If they value the cat that much they why are they letting it roam the neighborhood where it can get hurt or killed? Sounds like they only value their cat that highly after they find out that their neighbors don't.
Here is some more food for thought or food for cats. Your poor little innocent pet kitty isn't so innocent at all.
From the New York times science page.
The American Bird Conservancy estimates that up to 500 million birds are killed each year by cats — about half by pets and half by feral felines. “I hope we can now stop minimizing and trivializing the impacts that outdoor cats have on the environment and start addressing the serious problem of cat predation,” said Darin Schroeder, the group’s vice president for conservation advocacy.
From Science News Magazine
America’s cats, including housecats that adventure outdoors and feral cats, kill between 1.3 billion and 4.0 billion birds in a year, says Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C., who led the team that performed the analysis.
And this from USA Today.
Cats that live in the wild or indoor pets allowed to roam outdoors kill from 1.4 billion to as many as 3.7 billion birds in the continental U.S. each year, says a new study that escalates a decades-old debate over the feline threat to native animals.
From The Washington Post Health and Science.
Outdoor cats are the leading cause of death among both birds and mammals in the United States, according to a new study, killing 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds each year.
Later that day, a distraught woman came by, asking about her missing cat. It fit the description, and I let her know that because I care about my catz, I don't let them out where they can get killed by cars.
I feel sorry for her loss, and her real pain, but it was 100% self inflicted.
If you love your pets, keep them on your property. Cars have no mercy.
/johnny
The fact that the pet’s owner is negligent has been conceded. The cat is there in the sandbox. The question then, though, is what do you do about it? Kill the cat or just put a cover over the sandbox? The fact that the owner was negligent won’t take away the pain that killing the pet may cause. Whatever the antecedent causes, at that point you have the power to determine whether it happens or not.
> Here is some more food for thought or food for cats. Your poor little innocent pet kitty isn’t so innocent at all.
I don’t have a pet myself, though I had dogs and cats as a child. I’m well aware of the cruelty of nature, the law of fang and claw — which applies to cats, dogs, birds, everything. I’m not one of those persons who believe pets are good, and human beings bad. To love a cat, for instance, you have to close your eyes to some of the cruel acts of which it’s capable. We attribute those acts to nature, though, and try to put them out of our minds. I like to believe that human beings, though, are capable of being more compassionate. We’re not just predators. We can put ourselves in the places of other creatures, and try not to hurt them unnecessarily.
> Cats that live in the wild or indoor pets allowed to roam outdoors kill from 1.4 billion to as many as 3.7 billion birds in the continental U.S. each year, says a new study that escalates a decades-old debate over the feline threat to native animals.
The woman in the story killed the cat because it messed in her sandbox. Imagine 3.7 billion more birds flying overhead and defecating on sandboxes, car tops, and people’s heads. :-)
You seem to have taken the trouble to research this matter, though, so I’ll try to respond seriously. Nature is cruel. We can’t get away from it. I don’t like seeing the remains of a dead bird either, and the idea that billions of them are dying painful deaths would make me sad if I thought about it very much (I try not to do that, just as I try not to think of the millions of human beings who are suffering at this very moment. If we spend a lot of time thinking about things like that, then not only will they be unhappy, but we will be to.) The sad truth is that birds will increase in population until they reach a number that the environment can’t support. If they aren’t limited by predation, they’ll be limited by starvation or something else. As I understand it — and despite cats — suburban areas are favorable habitats for many species of birds (the combination of shrubbery and open spaces).
Despite the cats that often come through my yard, I see mockingbirds, Carolina wrens, cardinals, and brown thrashers nearly every day, along with many other species. Some of them nest in my yard. Occasionally I see the remains of a bird that I assume a cat killed, but on the whole they seem to be reproducing well. Predation itself is cruel (and practiced by many species of birds too, of course), but that’s a characterisic of nature itself, not something peculiar to cats. In ordinary suburban areas those large numbers of killed birds are misleading. Imagine what a large number of birds those areas must be supporting in order for 3.7 billion of them to be killed by cats.
It’s true that in more wild areas there may be a few endangered species that cats do pose a serious threat to, and I agree that special care should be taken there. In most residential areas, though, the battle for survival among the various species — cats, dogs, birds, mice, squirrels — probably reached a state of relative stability long ago. Cats and dogs have been in this country for hundreds of years. I’m living in the same neighborhood where I spent my childhood over half a century ago, and I think we have as many birds as we had in the past. Probably more.