"As an invasive species and superpredator, they do considerable ecological damage. In Australia, hunting by cats helped to drive at least 20 native mammals to extinction, and continues to threaten at least 124 more. Their introduction has caused the extinction of at least 33 endemic species on islands throughout the world. Feral and domestic cats kill billions of birds in the United States every year, where songbird populations continue to decline."
This, incidentally, is why I don't take people who make the "wind turbines kill birds" argument seriously. It's not false, but the number is very small compared to those killed by domestic cats and window collisions. So the loss is minimal provided they're not in a breeding area for an endangered species.
>Current research suggests that the overwhelming majority of bat fatalities are caused by collisions with turbine blades. There is some evidence to suggest that a phenomenon known as barotrauma may result in a small proportion of bat deaths, as well. Barotrauma involves tissue damage to air-containing structures, such as lungs, caused by rapid or excessive pressure change. Air pressure changes can occur at the edges of moving turbine blades and may help explain some bat fatalities.
>Between 2000 and 2011, an estimated 650,000 to 1.3 million bats have died from collisions with wind turbines in the United States and Canada (Arnett and Baerwald 2013). Additionally, as many as 400,000 estimated fatalities may have occurred in 2012.
>in the U.S. and Canada, at least 24 species of bats have been reported as killed by wind turbines. The hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis) and silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans), all migratory tree bats, account for nearly 78% of the kills north of Mexico. The hoary bat accounts for 38% of the fatalities. A new study that looked at hoary bat mortality at wind energy facilities during 2014 revealed that populations of the species may plunge by a staggering 90 percent in the next 50 years if no action is taken.
>At some sites in the Midwest and Eastern U.S., species that are already battered by White-nose Syndrome (WNS), can account for up to 60% of wind-energy fatalities.
Two federally endangered species, the Hawaiian hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus semotus) and the Indiana myotis (Myotis sodalis), also have been killed by turbines.
This is not a good argument given that the victim populations typically are different species. The hawk population cares about cats eating songbirds just in so far that it removes some of their own food supply, not because it is threatened by cats.
There is also a big quality difference. Turbines kill raptors, eagles, storks and vultures. And some hunters kill huge amounts of migratory birds. You need to put all things together.
Birds know well that cats are dangerous. The real problem is the habitat loss and pesticides. The first force birds to nest in dangerous suboptimal places, where cats can catch them. The second makes them much more vulnerable to cats.
My understanding is that the idea that wind turbines kill birds in huge numbers is based on the original wind turbines. These were much smaller in radius and had many more blades and spun much faster.
Think of a giant farm water-pump windmill. Those things were bird blenders. Modern three blade wind turbines are a different beast, but many people have not caught up with the changes in engineering.
[ Also, some of the initial wind farms using the bird blenders (e.g. the Altamont Pass near Livermore, CA) were right on the Pacific Flyway, which is a massive migratory path. ]
I'm also thinking that birds will adapt because it seems like a relatively simple change in their behavior would fix the problem. Natural selection will play its course. The birds who are dumb enough to fly into wind turbines will get weeded out. Future generations of bird will be more fearful of wind turbines. This kind of selection can start to take place over a relatively short span of time. See peppered moth evolution [1].
How long would it take for natural selection to play its course though? Moths live for maybe a year, while a bird might live for a few decades.
And the soot from the industrial revolution would've covered the entire environment for a peppered moth, whereas many birds fly over incredibly large distances, which wind turbines will only cover a small fraction of.
The only effective solution I have found so far to prevent my cat from hunting too many small animals is to have her wear a bell. Is seems that prey are scared away and manage to escape. Before we put it on we used to find dead mice, lizards and birds everyday in the garden or in front of the door...
I've spent a lot of time living around wild cats, and I've yet to see a cat hunt a bird. Of course cats do hunt birds, but I'm very curious about how these figures are reached, in this case, how reliable those isotope studies are.
