That’s true. We have coyotes right in Seattle; back in the late 80s one made its way onto an elevator in the Federal Building downtown. But it’s saddening how many people lose their pets after moving out our way.
I always figure if you don’t want your pets to be part of the food chain, or hit by a vehicle, or worse yet, fall prey to meaness, the best place to keep them is in the house, unless they are on leashes.
Hobbes and Calvin both have leashes, so we go outside every once in a while. They don’t like the wind, though...
Having a coyote in the elevator must have been a really freaky experience; for both man AND beast.
Many people have never lived in an area where natural predators are so intermingled with suburban, and even urban, development. Suddenly their cat’s missing, and they’ve no clue why. I grew up with it. My folks never made any special effort to keep our cats indoors at night, but that was back in the 1970’s when there was a great deal more undeveloped wildland adjacent to our neighborhood.
Ongoing development has altered that to where the ranges of wildland populations of both predators and prey more and more overlap developed areas. Wherever they hole up during the day, at night, the jackrabbits come out to forage, and the coyotes come out to chase them. When they can’t catch a jackrabbit, an unwary housecat will do just as well.