back to article Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Housecats should be kept inside more often to keep them from their daily killing sprees, a study shows. KittyCam spots an injured bird KittyCam at the scene of the crime. Pic credit: National Geographic & University of Georgia Those cute kittens whose faces are peer from endless posts on Pinterest are actually predators, …

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  1. Tikimon
    Boffin

    The blindness of cat lovers...

    Good gravy! Cat lovers think their little moggies can do NO wrong! To listen to the cat lovers, it's perfectly fine to replace wildlife with hordes of stray cats. What's going to keep your trees and gardens pest-free when all the songbirds are dead? Those birds eat lots of bugs you know.

    There's good (non-greenie-whacko) research documenting the correlation between stray cats and loss of wildlife in urban-suburban areas. There's also good documentation of how trees without birds are less healthy and grow less (as much as 60% less in a year).

    Dogs aren't allowed to roam about killing at will, there's no good reason to let cats do it. As far as "following instinct to kill things", apply that argument to dogs and see how bogus it is. We routinely stop pets and livestock from acting on their instincts, for their good and ours.

    Hey cat lovers, do you make excuses for your delinquent children too?

    1. easyk

      Re: The blindness of cat lovers...

      A fine statement of truth. I am at a loss as to why anyone would have a problem with what you said. Is it because you called their house pets "stray"? People need to think rationally about this. Emotion is clearly clouding their judgement.

    2. Galidron

      Re: The blindness of cat lovers...

      I would like to see more predators in the urban setting. Maybe eagles, owls and the like. Mostly anything that will kill the damn squirrels. Where I live I think they are the most dangerous population to the birds, there are maybe 2 cats around but so many squirrels in the trees that they spend a fair amount of time tearing holes in people's houses to make a place to live.

    3. Tom 38

      Re: The blindness of cat lovers...

      The loss of wildlife in areas mainly comes when it goes from fields to 'urban/sub-urban'. Any subsequent feline decimation is minor in comparison.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Do you find

    cat owners as annoying as iPhone owners?

    1. VinceH

      Re: Do you find

      Moreso. I've never had any of their iPhones shitting in my garden.

  3. sisk

    Suprised?

    Who's honestly suprised by this? As cute as we find them and as friendly as they can be to their favored human slaves they are still predatory animals with a sadistic streak a mile wide.

    Despite having known this for several years, they're still my favored pet. What does that say about me?

    1. Fibbles

      Re: Suprised?

      "What does that say about me?"

      That you have toxoplasmosis, a brain parasite carried by cats that makes humans more amenable to felines when infected.

  4. Claus P. Nielsen
    Holmes

    Clearly a case of bad upbringing

    The researchers are looking at this all wrong.

    The shocking thing is not that some cats kill around 2 small animals a week.

    The shocking thing is that 2/3 of the house-cat population are apparantly not capable of capturing and killing anything!

    This is clearly a failure in their upbringing, most likely brought about by a stupid human taking them away from their mother before she has had a chance to teach them how to hunt.

    The scientists notion that you can extrapolate from a small-scale study in a certain county to nationwide numbers or even that you can compare kill-rate between feral cats and domestic cats is laughable.

    Feral cats that can't capture and kill will die.

    Cats in the countryside have more opportunities for kills than cats in the suburbs and they have correspondingly more opportunities than cats in the big cities.

    before an extrapolation can be made, it is necessary to get data from a much more diverse set of areas than what was the case here.

  5. Stoneshop
    Boffin

    Hunter instinct not fully suppressed in domestic felines

    Who'da thunk? Truly ground-breaking research, this is.

  6. bruceld

    My darned large orange cat...

    My partner and I lived in a penthouse with only one neighbour couple in another suite on the same floor.

    My cat discovered how to climb up on the roof and 'find' things. He kept bringing home alot of bones. I could never figure out where he kept getting these rather large bones from.

    Some time after we found out our neighbours were missing.

    Of course I'm just pulling your leg. ;-) I think seagulls and crows were flying their goods on top of the roof.

    One epic battle though. I was sitting quietly with the partner on a beautiful summers day. We heard this crashing and we looked out the patio window. There was an epic brawl between our cat and a rather large seagull. We were like "Wow!!" Finally the gull flew off and our cat comes running in fresh from a brawl and we could see this look of pride and glory on his face and demeanor!

    Good kitty!

  7. Triggerfish

    Upbringing and hunting

    There must be some correlation between how the cats have ben brought up and their skills. I've had two cats that grew up as kittens in a nice house and they were pretty indifferent hunters, (admittedly I also lived in a more urban area).