Another anecdote - my cat was 100% indoor first 6-8 month I had him. Then I started to let him outside during day and he started immediately to try to hunt. His first attempts were hilarious, like trying to hide just by laying down and flap around with his tail from excitement, birds would look funny at him and just casually jump away if he got too close. He also wore a bell all of the time, which made it even more impossible. But after half a year he started to consistently kill 1-3 animals per season, birds and mice. One time he killed a huge pigeon. And thats only the kills I know of, since he brought them back home to show off. Not saying that can account for billions, but thats just one cat who had everything against him and also was well fed at home.
Allow me to contribute another experience. At various times, I've lived alongside twelve different pet cats, owned by family members who were also avid birdwatchers; usually, the garden would be crowded with birds at the feeders.
In terms of individuals among the cats, I guess about half have tried to stalk and catch the birds, and of those probably about half were effective. But in terms of impact, that seemingly small quarter punched above their weight to be a total menace. Carcasses of the birds and other animals (even rabbits!) would keep showing up until they were stopped with a bell collar. If left to their own devices, I don't have trouble imagining they'd put a huge dent in the local ecosystem.
For this reason we walk our cat. With some training (and some - not all - cats) you can even get rid of the leash and let the animal roam whilst maintaining visual contact.
It's very different from walking a dog. Ours usually hides in his favourite spot and just sits there for 20 minutes straight, then takes his usual route, sniffing and rubbing his face on places where apparently other cats have been.
The upside is that you only need to do that once every 2-3 days.
Now that we're on quarantine he's been calling out other cats from the balcony. Fortunately on Monday we'll be allowed outside, so he'll get the chance to catch up with his buddies - or actually - their scents.
I'm what you would call an accidental crazy cat person that started off feeding one feral cat but was unable to catch and get fixed and wound up multiplying (finally have it under control). One of the cats was great and would just naturally walk with you. We live about a block away from a grocery store and it would walk with us to the start of the parking lot where we'd just tell him stay and he lays down and waits until we come back and walks with us back to the house. People would always be amused seeing this and how much it resembled the behavior of a dog. Probably one of the best cats we've had.
My family owner over 20 cats (some died) before I turned 18. Same reason: we didn’t fix the first female. My favorite cat would always take walks with me around the block. She passed away while I was in college. Really showed me how cool of a pet a cat can be.
I walk my two cats every morning, neither use a leash.
Trained them to run to the front door if they get scared. I use sounds like snapping or clapping for re-direction or warnings.
They’re even trained to return to the front door when I say “Haus”.
Then a treat when they are good, which is everyday!
that's awesome! my dog is under voice control and is soccially appropriate/reserved around other dogs, so i can walk her without a leash. i've been thinking about trying to train my cat to walk with us (on a leash, as she's skittish outside right now), but haven't had the gumption to do so yet.
Is there any ethical and easy way to keep cats out of my yard?
I live in an suburban single family neighborhood where the houses are close together. (5000sq lots) There are 3 or 4 different solitary cats I see slinking through my yard from time to time. They all seem like outdoor house cats as opposed to feral cats.
I try to hiss at them and scare them off but they come back. Is there a method that will encourage them to avoid my yard?
You have to get a number 2 of a big cat. So at your local zoo ask for tiger dump. This will leave your property untouched, I have done this myself several times.
> they crap in my vegetable patch, and it contains toxoplasmosis
Each cat can release toxoplasm parasites once, maybe for less than two weeks in 12 years, if healthy
If you have an old cat in your garden is removing toxoplasmosis (killing rodents that act also as hosts and crap also over your kale and under your carrots).
If you kill this cat or chase it off your garden, then new cats will apear and refill the territory. Think that you could be increasing the risk, in fact. Not to mention that people can pick up toxoplasm perfectly in a supermarket can of soup / rodent dance-floor. If you want cats out of your vegetables install sprinklers.
If you are concerned about the cat effect in birds, just add more natural areas and tall trees
I have the opposite of your problem, live in a city where there is a huge rat problem, I let my cats go outside, and they poop in my neighbor's garden.
I bought him a motion activated lawn sprinkler, which did work, but he was still angry the cats would come anywhere on his property.
There are also little motion activated cans of pet corrector, too.
