Your cat is on a killing spree that's destroying the planet; study finds you're in denial about it

OregonLive.com ^ | July 1, 2015 | Douglas Perry

[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."

[FredZarguna]

”What came first, the warming hoax or the p....? “

Warming is just the pu**ies latest hysteria. Before this it was the disappearing rain forests, before that acid rain, before than the population explosion, before that air pollution, before that ...

The next ice age and asteroid collisions never went anywhere because they couldn't claim they were caused by man.

[Ransomed]

Maybe it’s something like that, but I definitely haven’t noticed any lack of jays or crows in the last 10 years for sure. A lot more cats, or it seem like a lot more anyhow. Do the night jars get west nile from eating mosquitos or getting bit by mosquitos? Or some other way? One place I looked said the Audubon Society claims whippoorwills declined 47% in the last 20 years.

Freegards

[MeshugeMikey]

danger danger DANGER!!

[Western Phil]

My guess is that they have to get bit, although I suppose that the virus might survive the digestive process.

[Fresh Wind]

I am Kitteh, hear me roar!