Kitten snatched by hawk survives fall into landfill

A tiny kitten is recovering nicely after it was grabbed by a red-tailed hawk and dropped from the sky into a Vancouver Island landfill. The feral black-and-white cat was found in the Nanaimo dump on Monday and taken to an SPCA shelter, where staff named it Hawk.



"He was dropped by the hawk from not a great height, so he didn't suffer any broken bones. He has a slightly injured foot, which has healed, and he had some talon punctures in his side, which has now been treated by a vet and have healed also," shelter manager Leon Davis said. He said that the dump keeps birds of prey around to scare pigeons away and stop them from roosting on neighbourhood homes.

Two other kittens from the same litter were plucked from the ground by the hawk, but neither survived the drop to the ground. Hawk is just a few weeks old, and once it recovers from its injuries, the male kitten will be neutered and eventually put up for adoption.


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"I imagine there's going to be a whole bunch of people that will want to take him home," Davis said. The landfill is a popular dumping ground for unwanted animals, he added, and leaving domestic animals to fend for themselves can be risky. "Especially with cats, they can be prey for a lot of different things, for example raccoons, birds of prey, things like that," he said.