There are products that are supposed to deter cats, though I don't know how well they work or whether there are associated risks to other creatures. I remember one that claimed it was based on lion dung, and would make the cats think someone much bigger and scarier already owned the territory...
I understand it's your right to control your own yard, but if someone trapped my own cat and dumped it off at the pound, I wouldn't be too happy.
If it were my cat who kept being dumped off at the pound, after being attracted to the cat food you purposefully left out to trap him, I'm guessing you'd start having some strange issues with your cable / fiber line constantly being cut.
Vice Media did a video about the impact of the feral cat population on Australian wildlife, and the hunters/trappers that are working to cut down on their population[1]. Some of the imagery can be a little brutal if you're averse to that sort of thing, but I found it to be fairly interesting from a conservation methods perspective. It reminds me a little of the work being done in the American South on trying to keep down wild pig and python populations.
There are similar efforts to reduce wild dog populations in Australia, which Vice has also covered[1].
One thing that stuck with me after watching both videos is that Youtube posts a content warning on the video showing dogs being hunted, but not the feral cat equivalent.
From a conservation perspective, I'm skeptical that hunting dogs and cats with traps and rifles will have much of an impact on Australian wildlife.
The fact that cats hunt have been helpful to me in the past. Twice while I was living in an apartment building all of my neighbors had problems with mice. Once in New York and once in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts before my girlfriend came to live with me, I would see the mice. After she came to live with me with her cats, never saw them again. The same when we moved to NYC. While my neighbors all had rotten issues I never saw one mouse or rat in my apartment the entire 8 years living there.
I used to battle with mice all the time at my little cabin in the woods and then a neighbor moved in with a cat that "hunts" outside my cabin all night. Haven't had a mouse problem in years. I've never seen a dead bird anywhere and the cat never seems to hunt during the day.
If the dog is already biting you, eyes and dick/balls work.
If not, you can try to out-aggress the dog, usually dogs aren't stupid and won't attack people who seem to be intimidating. ...on the other hand some breeds have had this instinct bred out of them and will try to kill anything of any size with no regard to their own safety.
IMO what’s important isn’t merely whether something poses proximal danger to human life (which asks for immediate and more severe solutions), but whether something poses greater community burden on a level where it’s hard to trust an individual to self regulate.
Owning any equipment or process with bad waste or ecological burden should also require extra licensing under the same rationale.
Of course it’s an argument because we can simply license based on predictors of burden. Small dogs which are projected to fall below a risk tolerance threshold should have less licensing burden.
Similarly, different classes of vehicles get different licensing requirements; saying all cars are the same is just lazy, and a regulation meant for big risky entities being applied to small ones is what we call regulation moats. We have enough pet owners that we should be able to quantify risks and burdens for the purpose of licensing. Here we have an article which provides empiricism on the community burden from cats.
I'm talking about whether anecdotes of safe dogs is an argument that we might need different levels of licensing. Yes it's an argument, especially in the face of empiricism on the community burden of cats.
It's as much about personality as physical threat.
Cats are far more skittish around people as a rule. There are practically zero stray/outdoor cats that will attack a person unless they're backed into a corner and provoked. The same thing isn't true for dogs, some dogs are simply aggressive.
It seems more likely that a free-roaming cat will get rabies than someones 6 lbs lap dog. Especially because cats (at least in my area) don't require licensing or rabies shots like dogs do.
Cats do too, maybe not as frequently, but I think the important factor is, that the damage is not as severe in most cases.
It probably is related to the size of the animals. If there would be more tiger-sized cats and more Chihuahua sized-dogs it would most likely be different.
I think "not as frequently" is a understatement. Cats are orders of magnitudes less dangerous to humans than dogs are, it's not even something I have to think about when I walk outside. Meanwhile, often times, the only thing that stops a dog from attacking me is the gate of their owner's house. Even that won't stop them from running at me and barking at me though. And yes, I've walked by a house with no gate before and two dogs just came after me and attacked my legs, one even biting me. I'm no dog hater or anything, in fact I like dogs, but dogs are only appreciable if they're on your side. I shudder at the thought that anyone would be able to get a pitbull and do whatever they please with it without licensing or repercussions for letting it loose on the neighborhood children.