    Before that I had two strays that hung around and became house cats and they were unholy terrors for anything they could find rats killed and left on the step, mice dropped live in boots, birds for release in the front room, and for some reason the odd live hedghog in a washing basket (I figured they thought the rats were to tough for the training sessions they had planned for us), one of the cats cornered a neighbours alsatian and red setter in the garden after the dogs broke through the fence.

    A stone of tomcat in its prime can quite easily handle itself.

  8. N2

    Typical American 'cuddly bunny' rot

    Our two cats kill about 3 or 4 mice at least each day & have also killed two rats. If attitudes like that are allowed to prevail then where will it end?

  9. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
    Happy

    I'm glad to see...

    ...that the posts are overwhelmingly in favour of cats doing what they're designed to do.

    I wonder why there are none of the tree-huggers around trying to pretend that nature is all cuddly and cute...?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We have a furry assassin squad as we live out in the sticks and my wife is phobic about mice and lizards (really...) , currently its ranks are depleted in numbers to 3, the old girl we've had for 13 years, one that we got when someone gave her away, and a bengal/farmcat cross who's just turned 1. He brings in rabbits etc, for a while I thought he was finding someones hunting stash and nicking them because they were bigger than him, but the other day I disturbed him dragging one across the wilderness reserve we call a garden and he dropped it in surprise and it bounded off, only for him to recapture and deliver a proper fanging to the neck job done. He ran off with it and left part of the bum for me later on...

    He's offspring of another bengal who went missing aged 3, but he was even worse, he used to bring snakes back (yeah, a poisonous viper, in the downstairs hall that I had to take off him and stand on it with big boots and subdue it with a brick hammer as it was so p***ed off, after hearing loud screams of "THE CATS BROUGHT A BLOODY SNAKE IN NOW" from a safe distance upstairs), rabbits, various birds of varying sizes, you name it if it moved and was smaller than a collie he'd have a go. He even used to chase the kids across the room and have them if they annoyed him too much. Fantastic...

    .

    I love cats, and we've always had them, but anyone who doesn't know they're natures supreme small fluffy animal assassination specialists either hasn't had one, or hasn't got eyes. They got a job to do here, and do it well they do. Mid summer I'd expect to see the bengal cross with 3-4 mice a day, with whatever else he could bag + the stuff he doesn't bring home for fear of having his new toy taken off him.. Can I have their research grant to state the bleedin obvious instead of them?

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  12. NotSmartEnough
    WTF?

    Bird numbers

    It would be interesting to know how much of the decline in bird numbers is due to an increase in the numbers of domestic cats, rather than, say, destruction of hedgerows or reduction in insect populations due to pesticides, etc.

    That would be a bit like doing research, wouldn't it?

    On another topic, and in response to the foaming-at-the-mouth 'cat shit in my garden' bunch: I take the kids to the park, guess what I have to clean off shoes/pram wheels far too often: cat shit or dog shit? Go on guess. When was the last time you had to step round some cat shit on the pavement?

    1. Mike 137 Silver badge

      Re: Bird numbers

      Well this is only "anecdotal", but I had a wide variety of small songbirds visiting my garden bird feeders for several years - I usually had to refill them daily. Then two neighbours introduced three young cats around Christmas time 2011. This year I have only recorded two visits to my bird feeders since January, and the untouched seed goes mouldy in the feeders.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bird numbers

      "When was the last time you had to step round some cat shit on the pavement?"

      There's no pavement in my garden, but cats shit on the lawn.

      1. NotSmartEnough

        Re: Bird numbers

        What's your point? Are you saying that fouling is ok as long as it's Not In My Back Yard?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My favourite is a 22LR lead bullet right between the cats eyes

    I'm in full rural zoning with farms and it is illegal to let your cat out of the house. Us farmers have a rule that if your cat is out of your property and in their farm it is classified feral and gets shot. 22LR works wonders at 5 cents a shot as would a 17HMR. But if all a farmer has handy is a larger caliber then it's pink mist time in the paddocks. Same with any stray dog. Too much money in livestock is at risk to allow developmentally retarded city dweller mentality to rein supreme in rural zones.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My favourite is a 22LR lead bullet right between the cats eyes

      So, you get some free rodent control done by the local precision hunters who are sized so they won't put your livestock at risk, and instead of taking advantage of the saving in poisons and effort to control them, you kill the animal helping you? that's very intelligent...

      Our local farmer isn't equally as mentally challenged, he not only tolerates other cats on his land, they have a big pack of feral ones meowing around the barns for the warmth and easy food supply, keeping his grain store and other parts pest free. But of course, he has half a brain.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Maty

      Re: My favourite is a 22LR lead bullet right between the cats eyes

      If you want to sound convincing about 'retarded mentalities', learn to spell 'reign'. Otherwise you are just convincingly retarded.

