A family of wolverines is terrorizing the cat population of a northern B.C. town and its residents are worried the animals will start attacking people next.

Kitimat mayor Joanne Monaghan says house cats started disappearing from the town in May, the same time wolverines were spotted near the forest around the town’s edge.

In May, one of Monaghan’s neighbours saw a wolverine attacking his cat in the backyard. He went outside and fended the wolverine off, but the cat was already dead. The wolverine stayed nearby and growled at him as he buried the cat, Monaghan said.

More than 75 house cats have disappeared from the town of 8,000 people since then.

As the missing cats pile up, the wolverines — two adults and two babies — are being seen wandering further into town. Monaghan and others are concerned the town’s children will be the wolverines’ next targets. There has never been a wolverine attack on a person reported in British Columbia.

“They can disembowel a person in a matter of minutes, and they can take bears down, take elk down, take deer down,” she said. “A small child wouldn’t be out of the question.”

Kitimat animal shelter head Maryann Baumbach said there have been only two confirmed cases of wolverines grabbing cats, but there were five sightings last month alone and the animals seem to be wandering further into town.

“The concern is they’re becoming too aggressive, and that soon it’s not going to matter whether it’s a domestic animal or a child.”

Wolverine sightings are usually rare because they normally live in remote areas, far away from humans. Baumbach said these sightings are the first in her 40 years in Kitimat.

She said combination of last summer’s rampant forest fires and an unusually heavy winter snowfall may have pushed the animals closer to more populated areas.

Conservation officials last week set a trap for the animals, but succeeded only in trapping two baby bears, which were promptly shot.

Martin Melderis, an inspector at the conservation office in nearby Smithers, B.C., said, “It would be extremely out of character for a wolverine to be aggressive towards a person. People shouldn’t overreact.”

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