Residents Mourn Pets Killed in Attacks

Two pet deaths on Collins Street in Sherman Oaks during the past two weeks point to coyote attacks, residents say. Veterinarians who have examined the remains of two felines found dead believe the pets were killed by coyotes.

"One of them happened two weeks ago; the other happened Sunday with us," said Samantha Sage, who lives on Collins Street, near Tyrone Avenue.

Residents of the area north of the 101 Freeway are being alerted that coyotes have been coming into the area, "probably from the Sepulveda Basin," Sage said.

The following coyote alert was sent in an email by Sage, who is a block captain for her Neighborhood Watch group:

"Close your gates. Keep your furry loved ones indoors at night, and have caution if you are out for evening walks or bicycle rides, and don't leave your wee ones unattended."

Meantime, Sage and her husband, Corey Cooper, are still grieving over the violent death suffered by their cat Tyrone.

Cooper was moved to write this obituary about Tyrone and he sent it to Sherman Oaks Patch.

Tyrone was an odd little guy. Samantha and I found him abandoned or lost, living under a bush at the corner of Tyrone and Magnolia streets so we named him Tyrone Noland Grey. He was half starved, but willing to be petted and quite friendly. We took him home with us when we first met him on Friday, 8/8/08, the first day of the Olympics.

The intent was to find him a home on Monday, we already had three cats, and we were not looking for another. That plan changed when I went to bed that night, and Tyrone jumped up on the bed, crawled up onto my chest with his face no more than a quarter of an inch from mine, and purred so loudly he woke up Samantha. After he fell asleep, he was still purring, and I couldn't roll over for hours. Although there were many times he would crawl up on my chest to be petted after that, he never went to sleep on my chest again, preferring to sleep outside, or if it was too cold and we had just shaved his 4 inch long hair, he would sleep at my feet.

He seemed to pick people he liked immediately, and others he just didn't care about. Food was his security, and he needed to be fed several times a day, and for the most part it was Samantha that fed him. Yet in the first year he made his preferences known. For a while after we got him he had some sore spots on his back, the vet said from flea allergies, and if we accidentally petted him there, he would let us know. Samantha was bitten a few times, and scratched a lot, she said he had a wicked one-two punch. However, if he felt I 'needed correction', it was always with the claws in and I never felt anything but his soft pads.

Nine times out of ten, when I would come home, whether I was gone for an hour or all day, he would come out to the car and greet me with a big yawn. Sam said it was his way of saying 'hello,' I thought it was an existential comment on the world in general.

Mostly I work out of my home, and 90% of the time I'm in my office, and Tyrone would occasionally visit me there, but somehow when I was in my shop in the garage, that was special to him. I don't think there was a single time that if I left the door open he wouldn't come in and jump on my lap to be petted. Samantha thinks it was because he felt it was a "man cave," and placed there just for he and I.

He was definitely an outdoor cat, he used the cat box in the house from the first day we got him, so he had lived indoors at some point, but I guess the bushes we found him in felt most like 'home' for him. There were a few places he liked, but mostly it was under the hedge between us and our neighbor that he liked. Tragically, that was where he was when the coyotes found him. What was left of him was found in the middle of our neighbors front yard the next morning.

Corey Cooper