EDIT: Forgot to say, it don't matter even one bit what size the dog is or how small it is. If they aren't on your side, they're capable and very willing to bark at and attack you.
http://newanimalcontrol.org/newsystem.shtml proposes a sensible dog licensing system that "gauge[s] the competence of those who want to take their dogs out onto the public streets. Those who can prove that they have perfect voice control over their dogs can become licensed to walk them off lead, while others may be forbidden to take their dogs out among the public at all. It all depends on the animal's behavior and the owner's demonstrated ability to control him."
As a cat owner I do not understand why the "indoor" dog needs license either. I would mandate the leash at all times on all dogs > 15kg but the license... If that's not a "fighter" dog the license requirement is just stupid.
Out of curiosity, is a "fighter dog" anything like an "assault rifle" to you per chance? I.e. poorly/subjectively defined and amorphous to the point of becoming a functional drop-in for "thing I don't think someone else needs"?
Not trying to derail or start a flamewar, but wanted to point out that there is a kind of rhetorical distinction-without-a-difference-making at work there, that I've noticed tends to be completely innocent and well-intentioned, but left unchecked for what it is leads to some absolutely farcical legislative outcomes.
Dog fighting is already illegal; and licensing on whether a dog meets some nebulous, ill-defined criteria by which it is judged to be a "fighter dog" or not seems ill-advised as a productive expenditure of governmental oversight.
That I think the same logic already extends to firearms is tangential to the topic at hand, but I figured I'd toss it out there anyway in the interests of dispelling any speculation as to there being secretive ulterior motives.
Anywho, back on topic; I let my boys out onto a woefully undersized porch, but we have a stray cat colony next door, and no fence. So I'm leery of letting them wander around too much. Especially since we had a scare with one of them over a rather strong reaction to a an immunization booster given too early because we couldn't find paperwork for one of them having gotten a rabies shot. I've been gunshy a bit because the vet that readministered the vaccination was totally prepared to amputate the limb before biopsy results came in in and if it weren't for getting a second opinion our boy may be a tripod now.
I find any law that leads to something like that to be a rather antagonistic application of force, and requirement to induce pain and suffering. Yes, I collect immunization records like a hawk now, but injection site sarcoma fears are not something I wish on anyone.
That does seem silly - dogs font need licenses where I live, and given that mine are never out without a leash and aren’t bolters, I’m darned glad I don’t have that kind of ridiculous nanny-statism to deal with.
Those licenses pay for the dog pound, and help the local govt control the number of dogs. You are only allowed 2 registered dogs, all dogs must be registered etc...
Wait, where do you live that doesn't require licensing for cats? Licensing and registration is an important intervention for control of rabies and animal overpopulation, as well as facilitating the return of lost pets. Everywhere I've lived in the US, both cats and dogs have to be licensed. Owners have to provide proof of rabies vaccination, and registration costs more for animals that haven't been spayed or neutered.
Animals do deserve to have it good. First, their basic needs like food and water should be taken care of. Then self-fulfillment and medical care. After that, higher philosophical concerns such as freedom from government registration.
But that's in general. Specifically, registering indoor pets does nothing to prevent pets from being abused. What it does is satisfy the state's innate desire to assert control, and create a fakejob for a bureaucrat to administer the registration.
In Seattle, the real reason is to collect fees to run the Seattle animal shelter and animal control. I appreciate knowing that if somehow my cat gets out someone could return him to the animal shelter where they'll scan him chip and contact me.
My guess is it's more about liability - if a dog is involved in an incident, you can prove who the owner is and potentially hold them liable (depending on the circumstances, of course).
I would if it made sense, but it doesn't, unfortunately
Dogs are more dangerous than cats for humans, that's enough to justify why to own a cat you don't need a license while to own a 70 pounds dog you do.
I live in a country, Italy, where you don't need a license to own dogs, but I can clearly see why they aren't needed for cats where dog licensing is mandatory.
