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Residents of the Joe Rich area east of Kelowna are losing domestic cats and chickens in numbers never seen before.

They can only speculate as to the cause because, often, nothing of the animals is left behind.

“The general consensus is it’s a predator of some sort,” Laurie Takoff, secretary of the Joe Rich Ratepayers and Tenants Society, told iNFOnews.ca. “It’s probably a direct result of not only the fires but also the dry season. There’s not much out there for them to eat as far as berries and wild food so they’re moving into the residential areas and getting into garbage and livestock and pets.”

She lost two of her three barn cats without a trace.

Barn cats are known to wander off sometimes for a day or two but Bill and Bob were never gone for more than half a day and they disappeared more than two weeks ago.

Her neighbour lost five or six cats, with one disappearing each day. One neighbour had 10 chickens killed.

Takoff is also in touch with animal rescue groups throughout the Okanagan and has heard similar stories from other areas.

“A lot of people are seeing a lot of wildlife,” she said. “Bear, cougar, skunk, racoon, bobcat. We usually go by the remains that are left behind. For instance, skunk, they just eat the guts and they leave everything else. If an owl is taking down poultry, they eat the breast meat and everything else is left.”

The cats are just disappearing without a trace so, Takoff suspects, it may be a bobcat since they’re more likely to attack domestic cats than a cougar would.

READ MORE: Another Kelowna cat killer? It's almost always coyotes

She doesn’t suspect coyotes in her case, although a lot have been sighted in the area. Her property is fenced with page wire, a wire mesh fencing. She’s only seen one deer inside the fence in 30 years and no coyotes.

Remains of the chickens are left behind and one owner suspects skunks of killing off his entire flock of chickens, Takoff said.

Animals are lost each year in the area but these kinds of numbers are unusual and the devastation stretches for the whole distance of Joe Rich from Goudie Road, near the Black Mountain area of Kelowna out towards Big White Mountain.

While there weren’t any large forest first in that area of the Okanagan, there were some smaller ones that likely displaced some wildlife, Takoff said. But the summer’s drought likely had a bigger impact on food sources.

“Normally, a lot of us go out and go berry picking,” she said “We’re recommending that people just leave that because the animals don’t have much and it’s pretty dried up.”

Her advice to anyone living near the forests in the Okanagan?

“People are going to have to be a little more careful to lock their stock up,” Takoff said.

READ MORE: Cat carcasses found in Kelowna killed by predators, not humans: SPCA

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