ACCORDING TO THE TRACKING APP ON MY PHONE, THE CAT WAS in the alley, right in front of me. He should’ve been easy to spot: He’s bright white and, for the past week, he’d been sporting a blue GPS collar, which I’d selected to match his eyes. I peeked behind a dumpster and under a discarded truck topper, but didn’t see him, so I stepped on a junk tire for better vantage into a yard, then froze. I suddenly recalled the previous day, when my similar behavior prompted a passerby to ask suspiciously, “Are you all right?” Flustered, I’d explained I was following a cat, and pointed to—nothing. My feline friend had disappeared.
Reluctant to draw attention again, I stepped back and finally saw him: 15 feet up, perched atop a defunct chimney beside a tree. He glanced at me, sniffed an empty nest, then leapt onto a shed, dropped into a yard with a No Trespassing sign, and padded across the street. I, of course, would have to go the long way around. “Bad Kitty,” I muttered.
To be clear, I wasn’t calling him names. Bad Kitty belongs to my neighbors, who dubbed him Elton upon his adoption, but pivoted when he began swatting stuff off shelves, bringing home dead birds, and arriving at dawn with scratches.
For months I’d wished Bad Kitty would stay inside, away from the irresistible lure of my garden (read: litter box) and bird feeders (snacks and sport). But his outdoor escapades are perfectly legal since, like most towns, Missoula, Montana, doesn’t have a feline leash law. The thought of raising the issue with my neighbor, Jennifer, made me wary. In the past, my in-laws hadn’t appreciated my suggestion that keeping Ethel indoors might be safer for her and birdlife. (Now we stick to less contentious topics, like politics and religion.) To create common ground this time, I pitched Jennifer on following Bad Kitty’s every step for a few weeks with the GPS device, and she readily agreed. It turned out we were both curious about his exploits: I was mostly interested in his impact on wildlife, while Jennifer was concerned about his safety.
I knew I was wading into one of the thornier issues in conservation. America’s roughly 100 million free-roaming felines—about one-third
