As I was reading through
my March/April issue of Audubon Magazine I came upon an article entitled “10
Things You Can Do For Birds”. There were a number of
good suggestions in this article, many of which I was already doing—however,
suggestion number 9 struck a real chord.
It was about letting your pet cat run free outside.
Even though I do not have a cat of my own, I have had two loveable "grandcats"
I do not have a cat—not because I don’t
like them (actually, I love cats), but somehow a cat seems to be one of the few
domesticated animals that my family never adopted. However, we do have a neighborhood cat that has adopted our
yard as his own personal hunting ground.
I have never personally seen him take a bird, although I have often seen
him stalking something in our flowerbeds.
Given the amount of time he spends in our yard I’m sure he has captured
his share of mice and birds. I do not fault him for this, since he is just following his natural instincts. However, I do fault the irresponsible owners that let him run free.
Here is a verbatim quote
from the Audubon Magazine article which gives some amazing statistics:
“9. Curb
your Cats
Keep
your felines inside or in outdoor “kitty condos”. America’s estimated 150 million outdoor cats kill serious
numbers of birds—up to 3.7 billion a year, according to a new report
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird
Center. Tiny radio transmitters
affixed to gray catbird nestlings in the Washington, D.C. suburbs by scientists
from the Smithsonian Institution and Towson University showed that predators
killed about 80 percent of those birds after they fledged (more than was
sustainable) and that cats were responsible for nearly half of those
deaths. House cats in the
so-called “kittycam” study by University of Georgia and National Geographic
Society researchers carried tiny video cameras. The footage shocked the cats’ owners, revealing 44 percent
of their pets were cut-throats; those cats averaged one kill every 17 hours
outdoors.”
Cats make wonderful and
entertaining pets. If you’ve ever
played with your cat by tossing a kitty toy in front of it and twitching the
toy to watch him pounce, you know that a cat’s natural instinct is to
hunt. When kitty is allowed to
roam outside, its natural instincts kick in and it becomes a hunter, pouncing on
and killing any small creature that moves—just
like the kitty toy.
Not only is a free roaming
kitty a danger to the neighborhood birds—the cat itself is
then at risk. A free roaming cat
is in danger of being hit by a car, mauled by dogs, other cats, and other wild
animals that may live in your area, such as coyotes, raccoons, etc. Your beloved pet is also at risk of ingesting
poisons that may have been put out for rodents, or by catching and eating
rodents that have ingested the rodenticides. Plus, other animals carry diseases that can be transmitted
to your pet. It can also pick up
fleas and ticks that carry their own set of diseases that are transmissible to
other animals, such as Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus.
So, if you love your cat,
for its sake and for the sake of the neighborhood birds, please be a
responsible cat owner and keep your cat inside.
Submitted by Gay Schroer,
World Bird Sanctuary Volunteer/Photographer
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