Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor: Urban foxes almost killed my cat

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Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor
Published: 8 November 2007

Urban foxes almost killed my cat – it’s time to act

• HAVING read your article (Has urban fox turned cat killer? November 1) I would like to recount what happened to one of my cats.
A mature and brave animal, he had all his life chased off any fox that ventured into our garden in central Hampstead – like most gardens round here there are dozens of foxes invading our land every night and sometimes in daylight as well. On one night in May 2006, while we were out, a family pack of five foxes (we later found their den) caught the cat, carried him into the next door garden and then tossed him up in the air from one to the other, obviously enjoying the sport of the attempted killing and certainly not in urgent need of food. The neighbours, seeing what was happening, came rushing out into their garden and tried to scare the foxes off but they were not at all bothered and continued mutilating our cat. They then let their dog out but the foxes were equally unconcerned so they then got two large garden brooms and rushed at the foxes and actually beat them off the cat – an act that took courage and a caring that we don’t see enough of in today’s society. Unbelievably the cat was actually still alive on the ground and with another great and good deed the neighbours rushed him to the local vet. We and our cat were lucky, he had hundreds of puncture wounds all over his body, a totally broken jaw and a lot of mutilation of his tail and surrounding area.
Thanks to the wonderful neighbours and superb vets the cat survived and today the only remaining sign of his ordeal is that he lost half of his beautiful long haired, bushy tail.
The fox problem is still as bad today, if not worse, and will continue to be as long as there are bags of refuse for them to help themselves from.
I am an animal lover and I have sympathy with the foxes driven in from the countryside but councillors all over London should long ago have got together and made an effort to sort this problem out, a problem affecting not just pets but potentially children and health and hygiene, and a far worse one I suspect than the pigeons and traffic that Ken Livingstone has devoted himself to for the last few years.
A good start would be for every single council to insist that all rubbish must be in bins with gripped down lids and if that means households buying a few more bins it would surely be worth it. I am sure there are many other ideas that could be implemented and I do think that the time has come for this problem to be taken much more seriously than is currently the case. Is this the moment for a positive action group before the foxes problem becomes too big to be dealt with?
Andrea Taylor
Principal,
Hampstead Hill School

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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