What cats do when we’re not looking
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
These are designed to break off (as opposed to choking the cat) if they get caught on a fence or branch or something.
They cost next to nothing - and can save your outdoor cat's life.
https://www.petmate.com/the-importance-of-quick-release-cat-...
Cats are stone cold hunter killers. Almost brainless too. They kill anything that moves and is edible.
We all know cats that sometimes just kill for the sake of killing (practice??) and don’t even eat the prey.
It’s like the cats brain is just made for hunting and killing and very little else. Just watch how stupid cats are in cat videos — except when they are hunting.
I have a cat at one of my homes and one day I went up on the roof for some maintenance stuff. The roof was littered with the partially eaten bodies of almost every kind of animal that was edible and smaller than the cat.
Then when you come home she curls up in your lap and purr for your next cat video. Yes, even your docile house cat - put her outside and bam! Death and destruction. Thank god they don’t hunt us.
Don’t get me wrong - I love cats.
I was working on my truck one summer night, and a cat introduced himself by meowing.
I immediately thought he was abandoned.
I took him to a vet, and no chip.
He arrived a few days later with a breakaway collar, and tag.
It turned out he was from a wealthy family, but didn't lije the dog.
I am very allergic to cats, but this guy tried everything in order to live in my house.
Every day for a week, I would wake up to a mouse on the porch, or in the house. (He figured out the dog door)
I later heard that he had at least 5 hones on the block that we're feeding him. One home bought fresh sardines. One was buying fresh Salmon.
Anyways---he was far from brainless. I think a mountian lion got him? I do miss him.
My wife and I have four cats in this house. We have no illusions as to what role we perform.
Ours frequently goes next door to share supper with the cat there.
The setup:
Friend has a small bungalow with two rescue cats that never go outdoors. One was from animal cops, rescued from a house with dozens of cats. I've watched the show, cats running everywhere. Cat was totally skittish around people. Usually kept to herself. Never let me pet her.
Anyhow one day a large mattress gets delivered and two really big guys take it up to the attic. Lots of commotion in the small cramped house.
About a half an hour after they leave we notice that the cat is missing. My friend thinks she must have freaked out, commotion probably reminded her of the rescue operation. We think the cat bolted outside as the front door was held open for a while. Anyhow my friend is in a panic, searching everywhere, outside, around the house, under the porch, neighbors yards, etc.
About half an hour later I give up and tell her that if the cat wants to come home she will in her own time.
Now the story...
I go inside and sit back down on the couch in the living room.
After a few minutes I notice her other cat (the friendly one) is standing in the arch between the rooms and meowing. Staring at me and just meowing, pretty verbal for a cat. Not sure what she wants. Try to get her to come to me but she won't.
Finally I go to get up but as I move towards the cat she moves away into the next room. sigh I sit back down.
The cat soon comes back into the archway and starts meowing again. I get up again. She moves away again. :/ I sit back down.
She comes back a third time, meowing. At this point I know something is up.
This time I get up and walk to where she was and stand there. The cat moved into the dining room, standing in the archway to the kitchen, stares at me and continues to meow.
I move towards her into the kitchen and stand there, she moves to the top of the basement stairs, stares at me and meows.
I move to the top of the stairs, she goes down the stairs, sits at the bottom, stares at me and meows.
I go down the stairs, she moves into the utility room, stares, meows.
I move into the utility room, she moves to the wash tub and stares at the washing machine, meowing
I look behind the washing machine, and I'll be damned the missing cat is huddled up in a ball hiding there.
Mind blown... that cat knew we were in a panic looking for the other cat, knew where it was, and was determined to communicate her location to us.
Judging from the results I'd say she was pretty effective in her communications. How frustrating it must have been for her not to be able to communicate in any other way!
I have a whole new respect for cats now.
I can't count the number of times I've seen cats try to communicate something that requires multiple levels of understanding like your story - and I'm the dumb one taking what must seem like forever to the cat to figure it out.
If you observe them closely, you will see that they know the house and owners' routines better than they themselves do. For a while when we would watch Netflix then play with the cats before bed - completely different shows, timing, etc. - they would start showing up for playtime just before the ending credits (and we started carefully making sure that we weren't moving before then so cueing themselves). So while it seems that they were ignorant of the show, in fact they were in some ways more tuned in than us, just for their own reasons, not ours.
Don't underestimate cats.
Except for those city house cats who are terrified of anything moving. I know one city house cat who's a real hunter killer and is able to actually lure, trap and kill pigeons from inside an appartment (without balcony), and when outside in the countryside kills absolutely everything.
But most city house cats I know are scared shitless of rodents and birds. My own cat is frequently "bullied" by ravens.
I still love them though.
I have had extremely smart and extremely dumb cats in my life, single example here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272071
but that did not affect in any way their hunting/killing capabilities, that part is something that is independent.
