5 ms·
I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this. Outside of birds, cats kill rodents. I live in rural Quebec, near farms, a mas
by b112 3y ago
I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this.
Outside of birds, cats kill rodents. I live in rural Quebec, near farms, a massive nature preserve, and a national park larger than small US states.
When I first moved here, I had no cat, and several other neighbours were new to the area. Old houses, not fresh builds, just changeover of owners... they too with no cats.
The first year I was here, I became aware of the problem, and started to lay traps. And I caught 100+ mice, sometimes several per day for months, all inside my house.
Once Spring arrived, I tried to find entrances, and did! I blocked them, but anyone that knows rodents, and owns wood houses, that won't help if you have an out of control, local colony, and once the winter comes, do they ever want in!
I spent 3+ years with traps, sometimes reducing the population a bit, but each winter more than 50 mice.
Then a neightbour got a siamese cat.
I now catch a mouse or two a year.
If you look at mouse breeding and brood numbers, and you live in a area with loads of food in the summer (near farms, nature), you need something like cats. It's not an option, it just isn't.
There's a reason farmers have loads of semi-wild cats in their barns. And both the mice they catch, and the cats that catch them, are invasive.
And with the hantavirus often touted as 50% lethal, you do NOT want the moral responsibility of trap and release, nor do you want mice in your house. At all.
And yes, it is in the local population.
- arcticbull 3y agoIf they only killed mice that would be a fun fact, but they also kill 20 billion small mammals a year, lol. The point was though that cats are killing all the birds, that they help a few people with a mouse problem is tangential at best to the topic at hand. I can accept that mice are a problem and cats are killing all the birds and small mammals at the same time. It’s kind of like saying DDT is fine actually because it helps a few farmers improve their crop yields. That it does, but it nukes the eagles from orbit too, and we have to look at this systemically. Once we accepted DDT as a problem we found alternative solutions. But there’s also localized solutions. A few spayed/neutered farm cats aren’t the end of the world.
- giantg2 3y agoThe outdoor neighborhood cats are the ones that are an issue. It sounds like promoting owl habitat would be a great targeted solution to mice problem without affecting small birds as much.
- dunefox 3y agoGreat Horned Owls apparently also kill cats, so that might be a perfect solution.
- b112 3y agothat they help a few people with a mouse problem is tangenti You like to eat, yes? Because I assure you, without cats, or something to replace them that does what cats do, you and I will starve to death. Farmers don't have cats because they're cute. 3They have them to stop rodents from eating silo, seeds, fields bare. What do you plan to do? Spray death chemicals all over the place, as a replacement? And no, trapping won't work. It never kills enough, and there are never enough traps. Honestly, I sincerely doubt cats are the issue. Cats do very poorly away from human settlements, and therefore there's loads of area without cat habitat. In Canada, most of the land is cat free, there is so much land without cats, it would be impossible for them to wipe out a noticeable percentage of birds. There's no way they're the problem, as a result of this, when we're talking about 1/3 of the birds. A far better explanation is insect population collapse. Missing food.
- mbg721 3y agoSome cats kill rodents. Mine (indoor cats) can't be bothered.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoDid you think they were talking about literally every cat?
- magicalist 3y agoThe GP wrote their post as if the choice was feral cats everywhere or we all get the hantavirus, so I think it's a fair point.