A Hero Pit Bull Defends His Friend -- a Cat -- from Coyotes

When two coyotes emerged from the woods to eat the cat, her best friend was there to stop them.

Let's face it: Pit Bulls get bad press. From most media coverage of the breed, Pits sound like they're the dogs that would beat up Cujo and take his lunch money, just for kicks. So when a nice, heartwarming story about a Pit Bull crosses the desk, we have to say something.

Sherree Lewis of Seminole, Florida, has two pets, both rescue animals: her son's Pit Bull, Jack, and a cat named (appropriately enough) Kitty. The two animals not only get along well, but they are best buddies. This week, Jack saved Kitty's life from two coyotes who thought that she was dinner.

The coyotes emerged from the woods behind the Lewis' house and grabbed Kitty in their jaws. One took her by the head, one by the tail, and they started violently shaking her.

"I didn't know Jack could run that fast," Lewis said. "He was on them so fast."

Jack chased the coyotes away from Kitty, and the cat is now in recovery, suffering from a broken tooth and brain swelling. Even now, Jack is still there for his feline friend, Lewis says: "He probably feels like he's the caretaker. He checks on her every day and sniffs her, seeing what kind of shape she is in."

While Kitty recovers, Lewis is working to make sure that this doesn't happen again. She has hired a trapper to lay out traps in the mangroves behind the house, where the coyotes are probably living. In the meantime, Jack is standing guard over Kitty, and he keeps watching for the coyotes to return.

The inherent sweetness of the relationship between Kitty and Jack aside, this is a story that really strikes home for me, as I'm sure it does for a lot of people who have owned pets in rural areas. When I was a kid, my most visceral fear wasn't monsters under the bed, it was coyotes coming for my cat. The hills behind my house were filled with rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and coyotes, and the latter loved to make meals out of the local cats. Very occasionally, you might hear the wild screeching of a cat in the night as it was seized by a hungry coyote. They got one of my cats when I was very young, and when I got another, I was obsessive about always knowing where he was after dark. With more dogs like Jack around, it might have been a less scary time.

FOX 13 News

Via: MyFox, Tampa Bay

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