Wow, he did get big. I like the last picture where you can see his skinny little leg poking out from a big, round body. He is so cute. And to think how this all started, with a sickly little guy we weren't sure was going to live. Well done! That was a lovely fox, too. And great, clever work to solve the cat problem!
This is Fiona, the mother of the six cubs taken in 2017. This was the last photo we took of her, when she returned for the first time in two years. She was checking out her old lair which I had made inaccessible once she and the cubs had left. She never returned again. Given the length of time foxes live in urban areas she may no longer be alive.
He didn't appear at all last night, his food was untouched and there were no footprints on the floor of his feed station. "So he may have called it a day." I'll continue to put his food out for a few days, as he may change his mind and he'd expect to find some as usual. But it is decidedly colder. He can't have come to any harm as there's never been any other animal that has got into the garden to bother him. I won't check on him
He's definitely hibernating now. I was on the patio three days ago and I could hear him "moving his furniture about," but he was probably just having a scratch and his back leg was banging on the floor of his room. He'll have made a ball of hay around himself and blocked up the door to his room with more hay. I'll put his feed station in the garage until next year. It's two fewer job for six months. As every morning I had to clean his dinner bowl and run the floor of the feed station under the tap over a house drain and use a brush to clean it. Then put his wet food, pellets and water in his feeder every night.