Uhh, I dunno man, I saw a video of a cat playing the keyboard once, seemed pretty smart to me
We have had to baby-proof all of the door levers to all of the rooms we don’t want our cats getting into.
One cat in particular is very long, and can easily just stand up on his hind legs and wrap his paws around the door lever, and then pull. I’ve watched him do it. He was looking at me through the glass door, and moving slowly and deliberately as he did it. As if to say “Hey, dad — you know this thing here above my head? It’s called a door lever. Let me show you how it works.” Yes, he was just a kitten at the time, and still long enough to pull down on door levers.
A cat we had a number of years ago realized that the doors we had in our house in Belgium usually didn’t close too well, and she could reach under the door and pull it open. She did the same thing with cabinets in the kitchen. She taught her daughters how to do the same thing. We had to get a lot better about fully closing and latching our doors, so that she didn’t just pull them open all the time.
I guess my cat considers me inedible.
The maps of their ranges is quite fascinating:
This all gets messed up when new animals arrive or the habits if existing ones change, but it seems back into a new mostly stable pattern eventually.
I wonder what difference more human slaves being home all day over the last 18 months has made to all this, and how much disruption there is as we slip back into something more like older patterns.
They're not likely to care for us to not be there unless you change their meal time, reduce attention they want or go back to sending them outside all day. Our new feline took a particular liking to one of my boys when he was home from Uni and seemed put out when he left - she took to meowing in his room for the first week.
Dogs however love having the pack always there, and will be really put out as people go back to full-time office work.
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.”
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).
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.’”
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.
I strongly recommend this book for a deeper understanding: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CO34KU6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... There are MANY species that have gone extinct or are approaching extinction because of cats.
This natural feedback cycle has been around for millions of years, just not the human element.
So to repeat: Please keep your cats inside!
And again, when bird populations reach equilibrium the cats can't find more. That's independent of cat populations.
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.
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.
In places where cats are essentially an invasive species, not native at all, this is different of course.
The feedback cycle is broken where the cats have ample food supplied and the cat population no longer depends on the prey population.
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.
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] https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/DUGe2BbORXOIQyQgmD65wA....
[2] https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/x0vVRDOYSJK9oaGArGUVfA....
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).
She still "hunts" birds but hasn't been able to catch one since I put the collar on. I suppose eventually she will get one, but it helps immensely.
The only issue is about once every two months she loses the collar (it has break away elastic) and it has to be replaced.
My experience with this cat is quite different from the article’s author’s. She is very sweet and meek and cuddly. But she has free access to the outdoors and until she was about 14 yo it was quite common to wake up to a cat asleep next to me but with half a rat or such in the bed.
Now she doesn’t go outside I’ve discovered that there are other cats in the neighborhood.
The good news is we have fresh bed linens every night. But I don’t think all that washing is good for the environment.
At least the good news is it’s deliberate. The plumbing is otherwise operating properly
The thing is cats have good senses so I am wondering if they have an attention issue where something else distract them or they have a perception issue so they don't realize how closer a car is.
My current cat is afraid of cars, so I hope she stays away from the roads.
What our feline friends do when we’re not looking - they are ruling the world!
I'd have to walk a half mile to get a neighbor in rifle range; we need outdoor catS, plural, to keep the rodent population dented around the house. It doesn't "keep mice out" to have 3 cats around, but it noticeably reduces their numbers and comfort level when they come after the sacks of feed.
We're down to one cat this summer, and she's aged past much hunting but is too dignified and settled for us to upset her with new kittens.
From what I've been told, in the UK, shelters won't let you adopt a cat unless you agree that it will be allowed outside.
In the US, many/most shelters won't let you adopt a cat unless you agree that it will NOT be allowed outside.
Part of this is likely due to more cars being driven at higher speeds by inattentive people in the States (that's the main reason I don't let my cats out, I have seen way too much roadkill in my life and it sucks every time, those deaths are not always quick). Some other reasons not to let them out would be increased chance of disease, unwanted interactions with neighbors and the needless decimation of local wildlife.
The article mentions nothing about the setup or tech, and I'd love to find out what my cats are up to before they come home with another rabbit or bird (probably sleeping).
> To answer this, I contacted Tractive, manufacturers of GPS trackers for cats and dogs.
It lost connection pretty regular, probably because she crawled thru some bushes or undergrowth. The battery lasted only 1 day, so every day we needed to catch her (In summer she doesn't come home except for maybe 1 hour a day or so?) and recharge the collar. The battery is not removable, so you have to take the whole collar from the cat and put it on again later. This was pretty annoying and we definitely got some scratches from her.
Though now I have a KML file with over 1mm data points, so this is very cool. But in the end the battery capacity was annoying and the daily recharge was too much of a hassle, so we didn't renewed our subscription.
They seem to have a new tracker generation, maybe the battery problem is already fixed? I don't know.