'I have never known pain like it': Fox came in through my cat flap and bit the top of my finger off, says ambulance driver

By REBECCA EVANS

Tammy Page holds up the finger which was savaged by the fox. 'Blood was pouring from my finger, the tip was hanging off and it was so mangled and infected the doctor could not stitch it.'


An ambulance worker told yesterday how a fox crept into her house through the cat flap and attacked her.

Tammy Page, 29, found the animal in her kitchen in the middle of the night.

As she tried to move it back into the garden, it launched itself at her, biting the top of her finger off.


Tammy Page with her cats Tinks. She says the fox came in through the cat flap before biting her finger


Miss Page, who keeps chickens in the garden of her ground-floor flat, had woken early on Sunday to the sound of her back door rattling.

Fearing it was a burglar, she jumped out of bed and went downstairs. Seeing the fox dash under the stairs, she ran to her kitchen to grab a weapon – and the fox followed her.


A fox bares its teeth. Tammy's flat backs on to a railway line and she said foxes living there have increased in number and become more brazen in their hunt for food


She said: ‘It was a young fox, maybe a year old, but it was mangy and crazy looking. I think it might have chased one of my cats in so thank God it didn’t get hold of them.

‘It looked starving and desperate. I was between it and the exit and there was a stand-off. It was screaming like a baby being hurt, it was one of the worst noises I have ever heard.

‘My cats were terrified on top of the freezer so I went to try to push it back out but it came at me and snapped its jaw shut round my left index finger.

‘I felt the pain immediately, but grabbed the fox round the scruff of the neck and chucked it in the garden.’

Miss Page, from Worthing, West Sussex, wrapped a tea towel round her finger and drove straight to hospital. ‘Blood was pouring from my finger,’ she said. ‘The tip was hanging off and it was so mangled the doctor could not stitch it.


In June last year, nine-month-old twins Lola (right) and Isabella Koupparis were savaged by a fox at their home in East London. Their mother Pauline, 41, told how the animal crept in and mauled the babies in their cot


Experts believe the animal had become desperately hungry after wheelie bins were introduced in Miss Page’s street, removing an easy source of food for urban foxes.

Billy Elliot, of Worthing and District Animal Rescue Service, said: ‘The more scarce their food is the more desperate they’ll be for food.

‘If it sees a cat going through a flap, it thinks why can’t I?

‘It doesn’t know what’s on the other side but when it enters a home it can be more traumatising for the fox than the owner.’

He recommended pet owners keep cats in at night, lock cat flaps and keep windows closed at this time of year, which is the foxes’ mating season. It is also the time when adult foxes are more likely to be scrounging for food.

source: dailymail