The Killer Cats Are Winning
nybooks.com
nybooks.com
Actually, my Dad grew up on a mountain where, every day after school, he would come home and gather up the pig and cows that had been let free to eat for the day. So there's certainly use cases for letting a pig roam free and gather some forage. By the time I was growing up we had chickens, which had to be brought in at night to prevent predators from eating them, but otherwise could roam the yard to eat worms and the like.
Also a horse that kept the grass in the yard short without us having to mow it. There were goats, but they weren't allowed free mostly because they went and ate mountain laurel and poisoned themselves.
It's kind of strange to take a working animal like a cat, bred for pest control, and stick in a little indoor room and never let them out. Did farmers originally lock up their barn cats in the barns? I don't think so. It's actually a problem when they accidentally get locked up in a shed or a car or something, because they aren't out doing their jobs.
Seems nuts to me that the author belittles letting them outside.
The statement you quoted said cats "should be no more allowed to roam than <other domesticated livestock>". Your father's livestock were allowed to roam. Ergo, maybe the author wasn't talking about the farm your father grew up on. Something something false equivalencies or something.
Did farmers originally lock up their barn cats in the barns?
Did Jesus have a pet cat? No. Cats are the devil. Or maybe the author was not prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution.
We have a litany of examples of "Europeans brings domestic cats to newly-explored island, ecological devastation ensues", I don't think we need to digress with stories unrelated to the environments to which the author refers (which I gather to be urban and suburban environments).
Citing the historical reasons for their existence doesn't really help the case that they aren't a problem now because the exact reason that it's now and not then. Cats may have had a purpose when they were introduced but in most cases they don't actually serve that purpose anymore. And we can ignore that point entirely because feral cats don't even fit the definition of animals with a job to begin with. They aren't owned by anyone, they are just another animal in the environment. One that happens to be an invasive species causing extraordinary damage to the environment.
Barring that, if you want to minimize suffering of future stray cats/dogs (or limit environmental impact), it makes sense to do a one-time massive nationwide effort of scooping up all stray cats and dogs, and either spaying/neutering them, or culling them.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/courting_controversy_with_a_new...
It's too late to go and kill all the cats. It's been tried in Australia for decades and it's a dismal failure.
It's arguable that trying to kill cats or rabbits or whatever now is just species Xenophobia.
That IS the problem.
IIRC some cattle out West are allowed to graze on government/public land. Later in the season when it's time to get them back to the farm they check their brands so they know which Cattle belong to their farm.
In the country, I could imagine letting cats outside -- though only after getting them neutered or spayed -- but in the city or suburbs, where I have lived, keeping them inside makes more sense.
Seems unlikely. Citation needed.
'A pet that spends more time outdoors may live on average 2 to 3 years less than a cat that lives exclusively indoors.'
That indoor cats live longer seems reasonably well attested. However here's some anecdata: sum of my parents' 8 indoor/outdoor cats + my 3 indoor/outdoor cats: none have lived less than 13 years (two made it to 18). My parents two indoor-only cats both died before reaching 13. I have assumed the cats that go outside survived due to the low number of vehicles and predators they had to deal with.
There are other reasons to keep cats inside, as is the subject of the article. The problem is much worse in Australia where birds and small marsupials nest on the ground.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know_Why_the_Caged_Bird_Sing...
The mice were getting to be a problem, btw, because they were burrowing between the walls of my house and making noise at night, and doing god knows what damage in there.
My wife was once on the porch with him. She was gardening (lots of potted plants, etc). He was laying there in the sun and snapped up to grab a hummingbird in flight. She grabbed him and he spit it into her hand. The hummingbird flew away a few seconds later. That was when I realized how efficient a predator he was.
EDIT: and he did get into a fight with a raccoon once, that required stitches. So, living inside will definitely increase the health and length of life.
It should not be too surprising what apex predators like cats (we make them tiny, but they are at the top of the food chain nonetheless) can do to ecosystems if crazy people (us) confuse them with cuddly toys and breed and feed them without control.
Just for nitpicking: How can they be "apex predators" "at the top of the food chain" when they're eaten by coyotes e.g.?
That example is why cats were domesticated in the first place.
Not having a healthy predator prey relationship in areas leads to public health issues.
