In what has been a big week for African serval escapes on Vancouver Island, the third and final missing exotic cat has been found and returned home.
Last Sunday, Laurel Bablitz reported her boyfriend’s pair of servals missing from their home in the Corcan-Meadowood community, near Whiskey Creek and Qualicum beach, after discovering the cats’ cage was open.
The male serval, named Tumaz, was caught on the same day but Luna, a pregnant female, remained on the loose, with multiple sightings of her around the Qualicum area.
That is until Sunday when a family was able to trap Luna in an enclosure after she had killed three of their ducks. The now-captured servals are also believed to be responsible for killing a 19-year-old domestic cat.
According to Bablitz, she and her boyfriend have only had the pair of servals for a few weeks and this is the first — and hopefully the last — time they have escaped from their cage.
“We’re going to definitely beef up the security on the cage, it was only the door but if somebody wants to let them loose they’re just going to cut through the wire anyway, but it was in our yard and I didn’t think we’d have to worry,” Bablitz told CHEK News, adding that they will be getting security cameras.
Bablitz believes someone must have let the servals out of their cage and apologized to the community for the entire ordeal.
“We just haven’t had time to catch our breaths yet since this happened and again I am so sorry that this happened,” she said. “It’s been a really scary time.”
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Hannah Lepine
