Two wild cats are home again after escaping near Qualicum Beach.
Laurel Bablitz said her boyfriend Bill Edwards’ servals, a male and a pregnant female, were released from their cage at his Meadowood home the morning of Oct. 1.
She said the cage door of the “catio” the cats live in was open when she looked in on the cats around 7 a.m. that day.
“I don’t let them out ever and Bill was in bed, so they were definitely released,” she said. She posted to Facebook warning neighbours that the cats were on the loose.
Servals are medium-sized, carnivorous wild cats typically found in the African Savanna. According to the African Wildlife Foundation’s website, they weigh between 19 and 40 pounds and can jump up to 1.5 metres in the air, which is how they catch their prey — usually rodents, birds, reptiles and insects.
The male serval was found at a property across the street the next day, but the female wasn’t located until Sunday, when Bablitz received word that the cat was hunting ducks on a nearby farm.
When she and Bill arrived to pick up the cat, she had been herded into the duck pen by the neighbours’ dogs, Bablitz said, but not before she managed to kill two ducks and stun another. The male serval also killed a domestic cat during his time on the lam.
Bablitz said the wildcats were purchased about six weeks ago.
“The intention all along has been to build a bigger, better cage,” she said.
Bablitz said the media attention around the loose servals has led to a lot of negative comments from people online. She said the original post she made to Facebook warning neighbours that the cats were loose had to be taken down when people started commenting that they would harm the cats.
“Im happy to have them home,” Bablitz said. “I’m relieved she’s not going to be shot.”
The Qualicum Beach wild cats are two of three servals that escaped their homes on Vancouver Island that week. On Oct. 5 a Brentwood Bay couple panicked when their serval Cassia, escaped from their home.
Cassia was safely recaptured two days later.
“She is very much just a typical cat. They have their own agenda and it’s on their terms and their time,” owner Sylvia Lammers said in an interview that week.
Serval cats are not included in the province’s Controlled Alien Species policy, which regulates exotic animals that are illegal to possess, ship or transport without a special permit.
Regardless, the B.C. SPCA opposes ownership of servals as pets, noting that in the wild, they “roam savannahs and wetlands, hunting for prey” and have a “poor quality of life when kept as pets. “
“These wild cats are not much bigger than a medium-size dog, but they still retain their wild instincts and are cunning escape artists,” says the B.C. SPCA website. “They are difficult to contain in a home or enclosure setting, and pose a risk to their keepers and the public, and even native wildlife if they escape.
“Their own safety is also in jeopardy in captivity. Escaped servals have died by being hit by cars or of starvation, since they never had the opportunity to learn how to hunt.”
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