Please keep your cats inside. Most ecosystems aren’t supposed to have near-apex predators running around killing everything. Outdoor cats kill over 2 billion birds a year.
> The RSPB says there is “no clear scientific evidence” that cats are causing bird populations to decline, but there is a perception among some British bird-lovers that cats are a menace and should be kept indoors. (In countries where cats are not a native species, such as Australia and New Zealand, they can have a devastating impact on wildlife.)
> “I do feel that cats are an easy target,” says Bradshaw. “Skyscrapers kill more birds than cats do. But you don’t see people standing outside the factories where glass is made, saying: ‘You’re bird-killers.’”
I have a cat that's an expert hunter, and he now wears one of those collars daily. The collar has reduced his catch to essentially zero (maybe 1-2 birds / year).
That's what cats do. That's how bird populations are kept in check.
A bird nest has what, 4 or 6 eggs? All those hatchlings are pretty much born to die in the first year. Because next year, the bird population is pretty much the same.
Cats can only catch birds when they are plentiful. When the population is back within bounds, cats find birds hard to find. Its a natural feedback cycle, been around for millions of years.
If the cats didn't do it, then most of those birds would starve the first winter. Is that more kind?
It's nice to feel positive thoughts about birds. But don't let that poison your feelings about cats, who are only doing their job.
Without humans the number of cats in the wild would be vastly lower. Put another way, cat populations are at a level that would not be supported naturally without human intervention. As such, when we let our cats out an inordinate number of birds are "kept in check" as you put it.
This natural feedback cycle has been around for millions of years, just not the human element.
I'll take the RSPB's advice in the UK (there is little/no evidence cats are having a harmful effects on bird populations in the UK, tall buildings may have more effect, pollution definitely does, other forms of habitat destruction even moreso, etc.), though my current boss is happily an indoor cat.
In places where cats are essentially an invasive species, not native at all, this is different of course.
Feral cats outnumber domestic ones 2:1. Do humans affect that? Feral cat populations grow to fill their niche, with or without humans. I don't see how domestic cats account for more than a small fraction of the issue.
And again, when bird populations reach equilibrium the cats can't find more. That's independent of cat populations.
Feral cats are domesticated cats that have escaped and are no longer considered domesticated. The point is that if it weren't for humans we wouldn't have so many feral cats.
Also, feral cats tend to congregate close to human populations.
I'm not sure what your point is about equilibriums. Of course equilibria are reached naturally, but with the human factor these equilibria have been distorted beyond any natural capacity. In short, any human-impacted equilibria tends toward the rapid decrease in species populations, often to the point of species extinction.
Not at all sure that's sound reasoning. What have humans to do with feral cat populations? Sure a few domesticated cats escape every year, but that just temporarily perturbs the feral population which is self-adjusting.
Definition of feral (from google): (especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.
There may have been inter-breeding involved with wild populations, but most, if not all, feral cats have their origins in domesticated, or captive (by humans), cat populations.
Also, have you ever noticed that feral cats tend to congregate near humans? That's because they find it easier to find food from dumpsters, handouts, garbage, etc. This is very similar to other species that rely on humans for their success (rats, corn, cockroaches, crows). This artificially increases their numbers. I say "artificially" because their food source comes indirectly or directly from humans.
So simply from the definition of the word "feral", and not even including the inter-species dynamics between humans and feral cats, humans have everything to do with feral cat populations.
The part you aren't mentioning is that in your model cat populations decrease when they cant find enough birds, which allows for the birds to repopulate, which allows for the cats to catch them and repopulate.
The feedback cycle is broken where the cats have ample food supplied and the cat population no longer depends on the prey population.
Yes, thats integral to the point I'm making. Cat populations aren't being modulated by prey specie availability but they are still killing. A healthy ecosystem maintains a balance between predator and prey because their population numbers depend on each other. But cat populations that are being maintained by humans don't have that feature, hence the outsized impact of their predation.
My cat loves being outside, practically lives outside. He kills birds occasionally, but predominately hunts rabbits and squirrels. He also eats them on my porch. I have an indoor cat as well (she had he claws removed before we adopted her), and their muscular structures are entirely different, the outdoor cat feels strong, lean, and with the natural look of a cat. Cats aren't meant to be indoor animals - no animal, humans included, are indoor animals.
She was rescue cat, I would never declaw a cat and my wife felt we were the only ones who could take care of her. We don't let her outside as she has no way of defending herself and we live the deep south with plenty of animals that could kill her.
They mention a couple others in the article as well:
Bells on collars work, as does switching cats on to a premium, high-protein food diet, and giving them mental stimulation by playing with them in the morning. “Changing the cat’s food can reduce the amount of wildlife they kill by over a third,” says McDonald. “And playing with your cat, more than a quarter. These are positive actions for the cat that also have a positive outcome on their behaviour.”
How about keeping the cat indoors in the daytime and letting it out at night? Cats are naturally nocturnal so the cat should be happy with that.
As far as I've been able to tell where I am, everything out at night that a cat would be able to reasonably encounter is either too big for the cat to kill or something that I would like the cat to kill (rats and mice).
Well, I'm not sure about the weird floating blob thing that my cameras caught one night. It was a white featureless blob just floating in front of the camera jiggling around. I would have dismissed it as some optical effect, maybe some light somewhere shining right at the camera...except it was casting a shadow. It seemed small enough for a cat to take, but I have no idea what defenses it had. Here's the footage of the blob [1].
Also not sure what this thing is or how it would do versus a cat [2].
[1] appears to be a spider or some kind of bug, suspended by a web or fiber. It's really close to your IR leds, what's why it's blown out in white (overexposed) and casting a shadow into the distance.
Cats are not naturally nocturnal. They are crepuscular—active during twilight and dawn.
And putting the cat out for the night is still very bad, both for the cat (average life expectancy of outdoor cats is something like 50-70% that of indoor cats) and for the environment (they are an invasive nonnative predator species).
Keeping the cat inside also dramatically increases the life expectancy of the cat. And it also decreases to almost zero the chance of it catching toxoplasmosis.
Indoor cats don't really care about the outside, so no, it's not cruelty, as long as it's well fed and properly stimulated.
Ecosystems also aren’t supposed to have uncontrolled prey populations, that are also being fed by humans. And since the number of other bird hunting predators is almost negligible anywhere humans live with their cats, this effectively balances put the lack of all other predators.
If the cats wouldn’t kill those 2 billion birds we would drown in their shit and the resulting diseases.
This is deeply wrong on many levels. Let's start with birds of prey eating other birds. It's not true that there are no other predators / checks on population growth. A lot of animals eat eggs as well. And humans do a pretty good job killing birds with windows.
There are lots of bird hunting predators, mostly larger birds.
Do you think native bird populations would spiral out of control if they weren’t killed by cats? That is definitely not true I am not sure where you would have gotten that idea.
> The RSPB says there is “no clear scientific evidence” that cats are causing bird populations to decline, but there is a perception among some British bird-lovers that cats are a menace and should be kept indoors. (In countries where cats are not a native species, such as Australia and New Zealand, they can have a devastating impact on wildlife.)
> “I do feel that cats are an easy target,” says Bradshaw. “Skyscrapers kill more birds than cats do. But you don’t see people standing outside the factories where glass is made, saying: ‘You’re bird-killers.’”