The cat, named Mama, was known to be a "feisty" feline before the incident
Credit: KTLA 5/YouTube
NEED TO KNOW
- A 10-year-old cat was caught on camera fighting off a coyote outside a Pico Rivera, Calif., home
- The cat named Mama is known for being “feisty”
- Debbie Beltran, Mama’s owner, said she’s glad that her cat survived the battle after she lost one of her pets to a coyote attack in 2025
A Pico Rivera, California, resident captured some surprising footage: a cat fighting off a coyote in the middle of the day.
"I was in shock," Debbie Beltran, the cat's owner, told KTLA-TV, after viewing the video. "It took me a while to see—is that our cat or somebody else's? And no, it's our cat."
Beltran said she was at work on May 1 when a neighbor sent security camera footage of her cat ferociously fighting a coyote outside. The video shows the cat standing its ground outside the family's yard on Manzanar Avenue before it climbs a tree and escapes the coyote.
"Coyotes usually come out when the sun goes down," Beltran said. "So to see this happen in broad daylight, that was shocking."
Beltran said her cat, named Mama, has been with her family for about 5 years and is believed to be about 10 years old. She notes that Mama has always been a courageous cat who doesn't back down from a fight.
"She's always been feisty, this type of cat, and has got into fights before, so it doesn't surprise me," the pet parent told KABC.
Unfortunately, this isn't the first time a coyote has attacked one of Beltran's pets. She said that last year, one of her cats died in a coyote attack. Now, she's giving Mama some extra attention since her caught-on-camera battle.
California is no stranger to coyote incidents. In November 2025, the San Diego Police Department revealed that a 3-year-old girl and another child were injured in a coyote attack in San Diego.
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Several months before, a 6-year-old boy was attacked by a coyote in Del Amo Park in Carson, California.
"It felt like pain, like I got bit from a wolf," he told KTLA about the incident.
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