My cat doesn't care about wild life at all. She spends a lot of time in the garden and birds even have learned that they can walk near her without any issues.
My cat catches mice, birds, baby rabbits, lizards, snakes. Half the time she eats the heads off the mouse / baby rabbit -- the other half of the time she brings them in the house to play with. She is a murderer, but she is a cuddly murderer.
The local rabbits learned the same thing about our dog, he just loved to chase them away to see them run and then just strutted back proudly. He had no intention or drive to actually catch them.
The rabbits got wise of this in a week or two and just took a quick sprint and resumed eating instead of running all the way to the woods =)
* The cat studied were were not randomly selected; they were chosen by "local volunteers". There may be confounding variables that explain part of the effect and so turn the observed effects from being statistically significant to not being statistically significant.
* The data on kills was self-reported, allowing bias to creep in.
* All the cats were English-speaking.
* Only 10 un-neutered pet cats were studied. I don't know if being neutered would increase, decrease, or have no effect on the kill rate, but the subject is not discussed.
I also question the conclusion that cats have a significant impact on local fauna.
* The average kill rate for a pet cat was (roughly) less than two animals per week, which doesn't seem very high. I'm left with the feeling that the authors had to resort to killings/area to make the results impressive.
* The authors did not report on the total size of the home ranges of cats compared to total area. So, for example, if the ratio was 1:1000, then so what? If the ratio was 1:20, then house cat might have a significant affect on local fauna.
Finally, I have a question about the presentation of the data: Figure 2b does not indicate that "75% of cats spent 90% of their time in disturbed habitats". The graph indicates that 500+ (out of 875 cats) spent between 95% and 100% of their time in developed habitats. Perhaps the y-axis is mislabeled, but even if it is, the graph does not match what the authors say.
The problem is they don't really target invasive species, except maybe squirrels, from what I can see. They don't seem very interested in pigeons for example, while they clearly chase and sometimes kill nightingale, robins, magpies, and many other little birds around, lizards too, probably some butterflies who didn't ask for it too, all of them participate actively in the ecosystem health
Of course animals like cats will kill more in a given area if they don't stray out. I also don't see very much of a problem with that, given that most densely populated neighbourhoods have a want for large amounts of rodents and birds.
Occasionally I burn their latrines cause these diseases scare me to death. NO NOT FEED RACCOONS! Walt Disney is lying to you -- they are nasty creatures to have around.
It's amazing how adoptable cats are both to domesticated life and to life in the wild. Is there a way for evolution to work its magic and for species hunted by cats to develop countermeasures?
This is the way evolution works. The species of the future don't come from responsive adaptation, but from not dying before reproduction. Now with a new cause of death, those species are in danger of no longer existing like nearly all species across history.
> "The big concern is where we have an overlap of people and cats with native species that are small and vulnerable," Kays said.
Kind of the key question here. Does your local jurisdiction have native species that live in towns and cities that are vulnerable? Some places are different than others. In some places the typical small city bird may even be an introduced species.
In New Zealand for example yes absolutely. Other places maybe not so much...
It is absolutely wild to me how laissez faire Kiwis are about the right to have their cats roam while at the same time being so militant against other mammals (including dogs!).
You probably don't notice them, all little birds, insects, lizards, hedgehogs (I saw a cat mauling one once, same with lizards and birds),..
Actually, in my city, near woods, there's a small outdoor refuge for "wild cats" as the woman I talked to call them. She was feeding them, so I wonder how wild they are and how much they harm the local ecosystem, on top of all the other pets
I think there's an unhealthy addiction and love for pets. If you like animals, you could let them live normally in their natural habitat, and observe them once in a while. I hope this mentality will change
Domestic cats have a natural habitat in households. Owners who keep their cats indoors or on leash outside don't impact wildlife. Cultural education of not letting cats roam is likely to have more progress than arguing for banning pets. Besides, staying indoors is healthier for cats anyways
it's kind of weird to talk about the "natural habitat" of an animal that has been domesticated over thousands of years. it doesn't seem obvious that the modern cat (or especially dog) would be better off in the "wild" than living with humans.
