Smokey didn’t show up for breakfast this morning, which was a very bad sign. Early this afternoon we found his remains in the woods in front of our house. All that was left was a handful of fur and some blood. It appears that a coyote caught him.

Smokey has been with us for a long time. We can’t remember when he first appeared, but we think it might have been as long as 12 or 13 years ago. He and Sylvester showed up at about the same time.

Of all of our cats, he was the most affectionate. He was the only one that really sought affection. He would jump up on the sofa beside us and lie down right next to one of us. He usually was halfway on our legs. Sometimes he sat next to our legs, looking at us. If we didn’t pet him, he would reach out and pat us with his foot.

He loved being petted.

He also loved food. He would sit beside our dining room table, staring up at us as we ate. When we fed one of the other cats, he would lie down facing their food bowl. Waiting. Waiting. Somehow he knew when we put out food for Chloe and Dusty on the front porch, and he would appear from nowhere.

He was a reliably playful cat. He played with Mollie, and tried to play with Sylvester, who was not always a willing participant. Here he is staring down a hedgehog toy we got for the dogs.

Smokey was pretty much a homebody. In the last few years he didn’t stay inside much, but we never saw him walking casually up the street towards a neighbor’s house like Sylvester.

If he wanted in, he didn’t wait to be invited, he just shoved his way around whoever happened to open the door. But when he was finished eating, he usually went straight to the door to be let back outside.

In the past we had let him and Sylvester stay inside at night, especially in cold weather, but when we moved into our new house we put little cat houses with heated pads in the garage. That was where Smokey could usually be found once it got dark.

But of course, in warm weather he usually stayed outside, we knew not where. It wasn’t obvious where he was, but we could usually find him lying under our rainwater collection tank, or under my truck, or under our little Mule utility vehicle.

He might not have been immediately visible, but he didn’t disappear for hours like Sylvester. That’s why Leah was so worried when Smokey wasn’t waiting at the door Sunday morning. I tried to reassure her that he would show up, and that it was too early to start worrying. But secretly I was a little worried, myself, because it was so unlike him.

So when I took Sam for his walk Sunday morning, I looked along the side of the road for a little furry, gray body. When Sam stopped with his nose up in the air, I let him sniff. If he wanted to check out something at the side of the road, I let him. We checked out a few places on the road in front of the house, but I never saw anything.

After lunch, I usually take Sam out and let him run free around the yard. On this occasion, he was suspicious of something on the far side of the driveway, but I couldn’t find anything. So I went down into the front of our yard and started pulling weeds. After a few minutes Sam came over and went into the woods beside the yard. He sniffed around for a while, and then seemed to find something. When I went into the woods, I found what he had found. It was a big mass of gray fur with a few leaves spotted with blood. The ground was scuffed around where the fur was. This was almost certainly the scene of the crime.

One of our neighbors had stopped on Friday when I took Sam down to the mailbox and told me her young kids had seen a coyote in their yard. Their big dog had chased it away. We talked about when and where we had seen coyotes. One night shortly after we moved into our current house we had seen two coyotes running around in the front yard, just into the woods. I went out with a flashlight and Zeke (on a leash, naturally), and eventually the coyotes left. We haven’t seen any in the yard since then, although they are often more active at night.

But Smokey was almost certainly taken by a coyote. There really isn’t any other predator that could have done this. We have (or have had) foxes, but they typically mind their own business around the cats. I don’t think any of our birds of prey could take a cat the size of Smokey. So there really isn’t anything else.

Now we have to worry about Chloe, Dusty and Sylvester. We know Sylvester is a wanderer. That may be a problem. We also know that for some reason Chloe has taken to sleeping in the woods. Her favorite spot is about 20 feet from where we found Smokey’s remains. We would bring her inside at night, but she absolutely hates it. She runs from Leah if she tried to get her to bring her in. And Chloe and Mollie do not get along. So there isn’t much we can do for her. Fortunately, Dusty stays on the porch almost all the time, usually only going down to the yard for bathroom breaks.

Of course we knew that coyotes were at least a theoretical threat for the cats. Now we know they are a real threat, and they are in our yard.