My wife is having a problem with something getting after her cats. A couple weeks ago she found a small cat in the end of a hollow log, its hind leg was damaged. The cat survived. Today her biggest cat was found dead, its hind leg was damaged and its face was chewed on. This cat was found inside the barn. I am thinking it might be a Fisher, what do you folks think?

They prey on gray fox, theyll have no problem with a house cat....

I'd sooner guess fox in Pa. ???

Tom cat

I know coons can be rough on kittens and small cats. I don't know if they'd go after large cats.

Cats make great fisher bait …. They don’t walk past an easy meal ….

Not sure about fisher but coons will take on any cat regardless of size. If you are feeding cats someplace the coon will be there too and will kill any cat that gets in the way to that feed bowl of the cats.

If that is the case, I wish we had fisher around here lol.

I have heard fisher are hard on house cats

I could use a dozen around here

I'll take 2 dozen

Could be coons...my ex brother in Washington had a problem with them killing his house cats and kittens, I sent him a couple DPs and that solved the problem....

Sounds like you need a trapper! Seriously though set some cage traps

Fishers prey on cats. Probably number one nuisance complaint about fishers - all my cats are gone. If you had a fisher working on your cats, you wouldn't be finding them period.

I once had to write a short pop science piece about fishers for a genomics project.
I came across this paper while collecting facts for the text.

fishers do kill cats, and not just house cats.






https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21538

Set a larger cage with a cat for bait see what happens.

Absolutely they will kill cats.

I've got a neighbor with a lot of cats. I catch a fisher every year in my yard, 100 yards from my house. I think the resident cat lady helps me out.

They do indeed get cats.

Years ago , Bob Noonan had me do this image of a fisher chasing a cat across a roof. For WCT. He had calls as an ADC workers from distraught clients who had fisher clearing their places of cats , often by chasing them from trees onto roofs.

Interesting, when living in Northern Price County in Wisconsin the fisher all but disappeared but the bobcat population exploded. The best answer I got or somewhat agreed with was the fisher got out competed for food. Southern Price County still had a good population of fisher but not sure on the cat population down there. Up here in Northern Bayfield County there seems to be a few more fisher but still lots of cats.

We are getting quite a good fisher population in Pa.. I have been seeing their tracks in the snow for many years now in the winter months. Long before we had a season on them. They have done well and I am sure that barn or domestic cats would be a nice meal if given the opportunity.