Foster and her four adult children were driving home from a restaurant at about 8:30 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 15, when the car's headlights illuminated a coyote running toward a field on Rayshire Street in Thousand Oaks.
Until they noticed the cat in its mouth, they thought it was wonderful to see a wild animal on their street.
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| ©Bob Gerace |
| Jackie York holds her 10-year-old cat Cosmo after the kitty's life was saved by a quick acting neighbor who jumped out of a moving car and ran after a coyote as it held the cat in its teeth. Cosmo had three puncture wounds in her neck. Now she is making a full recovery at home. |
"I love animals. I always have," Foster said.
She loves animals so much that when she realized the coyote had caught a cat for its dinner, she began screaming at her 25-year-old son, Beau, who was driving, "Stop the car! Stop the car!"
As he slowed down, maneuvering to keep the coyote in the headlights, Foster took off her shoes, opened the car door and began to get out, even though the car was still in motion.
"Get in the car. What are you doing?" she recalled Beau saying.
She didn't listen to his sensible advice. Instead, she got out of the car and began yelling, clapping her hands and chasing the coyote.
"Drop it! Drop it!" Foster recalled shouting as she took off after the wild, hungry creature that was attempting to climb a hill with the 17-pound cat in its mouth.
She didn't notice there was another coyote behind her. All she knew was she didn't want to see the helpless cat get taken up the hill to its death.
"The feelings I had at the time ran so deep. My husband had died just a few days before, and I just couldn't watch that kitty die," Foster said.
Two weeks before, Wheeler Foster, 58, tripped over a cement block in the dark parking lot of a restaurant in Ventura after having dinner with friends, she said.
"He lost consciousness a few hours later and died 48 hours later," she said.
The family had been discussing a memorial service for him before they left the restaurant and began driving home. When Foster saw the cat in the coyote's mouth, she became intensely emotional, she said.
The coyote dropped the large cat. Foster said she thinks it let go because the cat was too big for the coyote to carry while trying to run away quickly from the woman who was coming after it.
She made sure no one touched the cat, which she thought might also be wild. Neighbors who had heard her screaming and crying brought out blankets to cover the cat and heavy gloves for protection while lifting it up. Her son put the cat in an animal carrier that came from Foster's home and she took it to the vet.
There she was told the cat was too well fed to be feral. A lung had been punctured and it was having trouble breathing. Foster signed a document promising to pay all the wounded animal's medical bills, but she still worried that it would be euthanized.
After coming home, Foster's family saw neighbors searching with flashlights for their cat.
"They were frantically looking for an indoor cat that was missing," she said.
Bob Gerace and Jackie York had been searching for their cat for about an hour and a half, he said.
"When we were told Cosmo, our 10-year-old cat, had been attacked by a coyote and was at the vet's office, we went right over there," Gerace said.
The solid black cat required surgery, X-rays and blood work and remained at the animal hospital until Nov. 18. She's doing very well and is expected to recover. The bill came to about $5,000, Gerace said. Cosmo has a companion cat named Alley.
"Cosmo is our baby. Our cats are our children. They are warm, affectionate and need us," York said.
Foster is glad she's getting to know the neighbors she'd met only once before, and she's relieved the incident had a happy ending.
"I would've been devastated if she hadn't saved Cosmo.
"There are no words to describe how much you love your cats," York said.
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