Not exactly.
Posted on 07/01/2015 8:36:24 AM PDT by Rio
Your cat is a killer. And we're not just talking about the hit to your soul when Fluffy stares right past you despite your sweetest cooing.
Cats, no matter how adorable, are predators. They stalk, they pounce -- and then they snap the neck of whatever little flying or skittering thing they've just caught.
Most of us view this as a good thing. We're all better off with fewer rodents around, and if some pretty little birds get caught up in the killing spree, we can live with that.
Biologists, it seems, aren't so sure. Domestic cats aren't a natural part of most wildlife ecosystems: that is, they're an invasive species, brought in by their human companions/enablers. Though researchers can't nail down solid data, they fear cats are throwing your neighborhood's natural wildlife biodiversity out of whack, damaging the long-term prospects of actual wild predators that don't have the option of chowing down on a can of Friskies at the end of a hard day.
This might sound familiar to you. Back in January 2013, the New York Times published a story called "That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think" that topped its most-shared list for ages.
The upshot of that story: "scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States -- both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it -- kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat."
It concluded that "the domestic cat (is) one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation."
The world read that sentence and went, "Whew! The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (whatever that is), the Fish and Wildlife Service and the New York Times have all gone nuts."
The world's opinion hasn't changed in the past two years.
A new study published in Ecology and Evolution found that "owners fail to perceive the ecological footprint of their cat, and have shown that their opinions on the general problem are not influenced by the predatory behavior of their cat."
In short, people who own cats and let them go outside do not believe their cute furball could possibly be damaging the ecosystem. (They do have a little better understanding of how the outdoors can damage their cat, giving it diseases and subjecting it to bigger, meaner animals and fast-moving automobiles.)
The Ecology and Evolution study tracked both cat-owner attitudes and 86 free-roaming cats themselves in two British towns. The pet owners were generally opposed to keeping their outside cats in the house, either entirely or at nighttime when cats are widely (and erroneously) believed to do most of their killing.
The study found that cats kill "up to three times more prey than they bring back (to the home), either because they consume or abandon their kills at the capture site." How many kills are typically racked up every week varies widely from cat to cat, but suffice it to say, these domesticated pets are prolific hunters.
The researchers determined that cat owners were not "influenced by ecological information" that documented the impact of their pet on the wider world.
"The opposing roles of cats, as both human companions and wildlife predators, are likely to drive divergent interests between cat owners and conservationists and may develop into a socially intractable problem should mitigation strategies be required," the study concluded. It mentioned the possibility -- perish the thought! -- of "Cat Exclusion Zones" to help distressed ecosystems right themselves.
The most unsurprising finding in the study: that the cat owners weren't clear about who was in charge. Wrote one human participant: "My cat chooses for herself whether to stay in or go out."
We used to have tons of insect eating whippoorwills around here, haven’t heard one for years. They nest on the forest floor. It’s a shame. The only thing I can think of is cats, but I could be wrong.
Freegards
Coyotes are far more dangerous than feral cats & prey on domestic dogs and cats & are a menace to children as well.
“Kill every coyote you see.”
And if you love your cats, keep them indoors.
NOBODY’S MOGGY NOW
Somebody’s Moggy by the side of the road
Somebody’s pussy who forgot his highway code
Someone’s favorite feline who ran clean out of luck
When he ran onto the road and tried to argue with a truck
Yesterday he purred and played in his pussy paradise
Decapitating tweetybirds and masticating mice
Now he’s just 6 lbs of raw minced meat that don’t smell very nice
He’s nobody’s Moggy now
Oh you who love your pussy be sure to keep him in
Don’t let him argue with a truck the truck is bound to win
And upon the busy road don’t let him play or frolic
If you do I’m warning you it could be CAT-ostrophic
If he plays out on the roadway I’m afraid that will be that
There’ll be one last despairing MEOW and a sort of squelchy SPLAT
And your pussy will be slightly dead and very, very flat
He’s nobody’s Moggy
Just red and squashed and soggy
He’s Nobody’s Moggy now
Ooohmm
By Eric Bogle
A nice fat research grant will take care of that minor problem.
