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In praise of urban foxes
• I FEEL an urgent need to put straight Ms Andrea Taylor (Urban foxes almost killed my cat– it’s time to act, November 8).
She reports her cat had a rather unfortunate experience with group of foxes, which I was sorry to hear and am glad the cat has recovered well.
Wild animals will sometimes display unpredictable behaviour. Each year John Bryant, a wildlife consultant, deals with about 200 requests for help in and around London; May to July is his busiest period. But these requests are surprisingly few considering the many thousands of foxes in the area. The low number of complaints reflects the overwhelmingly positive attitude to urban foxes.
The Mammal Society can confirm this from their survey of attitudes to garden mammals. Of replies, from all over London, 80 per cent of households positively liked the foxes in their gardens.
The National Fox Welfare Society has said that calls about foxes chasing or “attacking” cats start to come in around March. Householders learning they have a litter of cubs under the garden shed, or nearby, wrongly believe that foxes are chasing the cats to kill, or feed to their cubs. This is not the case; what is happening is where a cat is showing an unhealthy interest in a litter of cubs, the vixen or dog fox, for the protection of their cubs, will chase a cat to a safe distance.
Once the cubs are large enough not to be taken by a cat the parents are not as protective of them. Once again, calls about “gangs” of foxes “attacking” cats peak in May, June and July. Again, it is wrongly assumed that these foxes are killing cats for food.
Since foxes do not hunt in packs, what you are actually seeing is the devilment of a growing family of fox cubs – in the countryside the cubs would probably tease a badger.
For more than 30 years, foxes have lived in Highgate Cemetery and venture into the Holly Lodge estate and never in all that time has there been any reported incidents of foxes after cats!
Concerning diseases, the fox is more of an asset to towns and cities than a problem. Part of a fox’s diet will be rats or mice. Foxes are not bloodthirsty animals that need controlling.
Please, this week, give the fox a positive image.
Name and address supplied, N6
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