Luna in the Night

We got our cat Luna as a little black kitten in 2006, and she quickly grew into a grouchy, headstrong animal — always quick to nip or hiss when she didn't get her way.

She was never an "inside cat." We let her outside any morning she wanted to go. In practice this meant any morning when the ground wasn't covered with snow. Once outside she was the apex predator of our yard, bagging some critter almost every day. Field mice, chipmunks, voles, a mole once, and at least one songbird.

Despite her proven hunting ability she always liked a nice disgusting can of cat food for dinner. We learned to keep her inside after feeding her, since without hunger to bring her home she'd stay out until all hours. She often objected to this arrangement, especially on summer evenings when it was still broad daylight after dinnertime.

A couple of nights ago she managed to slip out after dinner. None of us saw it happen. I only noticed after full dark outside, when it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the cat in a while. Hmm.

Checked the screen porch (sometimes she gets shut in there overnight when we lock the house door). Nope. Checked all the downstairs rooms. No sign. Checked all the upstairs rooms. No cat.

This was when I alerted Diane, and the two of us went through the whole house again, checking the basement, looking in cabinets, and opening the closets in case she had gotten herself shut in. Checked under the beds and behind the piano. No sign of Luna.

Logically, if she wasn't in the house she was outside. We called, we made tapping noises (like the sound of knocking the last globs of disgusting cat food off the spoon into her bowl). We called some more. We shone flashlights around and turned on all the exterior lights. We checked all her favorite spots outside, and looked under the porches. We checked to see if she'd gotten locked inside one of the cars. No cat.

Then we heard the coyotes.

We didn't have coyotes in New Orleans when I was growing up. At night a full pack of coyotes make a weird, demented-sounding chorus of high-pitched howls. Almost like shrieking. It doesn't sound like any kind of animal, more like a troop of goblins or something. In the dark woods it's hard to tell what direction the noise is coming from, and even an adult human with a flashlight and boots finds it unsettling.

They must have been somewhere towards the back of our property, because every time a train went by it set them off. Maybe they were down by the tracks. Luna doesn't normally go that far, but a dreadful suspicion was growing in everyone's mind.

What can you do? We called and searched and searched and called and finally gave up. I went to bed. Diane took one more look outside.

And found the cat!

She was perfectly fine, but obviously something had spooked her badly. Her tail was fluffed and didn't get back to normal for quite a while. All that night and all the next day she stayed close to my son Robert. Presumably because he's now the biggest thing around.

We'll never know what happened, of course. She can't tell us. The best guess is that Luna did catch wind of the coyotes and sensibly found a place to hide. I know of some spots on our property where a cat could hide but a coyote couldn't get into. Maybe she climbed a tree. She waited until she was sure the coast was clear before bolting back to our door.

Less than 48 hours later she was trying to get outside after dinner again. No.

Comments

[Marc Zender]

We moved to New Orleans in 2011, and never heard or saw coyotes here in Uptown. Since the COVID shutdown, though, I've begun hearing them in the evenings once or twice a week: that same "demented-sounding" howling you describe, and which I've previously heard frequently in Mexico and on my parents' property in the southern interior of British Columbia.

[Chuk]

This one scared me. We have coyotes here (in BC), and we used to have an outdoor cat. (Those two things are related.)