Not exactly.
I can pretty much guarantee that our cat is the top predator of small critters in the neighborhood. He refuses to eat cat food of any type (canned or kibble) and hunts year round both in summer or winter. I was curious about his proficiency a few years back and counted his kills for one week. His total was 52 kills. It included about 25 to 30 mice, moles, voles and squirrels, 6 or 7 rats, 5 pigeons, 1 rabbit, 1 pheasant, and the balance were all small birds. He ate every single thing he caught, except the pheasant (my wife took it from him).
First they took the cats and I said nothing because I hate my kid’s friggin cat.
I somehow doubt that Fluffy can compete with the giant wind farms on bird slaughter.
There have been dozens of studies all over the world documenting domestic cat predation, especially on birds. Places like Wisconsin have contemplated encouraging hunters to shoot feral housecats because of the damage to game birds.
We have/had two cats.
O Samurai-san, a small black and white male we got from the local shelter, was an indoor/outdoor cat (meaning he was indoors until the weather warmed up then he was outdoors). He was scruffy, a careless groomer and yep ...a killer. He died at age fifteen from a stomach tumor.
Mi-ke (Japanese for calico), was adopted from the IAMS cat colony in Iowa. She is completely an indoor cat (by choice)and, other than being entertained by a mouse, wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to do with it or that it was a food item. Other than vanilla ice cream, has no interest in human food. She is nineteen and has high blood pressure. (Yeah, I know... “how can a cat have high blood pressure?” Well, she does.) She is also now blind, so she gets around mostly by memory and bumping along using her whiskers to detect obstacles. We try to maintain a consistent arrangement of the furniture to aid her navigation and, lately, we have begun to close off areas of rooms she might get stuck in because she can no longer see how to get herself out of a confined space she wanders into. She is such a polite cat that she won’t call out for assistance but will just stay trapped there until rescued.
All part of the “anything humans do is not natural” meme. Sorry, humans are quite natural and because of our intelligence we “do stuff”....like owning cats. So the consequences are quite natural too.
I read an article about how many bugs were squashed onto windshields each year. It was in the 10’s of billions...so of course there was great concern about this. I had to laugh, considering there’s probably 10’s of trillions of them I really don’t care.
You are kidding, right?
That’s the thing, there are innumerable studies showing the deleterious effects on ecosystems around the planet from the spread of Felis domesticus.
Do a little web searching yourself on this.
If you’re ever on Oahu stop in just past Dillingham to the national sea bird sanctuary. Plenty of house cats, zero sea birds, and that was decades ago.
Google “house cat zoonotic illnesses.”
HOUSE cats are a menace. They should be hunted to extinction.
LOTS of “crazy cat ladies” need to be rounded up next and sent to reeducation camps.
Just my humble opinion.
Even worse, cats are obligate carnivores, and a proper cat diet (essentially 100% animal flesh) has a nearly incalculable negative effect on “climate change”. Yes, that’s right, kitty will be the cause of the oceans boiling, the seas rising, the ice caps melting, polar bears and penguins disappearing, food crop failures, floods, famines, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, halitosis, and alopecia.
Some cats are outdoors...
And some are indoors.
TRE!
“Felis domesticus”
I believe you mean Felis silvestris catus
Ping!
Every day I drive roughly 100 miles mostly on country roads. Every day I see evidence of dead wildlife caused by traffic. Yesterday there were numerous groups of vultures around deer, armadillos, possums, cats, dogs, and numerous unidentifiable scattered meat. Multiply this by the millions of miles of roads and I guarantee that the mostly small rodents taken by cats pale to insignificance.
Domestic cats??? What about all the feral cats? Why do the domestic cats get a bad wrap? Or am I misunderstanding their term ‘domestic’. Liberals are nuts!
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