Foxy encounters.............

Pets and wild animals seem to have a healthy respect for each other. Their lives skirt around each others' and they appear to try to avoid confrontation, unless it is accidental. One of the wild creatures I love are foxes but I was scared Jonesy would meet one while out on his jaunts. To be honest we tried to keep him in at night, especially when we could hear the foxes at night, mating. They were far too well fed on our discarded rubbish to be bothered by a cat, but who knows what a cornered frightened animal will do....and foxes are bigger than cats! To be honest I used to blame Jonesy for the torn rubbish bags and scattered chicken bones but having found fox dung in the garden it could have equally been one of them?
We live right in the middle of town but close to a river bank and open fields. There are foxes living in the area, and I know this because I have seen them regularly. Once in the early ours of the morning while going round the corner to our parked car, in the next road, my husband and I make a young fox jump as he stood on the pavement. Another time I was coming back from a night out, again in the very early hours of the morning, and I chanced upon a fox simply sitting in the middle of the road, again round the corner. I crouched down and talked to it in a low voice, probably hoping I could coax it nearer, but it ran off. The third time was about 8am and I was sipping coffee and looking out of the bedroom window at the garden. I could not believe my eyes as this large fox sauntered across the garage roof at the end of our garden and hopped into next door. There were clearly people around but the fox did not seem bothered. Only once was I aware Jonesy was in the garden at the same time as a fox, and that was when I heard a fox barking very close by, late at night, and within a minute or so Jonesy shot through our bedroom window. We had a flat roofed conservatory below our bedroom window, and if Jonesy would not come back when we called at night we would leave the window open. At some point in the night he would scrabble onto the fence by the conservatory, haul himself onto the roof and then leap onto the window sill. If the window was not open he would howl until we woke up and let him in. I must admit to hating it when he was young and he would be off out for hours.It was sometimes difficult to realise he was not responding to our calls or racing back home. Of course later we realised he was either being pampered down the caravan park, or being spoilt by the elderly lady in the next road, but at the time I hated it. I would pace for ages and go in and out to call Jonesy. It must have driven the neighbours mad, although a few of them also used to say they were worried when either my husband or I did this because they knew he was not home! Such was the love Jonesy instilled in the neighbour hood. Still, foxes and cats don't like each other much, so I preferred to know Jonesy was home at night.
While we were away we had the interesting experience. One night, in the early hours, we were woken by an almighty racket...the howling, yapping and barking noise of what turned out to be a fox. This went  on for around an hour as the fox simply say in the middle of the road for a while, ran for a few yards and then ran back and sat down again. Something probably was spooking this fox but it was eerie, yet wonderful, to hear such a wild animal so close to humanity. I haven't heard the foxes near us for a while but spring will be here soon so they will be around. At least Ripley and Peanut don't even move from the sofa at night so we don't have to worry about them encountering foxes!