To me, this captures Zoe’s personality.

Zoe in the tub. I think this is his pirate impression.

I’m doing this Friday Felines instead of Leah, and I will admit to being more of a dog person than a cat person. But Zoe is not a good ambassador for cat country. He has bitten my wife multiple times. One of the bites resulted in a hospital stay. He bit Leah again not long ago, but she made sure to scrub the wound so it didn’t get infected. Lucky Leah. Lucky Zoe.

He has some issues. We think his eyesight is pretty bad, and he seems to limp sometimes. He also has digestive problems. The vets that have seen him haven’t really resolved those issues. So maybe he’s grouchy because he feels bad.

Saturday night Zeke and the fox met. I heard Zeke barking out on the front walk, so I went out to investigate. The fox was in the driveway eating cat food. I shouted at the fox (I’m assuming it’s a female), but she ignored me. So I opened the gate to chase her away. The fox still ignored me. Before I could do anything Zeke pushed out around me and took off after the fox. This the fox did not ignore. The fox ran down the drive and into the woods with Zeke not far behind. As the fox ran across the road it seemed to get a little more distance between her and Zeke. There was absolutely no point in trying to do anything, so I went back inside. I told Leah that if the fox was not faster than Zeke, Zeke was going to catch it and kill it.

I pictured two possible outcomes. One, Zeke would end up a couple of miles away on the road at the base of the mountain, covered in mud and with his tongue hanging out. The other was that I would find him in the woods with his face covered in blood. I went into the woods down in the direction they had run, which is in the general area where I think the fox couple may have had a den in the past. I stood and listened for a while, but heard nothing. I called Zeke and clapped my hands. Still nothing.

So I turned around to go back home. As I got to the entrance to the driveway, I saw the fox right back where it started, looking for more cat food. Zeke was nowhere to be seen. The fox ran away from me, but in more of a trot than a gallop. I think it knows about my bad knees. A little while later when I took Lucy out for a short walk, I saw Zeke in a neighbor’s yard. He seemed a little abashed.

So I was wrong about the outcome of the chase. I had only considered that the fox would be either faster than Zeke, and thus escape, or be slower than him, and thus be eaten. I left out the possibility that Zeke might just be outfoxed.

Perhaps not as smart as he looks

The fox we wrote about on Sunday came back on Monday. This time it was early enough in the afternoon that I was able to get some better shots. I was also able to catch it doing what we thought it was doing.

Scarfing down the cat food

He came to the cat food bowl and started eating enthusiastically, despite Zeke’s constant barking. And Zeke’s bark is loud. He (she?) ignored me as long as I stood behind the gate on our front walkway.

Look carefully on the pavement just behind the fox’s back legs, under its tail. The concrete is wet. I have noticed wet spots on the driveway after the fox visits before. It appears that the fox is urinating. I wonder if this is normal behavior.

It also poops occasionally near the food. The poop contains hair or fur. This indicates to me that it is getting at least some of its diet from its normal prey.

Retreating quickly

He didn’t leave until it was obvious that I was going to approach him, and then he retreated. But not far.

Waiting to see

I picked up the cat food bowl and went back to the front walkway. He waited a few minutes, then came back. It’s our little dance. I come out, he watches. I approach, he retreats. I retreat, he comes back.

Where did it go?

He checked out where the food had been, and then walked away.

Leah and I have a strong inclination to feed this fox, but we both know better. And, based on his (her) poop, he is getting at least a few mice.

I have written about the fox before. Now I’m beginning to think we have two. It makes sense that there would be a pair, since we have seen fox kits up here. The two, if there are two, seem to look somewhat different, and they seem to behave differently. One seems to be indifferent to us and the dogs, as long as we don’t come too close. But recently we have seen a fox disappearing into the woods at a dead run.  I’m used to having to actually approach the fox to make it retreat, and then it just trots away and turns around to see whether I will come any closer. It seems that the shy fox is a little lighter in color, but it’s hard to tell because we have only had a fleeting glance, and that from the rear.

Saturday night a fox made its regular appearance at the usual time. It was just after sundown, around 8 pm EDT. It was light enough to see but too dark to get a decent photograph without putting the camera on a stable platform.

The three original travelers and the fox

Here the three original castaway cats (yellow arrows) watch the fox (red arrow), who is trying to hide behind a bush. The cats are Chloe and her two children, Rusty (up front) and Dusty, who is perched on a big rock. The fox was watching me and Leah and paying only a little attention to the cats. The cats had been further away, but they came out a little closer, apparently to investigate. They were not afraid. In fact, Rusty was more interested in jumping on Chloe than in watching the fox.

Watchful but not particularly afraid

This was taken with the longest telephoto setting on our little point-and-shoot Nikon. I had to rest it on the deck railing and the exposure was long enough that even slight motion by the fox blurred the image. The fox was probably around 50 or 60 feet away.

Rusty, Chloe and Dusty, semi-interested in the fox

Chloe, the dark cat, was watching the fox, while Rusty, up front, was watching Chloe. After a few moments Rusty pounced on Chloe. Dusty was too far away to tell what he was interested in.

This event was a little confusing, because this fox’s coat looked like the lighter, shy fox’s. I haven’t seen both foxes (if there really are two) together, so it’s hard to tell. But this one acted the way I’m used to. When I tried to get closer, he retreated, but slowly and not far. He stayed at the end of the driveway and waited for me to go back inside. Then he came in close to where Rusty and Chloe had been sitting, which is where Leah usually puts their food.

We have been noticing that the cat trays we leave in the garage are usually licked clean by morning, which is not normal for the cats. Possums and raccoons do that, but whatever is doing it is not tempted by peanut butter crackers, which we have been using to bait a live-capture trap. Peanut butter crackers have always been a sure bet to catch possums and raccoons, so we are pretty sure that it isn’t either of them. We know for sure that one of the neighbor’s dogs came into the garage for the buffet at least once, but that dog does not normally roam free. So we think something else is eating the catfood, and it’s probably a fox.

There is no sign so far that the foxes consider the cats to be food.

The one resident up here who is not indifferent is Zeke. He desperately wants to meet the fox. Last weekend when I took him and Lucy for their last walk of the evening, we saw a fox run away from the front of the garage. I was holding the dogs’ retractable leashes in one hand. When Zeke saw the fox, he took off, jerking the leash out of my hand. It also jerked Lucy’s leash out of my hand, and unfortunately, it was tangled with Zeke’s. Lucy’s leash happened to be on the opposite side of a post I was standing next to. When Zeke ran away, it pulled Lucy back towards me and the post. I had no idea what was happening, and neither did Lucy. Fortunately Lucy’s collar came off, so after she bounced around next to me, she ran off towards the front door as Zeke disappeared into the night, trailing both of their leashes.

There was no point in trying to find Zeke, in the dark and rain, so I went in to make sure Lucy was OK. She was. A couple of hours later Leah went out and heard Zeke barking. I took an umbrella and a flashlight and followed the barking to him. He had wrapped his leash around two trees and was stuck with about two feet of slack. I rescued him and took him back inside. The fox, whose eyes I could see in the flashlight beam, was about fifty feet away from Zeke. I think he was laughing.