People keep finding mutilated cats in Sacramento. What’s likely to blame for the killings

Five years ago, Sacramento animal control officers investigated a disturbing rash of mutilated animals in the city.

They found headless goats, birds, cows, goats, fish and chickens in parks, remote areas and along the light-rail tracks. No one was ever arrested, but the headless corpses stopped turning up.

So when they started getting calls from Sacramento residents over the past few weeks about mutilated cat corpses, they took it seriously.

Turns out the culprit behind the dead cats is likely Sacramento’s growing population of urban coyotes.

“While we have picked up a number of cats in pretty gruesome shape, (including a couple recently in the East Sac area), our veterinarians have determined all of them were caused by predatory animals such as coyotes,” said Ryan Hinderman, a spokesman for the Front Street Animal Shelter. “We assess these cats as they come in, and so far there’s been no evidence or information to indicate intentional maiming or killing.”

Like many cities around the United States, Sacramento has a sizable population of coyotes that live in the area’s abundant wild spaces. Jace Huggins, the city’s chief animal control officer, estimated that at least 40 to 50 coyotes reside inside the city limits, using its large network of parks, levees, river corridors and green belts to move around.

Most of the time the coyotes go unnoticed, but a few of them have become common sights, even in broad daylight in East Sacramento, Natomas and Midtown.

Urban coyotes are opportunistic feeders that aren’t particularly picky. They eat rodents, wild turkeys, trash and fruit dropped from trees or in gardens. They’ll also eat a small dog or a cat if given the chance.

In February, a woman captured a remarkable series of photographs of a cat narrowly escaping the jaws of two coyotes in Midtown.

Not all cats are so lucky. As the residents reporting the mangled corpses found, sometimes the leavings of a coyote’s kill can be pretty ghastly.

And they’re not the only ones. Hawks and owls also can snatch a small dog or a cat for a meal. Their sharp beaks also sometimes leave a horrifying scene for pet owners.

Huggins recalled a Sacramento woman who thought someone had murdered a kitten and left its head on her front porch as a gruesome message.

Upon investigating, animal control officers discovered it was just the leavings from a bird of prey’s meal. There were several mangled cat parts in her backyard as well, Huggins said.

How to deal with coyotes

The safest way to protect a cat from predators is to keep them indoors, and that’s just a good idea all around, Huggins said.

Outdoor house cats prey on native wildlife, and they face a slew of perils outside, though one, in particular, is the biggest risk.

“By far, the most dangerous creature to outdoor cats is people driving cars,” Huggins said. “When you think about the number of deceased cats we pick up versus the number that we think are potentially predated upon by coyotes or other predators, there’s no comparison.”

Huggins said that, by and large, Sacramento residents and coyotes coexist without problems. He said that although there have been a few cases of coyotes growling and bluff charging walkers who got too close to their pups, the coyotes weren’t being aggressive.

In the eight years that Huggins had his job, only one coyote has ever been euthanized, and that one was so sickly, hairless and covered in sores from mange, it was put down out of mercy.

He said the best things Sacramento residents can do is to be loud around coyotes to shoo them away and encourage them not to habituate around people.

Residents also are strongly encouraged not to feed them. It’s illegal under state law, and the wild predators can lose their fear of humans, which inevitably leads to conflicts — sometimes fatal ones for the coyote.

“A fed coyote is a dead coyote,” he said.

This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "People keep finding mutilated cats in Sacramento. What’s likely to blame for the killings."