foxes attacking cats but this one never does. In fact she seems quite wary of any cats she encounters.

[Westi]

That's interesting to read - I always thought that the fox
wouldn't attack a cat as risk of injury to themselves is
too great so have confidently been letting mine go over
to the school nature patch where I know the foxes live.

Does anyone know whether they will or won't or is it just
the odd nasty fox? I don't know how I will change the cats'
habit of going there otherwise, although it is over a year they
have been scooting over without any harm to date.

Westi

[Clive.]

We saw a Fox here today....
It was wandering across the snowy back field at lunchtime (our lunchtime)

.....first time I have sighted one in 47 years here... (although I might have been a bit young for spotting them in the first few of those years.)

Clive.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Westi, i don't think a healthy fox would take on a healthy cat.

But a desperate fox might try to kill anything if hungry enough.
I know foxes will behead dead and maybe very ill cats.

[Primrose]

In recent years, we've had a fair number of foxes visit us at night and because the neighbours' cats know we put food out they often come and try to scavage it before the fox/es arrive. On a number of occasions we've spotted them in the front garden together. Not once have we ever seen a fox try to harrass a cat or bully it to leave the food alone. In fact on one occasion we saw the cat become so annoyed that it started spitting at the fox and the last we saw was the fox fleeing down the road with an angry cat on its heels.