opinion

Putnam: Coyote suspected in disappearance of Rosie, Betts, Skooter, Izzy, Icee, Booger

EAST LANSING – Where have all the cats gone in the Southeast Marble neighborhood of East Lansing?

Rosie, Betts, Skooter, Houdini, Izzy, Icee and Booger have all vanished since July 7 from a roughly eight-square-block area near Burcham Park.

The partial body of one cat, Houdini, was found in a neighbor’s yard after he disappeared Aug. 17. The rest of the cats are missing.

Ginger Ogilvie doesn’t own cats, but she heard talk about the pets. When she compiled dates and addresses on a spreadsheet, she was startled to see how many there were in such a small area.

Two cats, Betts and Skooter, disappeared on the same day, Aug. 1. They lived less than a block from each other.

Residents fear a coyote or other predator. There’s a heavily wooded trail into the park from the neighborhood, which is east of Hagadorn and few blocks north of Michigan State University's campus. Coyotes have been spotted in the area for a few years.

“I’m not 100 percent convinced," Ogilvie said.

But she doesn't want to rule it out.

"My best guess is there is a coyote that’s responsible for it," said John Dinon, director of Ingham County Animal Control, "and the best thing to protect your cat is to not let it go outdoors."

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He was aware of the disappearances. In June, a cat from the neighborhood had been trapped by another resident and brought into the county shelter.

The cat was reunited with its owners but others calling the shelter to see if theirs might also have been trapped and taken to the shelter were out of luck.

Neighbors speculate that the pets were prey for the wild animals displaced by construction of the nearby Whole Foods and Costco Wholesale. The Wardcliff area in Okemos a few blocks away reported a cat attacked by a coyote in June.

Ann Bean, another Southeast Marble resident, said she has twice seen coyotes in the neighborhood, the last time in the winter.

“This amount of cats is kind of concerning,” she said.

She’s on the lookout for Izzy, a neighbor’s cat who went missing Aug. 25, the last in a string of disappearances.

Adam Bump, fur-bearing specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, said coyotes are known to kill cats and small dogs and even eat them, but there are other reasons pets disappear. They wander and end up living with new owners or die when hit by cars, for example.

Coyote sightings often are linked, rightly or wrongly, to missing cats.

“I think the number of cats taken by coyotes is highly inflated because of the tendency of people to jump to conclusions,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to take precautions.”

Coyotes are particularly active in January to March during mating season, said Hannah Schauer, wildlife communications coordinator for the DNR. This time of year they are more visible too as family groups are breaking up as pups grow into adults. And they're everywhere in the state.

“They’re a very adaptable species, and they can survive just about anywhere as long as they have food, water and shelter,” Schauer said.

Denice Underwood’s cat Booger was the second in the Southeast Marble neighborhood to disappear. Underwood has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years. She had two other cats who were outdoor cats. They died of natural causes at ages 18 and 21.

Booger, so named because he had weepy eyes as a kitten, was just 11.

“He came home every night,” Underwood wrote in an email. “He knew our neighbors, was a nice boy with an almost shy personality.”

Though she said her cats enjoyed going outdoors, she advises others in the area to keep their cats inside.

“We still check for him every night before we go to bed and again first thing in the morning. He is missed,” she said.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com.