    4. Intractable Potsherd

      Re: My favourite is a 22LR lead bullet right between the cats eyes

      AC - I bet you think badgers cause TB in cattle too.

      Ridiculous zoning laws are decimating the countryside far more that any predator.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I cannot believe they were surprised.

    It's obvious to anyone who has owned a cat.

  15. RP84

    Our cat has a bit of a thing for Indian dishes, we've had Pakoras, Samosas and mini Naan breads delivered straight to the living room floor.

    Trust me, a circular Naan bread doesn't look like it should in the dark at 3am.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @we've had Indian dishes delivered straight to the living room floor

      You should get it to take orders round the area

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pigeons

    If anyone's got a kitty-killing-machine that needs to "get over the little phase" or "get it out of his system", then please send 'em to central London. We've got more pigeons that we know what to do with, some of which are so fat it's a miracle of aerodynamics that they can even fly. If ever-so-cute kitty wants to help themselves, I'm sure we'll all be grateful.

    1. Pedigree-Pete

      Re: Pigeons

      Dito Reading. Send in the cats as the flying rats are a pain.

  17. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Reasons

    A huge amount of the comment here and elsewhere on this research anthropomorphises cats - accusing them of "murder", "torture" &c. &c. All this misses the point entirely. Cats are much more hard-wired than many of us would like to believe. They are to a large extent stimulus-driven automata, pre-programmed to pounce on small animals that move in their field of awareness.

    That means it's the responsibility of the "owner" (although nobody really 'owns' a cat - it simply occupies a territory that you may also occupy) to minimise the damage a cat can do - particularly in densely populated urban environments. The simplest fix is a collar with a bell on it, but it has to be a sensible bell, not the tiny token gesture fitted as standard to most commercial cat collars.

    A bell does not so much alert the prey as distract the cat by spoiling its stealth as it springs - provided the cat can hear the bell and it is fitted when the cat is young enough. If it works, operant conditioning eventually sets in, reducing the incidence of the predatory behaviour.

    Nevertheless, the biggest problem for prey species is not the behaviour of the individual cat but excessive predator density. Where I live, nine or ten cats have "homes" within an area of one acre (18 residences). This is at least 20 times the natural predator density, and is only sustainable for the predators because the cats are artificially fed. It is however, completely unsustainable for many of the prey species.

  18. Triggerfish

    The mice jst need to get kitted up

    Mouse armour.

    http://luxlife.in/armour-for-cats-and-mice-created-by-jeff-de-boer/

  19. James 36

    how many ?

    birds in the US

    well at least 10 billion according to this

    http://birdstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2002/07/how-many-birds-are-there.html

    its a blog so treat with caution

    so 500 million killed by cats in a year

    equals 5% of the population (using merkin billion)

    so 95% of the bird population unaffected by cats

    sounds sustainable to me

    1. Fibbles

      Re: how many ?

      You're looking at the bird population as a whole, each type of bird fills a different niche in the ecosystem. You can't possibly claim it's sustainable without having a break down of the numbers. Saying cats only kill 5% of birds is as broad and useless a statement as saying cats only kill 5% of mammals. What if that 5% is all the rodents? That'd arse up our ecosystem quite badly.

  20. WorsleyNick

    Cats and prey

    Over the years I have been owned by many cats and can say that their behaviour is vary varied and much of it appears to be learned in their youth and their is a fair amount of learning by copying as well as experience.

    Unfortunately my wife is very definitely not a cat person and we have a two legged cat predator in this area, who chopped the head off our last cat. Which is a pity because we are plagued with mice in this area.

    I have a feeling of gratefulness to my near neighbour who is owned by two cats. They are both mousers, and appeared to have honed the skill to perfection, I hope. They both associate mice with food. I have watched them stalking mice, playing with them (in reality not play but a way of ensuring that they are not bitten by the mice), killing them and then settle down to a fine meal. After eating a mouse they then settle down to a well earned clean, polish and sleep in the sun. These two cats eat the whole mouse, I have been owned by cats that leave the liver.

    If a cat has successfully learnt to catch mice and rats (even) they, being creatures of habit, rarely, in my experience, seem to graduate to birds. It is probably only sick, poorly, birds that they go for. Around here (inner London), it seems to me that the greatest amount of predation of small birds comes from Corvids, squirrels and foxes. I have seen Magpies and Crows going through my trees looking for smaller birds nests, and it happens every year. I know when it is happening, the Corvids and the small birds put up one hell of a racket.

  21. Dylan Fahey
    Paris Hilton

    Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

    Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think...

    How could Paris not know?

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