This cute little white kitten may seem all cuddly and warm now but after it’s grown and allowed to roam outside on its own it can become a vicious killer of native wildlife. Having your pets neutered and confining them inside may help solve the problem of domestic and feral cats taking of quail and rabbits.
I find it quite interesting that one of the national television networks recently ran a piece about how domestic cats are taking a toll on song birds and other wildlife animals. They offered some very convincing evidence that roving house cats as well as feral cats are killing a significant number of animals that we outdoorsmen value very highly. I feel sure that the ire of a lot of the owners of domestic cats will take great offense at these figures that project our warm and fuzzy little house pets as being vicious killers.
It’s about time that some of us well meaning cat owners became aware that our well-fed and pampered cats are in fact, causing harm to a good number of our native wildlife.
We live in a wooded area with our closest human neighbors being maybe a quarter of a mile away. The surrounding woodlands abound with songbirds, deer, bear, squirrels, chipmunks and a host of other native wildlife.
Our pet cat is, for the most part, kept inside and is extremely well fed. However we do occasionally let the cat outside to wander around in the woods. Sometimes the cat spends the night outside and seems to be comfortable in doing this. The TV program that portrayed pet house cats as being vicious killers of wildlife really hit home when we began to realize that the little “gifts” that our pet cat brought home to display to its owners contained ample evidence that our domestic cat was killing a significant number of our prized wildlife.
A partial list of these little gifts included voles, field mice, chipmunks, an adult gray squirrel, moles, adult short tailed weasels (an invasive species), and a scattering of feathers that indicated that our cat was killing songbirds. The real “eye-opener” for us was when our cat brought in the remnants of an endangered eastern flying squirrel. Maybe our fuzzy little house cat wasn’t as domesticated as we’d like to believe.
Being brought up in a very small eastern North Carolina town we’d always had pet house cats that spent most of their waking moments outdoors. We always kept the cat’s outside food dishes filled and felt there was little need for the cats to kill wildlife to supplement their very ample food at home. The cats occasionally brought in remnants of birds and such and we didn’t think much about it. That’s just the way cats operated.
In those days it was practically unheard of to have one’s pets spayed or neutered and all of our female cats bore lots of kittens. Our neighbor’s cats did too. By the fall of the year the small town was overrun with what we locals called “our barn cats.” Before long we couldn’t begin to feed all these animals and the now-feral cats were depending on whatever they could catch and kill to live.
Animal control officers were unheard of in those days and when the numbers of feral cats became a little too obvious, neighbors began to complain that the cats were killing too many songbirds. The most logical solution to the problem of too many cats was to hire us kids to control the number of cats running around town.
With our trusty little 22 rifles we went out cat hunting. To help us out with the cost of ammo (a box of fifty, 22 long rifle cartridges cost 50 cents then) we were awarded trophy fees of a quarter for every cat we killed. We seldom had an over abundance of cats for the following year and no one ever complained about our methods of controlling the problem. We of the Town Cat Controlling Brigade were very sure that our shots at these cats were all head-shots and meant instant death to the animals.
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission also recognized the problems with too many predators (feral cats, hawks, foxes, wildcats, feral dogs, etc.) and actually (and discretely) looked the other way at our efforts to control some of these predators. A very fine and understanding game warden in those days was a fellow named Carleton Spain and he mentioned to us that such and such an area outside town was developing a feral cat problem.
Apparently some of the neighbors had attempted to limit the numbers of the barn cats by taking the half-grown kittens out into the wooded areas outside town and just dumping them to forage on their own. It was obvious that the numbers of bobwhite quail and rabbits were decreasing as the numbers of feral cats increased.
On the other hand, the NCWRC game wardens didn’t take kindly to fire lighting deer at night so we of the Town Cat Controllers Brigade always made sure that Warden Spain was made aware that we were on a reconnaissance mission out on the Sparrow or Campbell’s Creek Roads before we took to the roadways in whatever vehicle we had at our disposal. With rifles and spotlights in hand we’d cruise the roads looking for and killing feral cats. The cat populations declined dramatically and the quail and rabbit populations grew larger. Predator control worked!
Even though the American Veterinary Association approves of a well placed bullet to the head of an animal needing to be humanely euthanized, the general public shudders at the thought of shooting animals as a humane way to “put an animal down.” In today’s world it’s considered to be a far better way of controlling too many cats (or other animals) to simply have these pets neutered and kept penned up and well fed within our homes.
Our domestic cats are one of the few animals that will kill simply for the love of killing and, as I can well attest, they will kill native wildlife that we’d like to see around our homes or on our farms.
