Two dogs in West Sechelt saved the life of a cat recently after scaring off a coyote that had the feline in its jaws.
Sherry Nelsen’s dogs were barking insistently at the door of her house on Mason Road around noon on March 15. When her son Reece looked outside and saw a coyote running through the yard with something in its mouth, he let the dogs out to scare away the coyote.
Yellow lab Gringo and black lab Django bolted for the coyote on the perimeter of the farm and it dropped a grey cat it had in its mouth into a ditch filled with water running along Nelson’s property line before heading for the woods.
“The cat was traumatized and it was bleeding from its mouth and hissing,” Nelsen said.
Reece went to the house and got a kennel for the terrified cat that ran inside it as soon as it was placed on the ground.
Nelsen thought the cat might belong to her neighbours Colleen and Bruce Haynes, but she was unable to reach them, so she posted a picture of the feline on Facebook to see if anyone in West Sechelt recognized it.
While no one on Facebook claimed the kitty, Nelsen knew it needed medical attention – so she took it to the Sunshine Coast Pet Hospital, where caring staff members tended to the animal free of charge.
“The policy is that when there’s an animal in distress, you can take it to any of the animal hospitals and they’ll examine it, and if it needs attention they’ll take care of it. If somebody hasn’t claimed the animal at the end of the day, they take it to the SPCA,” Nelsen said.
The cat was treated for light puncture wounds and turned over to the SPCA.
Nelsen was able to reach her neighbours later that night and confirmed that indeed the feline was their 10-year-old grey cat named Polly.
Colleen Haynes said her own two dogs usually keep coyotes away from the family’s two cats, but her husband Bruce had taken the dogs out for a walk when the incident occurred.
Once the couple realized their cat Polly had been hurt, they went to the SPCA to claim her and bring her home.
Colleen said Polly’s doing well now, but she’s “petrified to go outside. She used up one of her nine lives, for sure. Maybe two or three.”
She thanks her neighbours for “doing all the right things” and saving her cat from becoming a coyote’s lunch.
“We’re very thankful,” she said, and Polly is too.