Mole problem? Borrow a dachshund for a week, no more moles. For efficient, methodical obliteration of a local pest population, hard to beat a canine for Terminator-like determination and efficiency. Cats just dick around too much.
My cats kill moles and mice. They do a damn good job of it. Only thing dogs seem capable of killing: rabbits and themselves.
Umm, I think you misread my statement, which was intended as "in a contest of who catches the most rats...". It was not intended as cat vs. dog in a cage match.
Though if that's the direction you want to go, the terriers I personally have are "American Pit Bull Terriers". Tell your cat to bring its A game.
There are many places in the US that have more of a problem with feral cats than rodents (which doesn't happen with dogs as much here). Some trap/neuter/release programs exist for these, but they struggle. Often the only service they provide the community - beyond simply neutering the wild cats - is a steady supply of pet kittens (also made sterile). I'm sure many people involved would love to see the wild parent cats actually made useful for something, which could also help reduce the problem of the thousands of unwanted cats that are euthanized every day.
In that first year, I found 23 small rodent bodies inside and out, I got 2 with traps. I found no bird carcasses. Pretty sure he wasn't eating them after seeing one half thrown up on the mat.
So, eh. Some cats kill birds. Some don't. (His brother certainly did. But his brother met something bigger and pointer than he was, and didn't make it to that house.)
Overall, I think we can't conclude that any specific cat is doing this, but we can conclude that outdoor cats do greatly reduce the bird population.
Maine Coons are the powerlifters of the cat world.
(edit: and yes, he did have that special skill of always being able to land right on your nuts)
And we're having rats picking up children at school, now.
https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/WritingGuide/10dangpt.htm
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/dangling-...
But at the first coyote or cougar sighting in the suburbs, the rifles come out. And then we wonder where all those feral cats came from.
I wonder what could be released in a dense city like New York to take care of the rat problem. Bats? Snakes? It's a comical thought, but so far there's no real solution.
The only healthy relationship we've found so far is that of rats to poison, but the rats seem to be winning that battle given their ubiquitousness!
The numbers seem to line up.
> We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.
Other parts of the world have had wild cat populations for millions of years.
The US has a few native cats, and I assume has had them for quite a while.
While the models they use are fairly conservative, it seems like figure 2 is pretty telling. 50% of the variance in their estimates comes from the "Unowned cats" parameter - a parameter with which "no empirically derived data exist".
IMO think they are reaching too far on this - but it is a nice elegant, simple study. I look forward to following the letters re: this pub.
100% of Berkeley residents were so flabbergasted we spilled fair trade granola and almond milk all over our copy of the Sunday New York Times whilst listening to NPR in our REI/Patagonia outdoorwear.
Or maybe some citizens were outraged. This Berkeley liberal monolith stereotype gets a bit old. The chicken population in Berkeley is in the hundreds; Berkeley residents do small-scale farming, to include slaughtering their animals. Plenty of Berkeley residents have more perspective than the knee-jerk reaction you describe.
But linguistic abuse does not. Make whatever recommendations about species culling you want -- but there's no way that targeted killing can be compared to "euthanasia."
Just check CATMANTOO channel on Youtube, you will be amazed at what he makes his cats do.
And apparently it's that hard to train a cat, he says you can do the same with yours.
Said they were much more "business-like" and weren't distracted by everything like dogs are.
One of my cats is very food motivated. She will always come running for the word "treat".
One of them is extremely not food motivated. He gets excited when I say treat because the other cats get excited and he loves excitement. But when the treats are dispensed, he might eat one, maybe. The first cat will usually finish his. He's motivated by attention. He will come when called by his name, just because he knows you will pick him up and snuggle him. Of course, this also means that if he's bored, he quite quickly learns what you don't want him to touch or jump on, and will do it just so you go after him for it.
Dr. John Pilley, who trained his dog Chaser to learn over 1000 words and even syntax (like the difference between "To ball take Frisbee" and "To Frisbee take ball")[1], said Chaser is best motivated by play.
"My last words to the class were to remind them that play was Chaser’s reward. I told them that they should always reward their dogs for good behavior by playing with them and petting and praising them. We all learn better and faster when learning is fun."[2]
[1] - https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/how-to-teach-...
[2] - http://www.chaserthebordercollie.com/the-book?_escaped_fragm...!