There are usually free clinics in local areas that offer to neuter your pets either free or for a very nominal fee. No doubt this is the best way to control the populations of pet animals without having to use more controversial methods of animal control.
I can’t think of anyone who appreciates that keeping the numbers of feral cats down more that our North Carolina quail and rabbit hunters. Along with such things as habitat loss, insecticides, herbicides, and other known predators on small game, feral cats play an important role the loss of quail and rabbits.
The one thing I don’t understand is how trap-neuter-release reduces the population of reproducing feral cats more than trap-euthanize. Both methods seem to reduce the amount of reproducing cats in the wild equally. I suppose t-n-r seems more ‘humane’ to cat lovers, however, it is not ‘humane’ to the many species of wildlife that neutered cats kill. What is deemed ‘humane’ is in the eye of the beholder I guess.
On the other hand, I found something that DOES work, and works well, and works fast (well, relative to the years it takes trying to reason with deceitful and lying cat-lovers that accomplishes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING). Where I live cat-lovers have learned that _ALL_ cats, stray and feral, collared or not, ear-tipped or not (because TNR con-artist liars now just clip cats' ears only, WITHOUT sterilizing or vaccinating them, to protect their hoarded cats from being trapped and euthanized), _ALL_ their cats are humanely shot on sight and buried whenever found away from supervised confinement.
The ONLY thing that works is destroying any of their cats found outdoors off their property. They either learn to stop getting more cats that die under the wheels of cars or from animal attacks, or they finally learn how to be a responsible pet owner, respectful neighbor, and learn to keep their invasive species animal under confined supervision, as it should be. Win win win all around. You can either destroy their cat for them humanely, or let their lack of concern for their cat cause it to die inhumanely. By destroying their cat for them humanely you are showing them that you care more about their cat than even they do. A bullet is by far the most humane death that any free-roaming cat will ever meet. Anything else is all inhumanely downhill from there. Their only other options are being hit by cars, environmental poisons, cat & animal attacks, disease and parasites, freezing, etc., etc.
You can't train a cat to stay home but I found that, in time, you CAN train a cat-owner into being a responsible pet-owner and a respectable neighbor. Most of them are so phenomenally stupid, disrespectful, and criminally irresponsible though that you have to make at least 12-15 of their cats permanently disappear before they even start to figure out what they've been doing wrong all during their sorry, useless, and pathetic lives.
If you live in an area where its not legal to use firearms to destroy any animal that is threatening the health and safety of you, your family, your animals, or property (as it *IS* legal in most every area of the nation -- shoot to maim is animal cruelty but shoot to kill is a perfectly legal way to humanely destroy any nuisance animal on your own property); then check into laws regarding air-rifles with ballistics speeds of 700-1200 fps and using pointed vermin-pellets in no-firearms zones. Many of the newer ones even come with their own sound-suppressor designs built-in, being specifically designed for shooting vermin cats in urban areas, the demand is that great. Failing that, then there's always the SSS and TDSS Cat Management Programs that are exploding in popularity worldwide. Shoot, Shovel, & Shut-Up; or Trap, Drown, Shovel, & Shut-Up. Both methods are legal on every square foot of this earth. No local laws were violated if it never happened! (Where cats have already learned to evade all trapping methods, then inexpensive generic 1-adult-strength acetaminophen (overseas a.k.a. paracetamol) pain-relievers are a more species specific vermin poison. But you really need to retrieve and dispose of that carcass safely so that native wildlife won't die from the many diseases cats spread even after their death.)
I don't see anyone dumping cats where I live anymore. They don't even adopt more than can be kept under lock & key 24/7. When driving through the area I don't see even one cat on anyone's doorsteps anymore. I always keep an eye out to see if there are more free-roaming cats that will have to be shot one day. And if I'll have to leave fish-oil trails on all the roadsides again, leading right to my IR surveillance system and laser-sighted rifle. (Got more than 70% of the hundreds of them in the area this way, VERY effective.)
Leaving ANY of their invasive species cat outside in my area means instant death for that cat. You'd think everyone else could learn from this simple lesson. The quickest way to solve an unwanted animal and irresponsible pet-owner problem is to let everyone know that you will quickly and humanely destroy every last one of their unwanted, uncared-for, or unsupervised animals for them. They either grow up fast or, far more plausible, dump their animals elsewhere to become someone else's problem.
You just can't be an enabler of criminally irresponsible spineless and heartless idiots -- or they remain that way. (At least where you live, anyway.)