We never found our Neko in the wilderness area of Washington state’s Olympic Peninsular. I hiked through a lot of brush and wooded areas and even got chewed out for checking out local vacant barns. For two months I was pretty obsessed and was told it was as likely to be a bobcat or cougar as a coyote that got him. I only found a very slight amount of fur but it was his underbelly fur. He had been a very resourceful cat who came to us as a lost kitten, very independent in Alaska. I have taken in another cat supposedly just temporarily, and he is a very sweet kitty, but nothing like the irreplaceable Maine Coon Neko. 5 days is really not that long for a cat, Neko had gone missing for over a week before but not in that area which was relatively new to him. Wishing you the best in your search and prayers.

Danielle, did you ever find your cat. Hopefully it was a cat fight and he was just hiding. Im missing my baby now going on 5 days and no trace. Just vanished and I’m becoming doubtful I will ever see her previous face again. I,do,hope you found your baby and if not you found another to love. Thanks again.

I’m so sorry to hear about your loss of your cat. Only finding some fur is not uncommon. Coyotes will sometimes eat everything (including the bones) except the fur and intestines when they kill a medium-size animal like a cat or rabbit.

Perhaps brave isn’t the best word, but I think that this cat actually behaved in a manner that increased his chances of surviving this coyote attack. That is why I picked this particular video off YouTube. Even though the video quality isn’t that great, it shows the largest behavior sequence of a coyote-cat interaction. Ray and Lorna Coppinger (2002) explain in their book, Dogs: a startling new understanding of canine origin, behavior, and evolution, that predators engage in a functional sequence of motor patterns that are genetically hardwired to perform a behavior such as hunting in the most energetically economical way. A hunting behavior pattern appears as follows: orient>eye*stalk>chase>grab*bite>kill*bite>dissect>consume. In some species, the motor patterns are strongly connected to the next in the sequence (i.e. if the prey animal doesn’t run, then the predator doesn’t try and bite it). This is why people are advised not to run from a wild animal such as a bear or mountain lion if they feel they are being threatened. By running, they engage the animal’s predatory sequence and greatly increase their chances of being attacked. Likewise, the reason that this particular cat probably survives this coyote attack is that he persists in standing his ground. Notice in the video that the only times the coyotes attack are when the cat is fleeing (though they may otherwise lunge to test the cat). If you search “cat chase coyote” on YouTube, you’ll find a few other videos of coyote-cat interactions. There is even one funny one where the cat attacks the coyote and actually sends him running off yelping.