Trauma

A small black cat with a long fluffy tail started visiting our back garden a month or so ago, joining the two or three other cats which were already so visiting. We think that it is quite a young cat, being prone to chasing all kinds of things and to jumping up in the air for no apparent reason at all. One sees it tearing up or down the garden on a regular basis. On a couple of occasions it has got itself onto our extension roof - then spending some minutes wondering how to get down, before diving head-first into the leylandii.

Today, however, it suffered trauma by the fox, as on this occasion it tore down the garden towards the house, hotly pursued by a rather larger fox. Luckily, it must have got away, as we saw it a bit later, although not from close enough to be sure that its tail was still as long as it had been.

So a rather feeble cat, as our understanding is that most cats will see off most foxes - and quite a few dogs - the story in the TB being that both foxes and dogs are very wary of a cat's claws, quite handy for tearing gashes in bellies left unprotected when leaping to the attack.

Next problem, why was the fox chasing the cat? Was it a mother fox concerned for its young? Young which are not, however, in our garden, so that seems a bit unlikely. Was the cat trying to muscle in on what the fox saw as its hunting grounds? I imagine that there is some overlap of diet, although I am not aware of cats eating the slugs and worms which I believe to be a significant part of a fox's diet. It seems unlikely that a fox would try to eat a cat, unless the fox was very hungry and the cat was moribund or very young. Do foxes, like dogs, just like chasing things? The chasing was just an energetic game, at least from the fox's point of view?