Letter: Pet owners should learn to live with mountain’s natives

EDITOR,
My heart goers out to the woman who lost her cat to the coyotes. Our beloved old cat Tim, an inside cat who occasionally snuck out, was killed by raccoons, and we miss him so much. Our new cat is absolutely an inside cat, but the one time she managed to sneak out past us, she met a fox right at the edge of our driveway.
Fortunately, I let out a yell of terror and the cat came racing back inside while the fox took off in the other direction — haven’t seen the fox again, and the cat hasn’t tried to go out since.
But that, of course, is the problem with living in the mountains and having cats. Coyotes, raccoons and foxes are only three of the hungry predators out looking for small animals to eat. There was also the mountain lion mother and her cubs who took up residence on the San Lorenzo River just north of Boulder Creek for a while this summer — residents were worried about their toddlers, let alone their pets!
All the hungry critters out there can’t be destroyed, and we wouldn’t want them to be. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be living in the mountains. I’m afraid we just have to learn to accommodate all the creatures of our woods, even when it hurts.
Leah Erez, Ben Lomond