When I first joined my blended family, we lived in the basement, which had previously had a serious mouse problem. This was largely cleared up through the acquisition of a kitten who quickly became a master mouser. We later moved to another apartment upstairs, where there wasn’t an issue with mice.
Years later, we adopted another two cats, and our now senior cat and the more sociable of the two young cats developed a relationship, perhaps typical of cats, where they weren’t friends, and rarely acknowledged each other’s presence; they merely happened to be in the same general area doing about the same thing. They’d sleep on opposite ends of the couch, or play with the same cat toy, one at a time, and so on. Anyway, one time, the senior cat caught a mouse. To our surprise, she took the live mouse over to the junior (but adult) cat, and dropped it in front of the other cat, and basically, it looked like the older cat was trying to teach the younger how to hunt mice. This was the most directly we’d seen the two of them interact, and it was quite charming.
Of course, this was probably the most horrible experience of the mouse’s life, though the mouse managed to escape.
And more to the point - define obliterated. There are still a ton of song birds everywhere I go. And even if they are eating a ton of birds, there are still plenty around. This article from the UK says: Despite the large numbers of birds killed, there is no scientific evidence that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK-wide. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease, or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds.
I’d heard that cats are very hard on bird populations in New Zealand, but that was in large part because birds in New Zealand had no natural predators until domestic cats were introduced.
I don’t know where you live and understand that in places with many ground dwelling birds, cats can be a severe blight on the population. If you really are so concerned with cats killing birds on your property, and are determined to stop them, won’t you at least consider humane methods of catching them, with the intention of returning them to their owners?
When I open the back door, the squirrels head for the trees. Then they stop and look back. Once they see that it’s just my fourteen-year-old cat, they usually go back to what they were doing.
Yes, they do. I’ve had cats. They killed everything they could get their claws into. Extrapolate that out to the millions of cats in the world. Many native populations of birds in Hawaii are gone forever due to cats. It’s a fact.
Bells are not the answer. Cats can learn to stalk silently while wearing bells. A better answer is a brightly colored hair scrunchy as a collar. Birds have excellent vision and can see bright colors very well. A colorful hair scunchy collar is much better than a bell to save wildlife from cats’ indiscriminate slaughter.
Percisely. This seems to be why it is female cats that bring presents, not the males. It’s also why the presents tend to be more or less alive. Cat Satan has been bringing me birds (and just how she caught one at 3am is a bit of a mystery) along with a snake and a gecko. At least she’s only brought in one bat, from which I’ve learned that modern rabies shots aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be even if you are getting five shots at a go.
There’s the problem right there.
I’ve had cats that were not interested in hunting. Extrapolate that to the millions of cats in the world and the picture is very different.
A colourful collar sounds like an interesting idea for the serial killers though.
Better yet, just leave your cat inside. My girlfriend’s cat would kill several times a day. Being an animal lover, this bothered me tremendously. I love the cat, but it was killing just for the fun of killing.
We decided to make it an indoor cat. Everybody is happier, including the cat. My girlfriend and I see the cat more, and give it more attention. My girlfriend worries about the cat less because there used to be days the cat would disappear (did she get run over by a car, locked in a garage, etc.).
Dawn chorus is often mistaken for beautiful,melodic song also, when in fact it’s more “get the fuck off my lawn” and “who wants to fuck?” by a large mob.
Aw come on. You are denying her the opportunity to honor you with her prize, which you earned as her master.
This confuses her greatly.
But on the other hand, yeah, don’t let it in the house. Those prizes aren’t always as dead as they appear.
The growling is probably to keep others away from the food. Cats that have people to feed them don’t really need to kill animals to eat so that’s a lot of pointless loss of life.
In nature, there is no “pointless loss of life”. There is instead the darwinization-away of the unhealthy and otherwise unfit. Native predators are in an equilibrium with the prey that’s adjusted to their presence. A bird that got unfit enough to be caught by a cat can be considered a gene pool hazard for future bird generations.
That’s what we can tell our grandkids when there’s no more yellowfin tuna or any other fish for that matter. We just cleaned the genepool completely. Nothing pointless about it. Besides, people made money and other people ate sashimi.
