| I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this. Outside of birds, cats kill rodents. I live in rural Quebec, near farms, a massive nature preserve, and a national park larger than small US states. When I first moved here, I had no cat, and several other neighbours were new to the area. Old houses, not fresh builds, just changeover of owners... they too with no cats. The first year I was here, I became aware of the problem, and started to lay traps. And I caught 100+ mice, sometimes several per day for months, all inside my house. Once Spring arrived, I tried to find entrances, and did! I blocked them, but anyone that knows rodents, and owns wood houses, that won't help if you have an out of control, local colony, and once the winter comes, do they ever want in! I spent 3+ years with traps, sometimes reducing the population a bit, but each winter more than 50 mice. Then a neightbour got a siamese cat. I now catch a mouse or two a year. If you look at mouse breeding and brood numbers, and you live in a area with loads of food in the summer (near farms, nature), you need something like cats. It's not an option, it just isn't. There's a reason farmers have loads of semi-wild cats in their barns. And both the mice they catch, and the cats that catch them, are invasive. And with the hantavirus often touted as 50% lethal, you do NOT want the moral responsibility of trap and release, nor do you want mice in your house. At all. And yes, it is in the local population. |
Once we accepted DDT as a problem we found alternative solutions. But there’s also localized solutions. A few spayed/neutered farm cats aren’t the end of the world.