Just keep your cats inside, everyone! It's better for the environment, it's better for birds, it's better for the cat, it's better for you.
So here's the rub: we really have to stop keeping so many cats
It's not as black and white as you paint it
You mean, except for significantly reduced exposure to diseases and prompt care for any health issues that do arise, better food, and risk free entertainment?
Based on the average life expectancy alone, an indoor cat has a lot of benefits.
The youngest straight up chose to be an indoor cat. He was a feral kitten, about 12 weeks when I first encountered him (based on the vet's estimate of 16 weeks when I eventually brought him in). I left food out for him for a month, as he progressively hung around more and more and watched my two indoor cats through the sliding glass door in the back of my apartment. After about a month he seemed to trust me, so I picked him up, took inside, took him to a vet to get him a checkup (he very badly needed to be dewormed), got him fixed, and now he doesn't even want to go outside, even if the door is left open. He saw how good my indoor cats had it, and he wanted it. He's the most affectionate cat I've ever had. He constantly wants to be touched.
My oldest cat is over 17 years old, and has arthritis. She's never been a good hunter, even as a young cat. She got out for a week when she was around 3 years old, and came back so thin you could touch your fingers together on either side of her stomach. She could have never survived outdoors, then or now.
The oldest cat is the only one I set out and said, "I'm going to get a cat," and adopted one. The middle cat was an abandoned kitten my mom rescued at 3 weeks (she waited all day after she found the crying kitten in the barn to see if the momma cat came back from hunting, but she never did, nor did she ever find the rest of the litter). Given the area my mom lives in, she would have been eaten by a bear or fox even if she hadn't starved.
Indoor is better for almost all cats. You just have a provide an enriching environment with lots of high surfaces for them to explore and exercise them with toys.
Even if you think cats should be indoor/outdoor, there's no way you can compare keeping a pet cat to chickens in battery cages.
Yeah, but maybe they were the best seven days of her life, worth more than a decade living indoors.
It just seems to absurd to decide what's "best" for them. By what standard?
I would try to call her back, so she could find her way back to me, but she would just sit in the next room and cry until I physically went into the room she was in. Then she would run to me and rub against my legs and follow me back out. Then she'd be calm for 30 minutes or so, then wander into the next room, repeat. It was worst the first week she was back, and gradually got better until she could handle leaving the room and coming back to find me when she wanted company again on her own.
My wife and I have decided no more cats going forward.
The article also doesn't talk about the invasive bird species humans have introduced all over the place.
I am suprised no one else has said this.
But yeah, that would be no easy task. Trying to herd cats comes to mind :)
[1]: This is behavior that you absolutely want to have in a collar that's designed to go around the neck of an animal who's roaming unsupervised. Consider the (likely) scenario where the collar gets caught on something, and the animal panics. If the collar comes undone easily, the cat escapes from being trapped and saunters off, and you need to buy a new collar when you can't find the old one. If the collar is shut in such a way that the cat can't escape, the cat is likely to injure itself.
My cat who died a couple of years ago at the age of 16 had a bell on his collar all his life. I couldn't pick that bell up without it tinkling but Radar could walk from one end of the house to the other, including the stairs, without a sound. Also when hunting he did most of it by waiting for his prey to get close enough so that any noise from the bell was simply the last sound they heard.
For a while he used to sit on the roof and catch bats
Why not start by extending that to humans as well?
Some other predators have reciprocal predator/prey relationships with other predators. Like lions and hyenas that will eat each other if given the chance but generally prefer less dangerous meals.
For example, in Texas, the problem with feral pigs is so severe that two thirds of the entire population needs to be culled each year in order to maintain it at a stable level.
The things that cats hunt, though, generally do have other natural predators to keep them in check, and getting cats into that game causes populations to plummet.
Ironically, they're in the decline in their natural habitat while thriving in North/South America. The Americas has a few native pigeons, but none are as well known or wide spread as the Rock Pigeon. Quite a few pigeon species are also far from the ugly "rats with wing" stereotype[1], but they don't live in Europe or North America.
We, as the dominant species, are always looking for ways to save the planet - but for the most part it is a blame game. Humans are what helped cats hit all corners of the world. Cats aren't responsible, so why target them?
Are you serious?