What I mean is like, if your cat kills a house finch that means something different depending on where you live. In you're in Western NA your cat killed a native bird, but if you're in Eastern NA or Hawaii, it killed an introduced bird which competes with native birds.
In the worst cases (ie. NZ) your cat may be killing literally endangered birds.
I've been bitten badly by a cat -- he gets angry when he's hungry. When I got up to pee at 4am, he was all friendly -- when I went back to bed, he lunged at my foot and chomp. That was like the first or second time I spent the night; only my gf can actually touch him without getting slashed up. I got lucky, but cat mouths are nasty and bites typically get very badly infected.
True, most cats are very prudent about human interaction -- most strays will avoid you. But if a stray has been taught to expect food, or gets cornered, they can do a surprising amount of damage
"Cat bites are more likely to introduce bacteria deep into the wound, causing serious infection and damage to tendons and ligaments."
They don't cite a statistical source for this. It sounds like it's based on the preceding fact that cat fangs are sharper and can reach deeper.
The study they link to cover statistics of patients treated for cat bites, but I wonder what percentage of overall cat bites get infected. Most cases that don't probably never reach an emergency room, I would assume.
that's a socialization problem - your cat needs more social training. it's harder (longer, more time, more effort) when they're older but still possible.
you can find training regimens and videos online, but basically, you need to find a motivating factor for the cat (food, play, grooming, etc.) and train out from that.
i volunteered at a kitten nursery for a while helping socialize rescues. i've seen cats go from completely vicious to humans to being pettable and loving. not all cats can make that much progress though.
Understatement of the century. As I said, it's not my cat, but anyway, he was rescued from a very abusive situation as an adult, has diabetes and a voracious appetite.
I wasn't posting here to get cat advice: I've lived with them my whole life and have nurtured several stray kittens into pleasant companions. I was responding to the notion that cats are ambivalent to human existence and wouldn't bother to harm us.
I live in a city that has a large wild rabbit population. It surprised me when I first moved here. They are very cute and pose no threat to anything besides weeds/grass.
The city also has a large variety of songbirds, which people generally like.
On a low level, I don't mind when I see cats patrolling the block. They're little human friends. They sometimes sit with me on the porch. However, I do think it's a bad practice to have an outdoor cat. I adopted a cat very recently and I will be keeping it indoors (against its wishes). It will have to be content killing virtual prey.
Google has (or had) a stray cat feeding station at the Plex. When birders complained, the security threatened the birders if "anything happened to the cats." The Plex is located next door to wetlands containing two endangered species that are at risk of predation.
Something I haven't seen data on is how much domestic cat predation compares with population change from habitat loss/modification. The population density of some bird species increases in suburban areas where domestic cats are likely to be present. I suspect the impact of outdoor cats (at least on North American songbirds) is overstated.
Can confirm, my cat kills all the time. Birds, rabbits, frogs. If something moves in my backyard, it will eventually be killed. In the summer when doors are open she actually drags in dying, bleeding animals from time to time. And under prey drive she's a completely different animal, scary and aggressive AF.
You ask how much wildlife there is in urban and suburban areas to begin with. The wildlife that lives there is all generalist, if a cat takes a mouse, squirrel, starling or blackbird it's a bit bloody but not really important in the great scheme of things.
Zealandia in Wellington, New Zealand has been a key part of a massive change in suburban wildlife. The changes made have resulted in many more birds (including quite rare ones) in the centre of town.
https://www.visitzealandia.com/
What is this mass psychosis of feeling the urge to own a dog or cat anyway? And how it comes, that environmentalists don't get loud on the harm on nature caused by domestic cats and dogs?
I think it's a lighthearted reference to studies which have demonstrated possible, albeit minor, psychological and physiological effects on humans after infection with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite [1].
In rodent models, infection appears to exert effects which make the rodent more likely to be killed and eaten by felines in order to complete the infection cycle of the parasite in the digestive tract of the feline.
The suggestion being that similar effects might be occurring in humans, particularly cat owners who are likely to be carriers of the parasite, manifesting in increased positive behaviours towards the cat.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. A topic this is emotional enough as it is, with people hating other people's favorite animals and other people hating back. If you post something cheap and nasty like this, you're dropping a lit match into a petrol tank. We need better than that.
I apologize for starting a stirring the pot, that was not my intent. It's more serious issue than people give it credit. Anyone who spent significant time in the Hawaiian islands may be able to speak to large herds of domestic cats roaming the islands.
The comment is not designed to take a thread into a flamewar, it's a legitimate grievance based on living in habitats destroyed by released domestic cats. I don't hate cats, I own an indoor cat. Removing them from a habitat they do not belong to is no different than government agencies encouraging the removal of snakehead fish from U.S. waterways. They're both destructive, predatory species hurting native species, the only underlying difference is that cats garner the irrational support of humans to exist in a feral/outdoor state and destroy with impunity (cuteness bias?).
As often happens, your later comment contains material that would have made for a more substantive comment originally.
This is one reason the guidelines include: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Cats are one hell of a divisive topic. (So are dogs, but I think less so.) It maybe doesn't quite sink to the pit with bicyclists vs. drivers but it's close.
I've had to deal with wild rodents in my garbage using violent (but less than lethal) means, but known house pets with collars or tags that belong to your neighbors? I mean, how much damage could a 7 pound cat possibly do to your property?
Seems passive aggressive to eliminate your neighbors pet. I'm not a social person, and I typically let me neighbors do as they please (as I want them to do with me) but if I have a problem with an animal I'll approach the owner.
If my neighbor kills my cat and makes my kids cry without talking to me about it first, I'm probably going to create problems for that neighbor that involve the local police department.
Probably not much. However if it was aggressive toward us or pissing on our patio furniture seats and did not appear to belong to anyone, that might be a different story. I'd actually probably just call animal control or trap it and release it somewhere far away.
> "CDC is aware of a very small number of pets, including dogs and cats, outside the United States reportedexternal icon to be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 after close contact with people with COVID-19. CDC has not received any reports of pets becoming sick with COVID-19 in the United States. To date, there is no evidence that pets can spread the virus to people.
The first caseexternal icon of an animal testing positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 in the United States was a tiger with a respiratory illness at a zoo in New York City. Samples from this tiger were taken and tested after several lions and tigers at the zoo showed signs of respiratory illness. Public health officials believe these large cats became sick after being exposed to a zoo employee who was actively shedding virus. This investigation is ongoing."
Maybe I'll say what a lot of people are already thinking but may not want to say out loud:
I don't care
Until someone can show me strong evidence that cat related hunting of this wildlife has a short or even long term affect on humans (through biodiversity loss of keystone species for example) than I think that the utility gained from enjoying the company of the local feline hunters is worth it. Frankly, I don't give a damn about pidgons or whatever else they're hunting until it impacts me directly. Shun my egoism with your Christian inspired morality all you want but at heart the vast majority of people are egoists in denial anyway.
Maybe I got the parasite as a serial cat owner and that's what's motivating me to talk this way but there seems to be an opposite parasite going around since many here are openly calling for folks to murder domestic house cats who are allowed to roam outside.
Part of what I'm articulating is based on my fundemental belief in anthropocentrism which I've never understood to be a bad word. Humans have more value-to-life than wild animals. The animals humans care about (like pets) have more value-to-life than pidgons. The alternative to this view (animal and human value to life is comparable) is veganism and you see how often that view shunned by the public at large.
Admittedly, nature is pretty messed up and it'd nice if house cats would be better about not causing their prey to suffer on the way out - but nature doesn't seem to care about morality so I'll give cats a pass as "not being ethical actors" on this one...
"As an invasive species and superpredator, they do considerable ecological damage. In Australia, hunting by cats helped to drive at least 20 native mammals to extinction, and continues to threaten at least 124 more. Their introduction has caused the extinction of at least 33 endemic species on islands throughout the world. Feral and domestic cats kill billions of birds in the United States every year, where songbird populations continue to decline."