My cats kill birds but won't eat them?

The freezing temperatures means the birds are starving and weak. They are around your house looking for food. They are also easy meals for your cats as a result.

The cats aren't eating them because they're not hungry, but they'll keep killing them because their hunting drive is too strong to overlook the opportunity of a bunch of starving birds too weak to fly away and too exhausted to notice they're being stalked.

This is typical cat behavior.

One of the cats has decided to show its appreciation,
and return the favor so to speak.

Seven birds or mice from one cat is quite common.

Don't know why it is seven, just seems to reoccur.

You must treat them quite well.

Zainal wrote: »

Alright, I guess I walked into that.

I mean, why not let the cat hunt?

Just out of basic respect for the ecosystem you're living in really.

'Why not let the cat hunt' is where the sentiment of 'Why not let the Japanese keep research whaling' starts.

The domestic cat, while it has retained many characteristics of wild cats, is not wild. Just because it *can* hunt, that doesn't mean it *should* hunt, willy nilly. You own the cat, it's your responsibility to feed it.

However, well fed cats will often hunt for sport. This is a major issue because it means you're doubly tipping the balance - not only are you allowing an introduced species hunt for no good reason other than its own entertainment, but you're also weighting its odds by feeding it and worming it, so it doesn't have the handicaps of hunger or parasitic infection or anything else that wild animals have to cope with.

Hunting cats can do a huge amount of damage to a local ecosystem, especially to birdlife (and here in Australia, to anything small and furry).

Whatever you may think yourself about numbers, living things are a finite resource and really should be treated with more respect than 'why not let them hunt'.

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

"Outdoor" cats without bells present a safety hazard to starving birds. :mad:

Birds are dinner for cats.

T-Square wrote: »

Birds are dinner for cats.

The same way, in the natural order of things, cats are dinner for dogs? Cats are roadkill, and worth extra points if you swerve to hit them? cats are pests that shit all over my garden, so I should be able to put poisoned food out fo them? Cats are nuisance animals so I should be able to use them for target practice?

Sheep are herd animals and sheep-worrying dogs are only doing what comes naturally? Toddlers are small and not the top of the pack, so dogs that bite the faces off young children shouldn't be put to sleep for it?

Cats aren't worth the vets bills after an accident, because they're only cats?

Value statements like the one you made are dangerous territory.

Yes, cats have a natural urge to hunt and will kill birds, insects, rodents and other small mammals given the chance. They will also exercise their urge to hunt on pieces of string, small cloth mice, ping pong balls - the same way dogs will exercise their urge to chase on a frisbee.

You have a domestic cat. It's up to you to try and limit how it exercises
'wild' behaviour, the same way people no longer allow their dogs to roam in packs.

Otherwise, at some point you'll find yourself on the unfortunate, karmic end of your own logic - if it's tough shit for the bird because it's natural for the cat to hunt, then it's tough shit for your cat - and you - when your neighbour's two dogs, for instance, catch it in their yard and tear it to pieces.

I'm not trying to force morality upon the cat.

Cats hunt. They have a stalk, chase and pounce instinct that's strong in even four week old kittens. They do not differentiate between prey animals based on value or tameness, attractiveness or position on the endangered species list.

Similarly, dogs hunt. Some dogs will react very badly indeed at the sight of a herd of animals, or a small, running animal (or small, running child). However, for many reasons, people have chosen to step in, in the case of dogs, and we now restrict their roaming, supervise their interaction with potential prey and exercise their wild instinct through supervised exercise and play (two walks a day and a game of fetch, for instance).

Why don't we do the same for our cats?

A lot of people hate cats, because of how they are permitted to broadly exericse their hunting, roaming and territory marking instincts. The cats come out worse from this negative PR every time - I have had to deal with "How much? But it's just a cat!" at the vet, leading to the animal being abandoned. I have also seen the aftermath of poisonings, shootings, and other anti-cat cruelty of various kinds (an attempted garotting with a wire trap designed for rabbits in one case).

Cats don't need to change. People need to change, and limit what they allow their cat to do. Free roaming cats are pests. The public hates pests. That's why we don't even count the number of cats PTS every year in the pounds - other than a number 'more than dogs'.

There are people on this forum who won't put a collar on their cat, because of the dangers of the collar getting caught when the cat climbs. Others won't allow their cat out without a collar, because they believe it indicates ownership. On the shooting forum, one of the distinctions for shooters who target 'feral' cats is whether or not it's wearing a collar. Flip again, and I can tell you that all a collar means is someone owned the cat for long enough to put a collar on it - which takes two minutes. The pounds and shelters brim over every year with cats, wearing collars, who nobody wants, or claims, or admits to ever having owned.

People really need to take responsibility for their cats. 'Birds are food for cats' is a cop out of the highest order. 'New born lambs are food for siberian huskies' has just as much validity in terms of the truth of the statement regarding the nature of the animal, but do you think it would excuse a husky caught worrying sheep? No, it wouldn't, but a mindshift had to happen for that to be the case.

Cats have a role as a working animal, the same as dogs do. In the case of cats, they keep vermin down - but there is a specific environment for that, such as in areas where there is a lot of food stored in a way that allows vermin access to that food, and facilitates a population explosion of vermin. Barns and stables for instance, often use a cat to keep the vermin down. In my view, that's fine - as long as the cat is neutered, wormed regularly, has access to clean water and to food that it hasn't had to hunt itself, will be given properly veterinary care if injured - you know, all of the things we offer our working dogs. The cat should also be shut into the stable or barn at night, with the other animals, and allowed out in the morning - this will limit its roaming, going some way towards protecting it from death on the road and fights with other roaming cats, thereby limiting the risk of it contracting a fatal disease through fighting with other cats.

I'm not comparing cats hunting to whaling or running down animals on the road. I'm comparing the attitude, the one that says that cats hunting is harmless, natural and the animals they're killing are unworthy of notice, to the same attitudes that form the foundation of sport killing.

Allowing your cat unrestricted outdoor access, to kill wildlife, shit on the neighbour's garden, stir up the neighbour's dog at 2am so it starts barking furiously and wakes the whole street, and conduct boisterous, yowling fights on the garage roof with other cats, does absolutely no favours for your cat or domestic-cat-kind as a whole.

Denerick wrote: »

Whats all this nonsense about now? Of course cats should hunt. You don't complain when they kill off vermin like rats (I never seem to hear the conservationists get into a self righteous huff about that) But whinge when they take out a few birds? Is it because birds look nice and rats don't? You can't seriously expect a cat to know the moral difference between killing vermin (Rats) and killing birds. Therefore, if you keep a cat because it keeps vermin away (Like we do, but we also like the little bugger) and you give it bells, or whatever the hell you people are talking about doing, its going to prevent it killing rats. What a load of nonsense this entire thread has been.

If you don't understand something, it helps if you actually read the thread.

Additionally, if you have nothing substantial to contribute because you haven't read the thread, and have missed the point of what you have read, you could always just refrain from posting?

Still though, if trumpeting in declaring everything 'Nonsense!' and then posting yesterday's lolcat pic makes you feel better, you carry on.

I'm not agitated at all. I have simply presented a point of view that you don't agree with - you're the one hollering 'nonsense!' (a claim you don't do much work to support, by the way) and posting lolcat pictures.

Can you back up why you think it's nonsense that a cat's instinct to hunt should be curtailed by its owner?

I'm not surprised they hunt. I'm surprised that people lament this inadvertent side affect of allowing your cat to roam, and then can't get their heads around the fact that if you don't want them killing wildlife, just don't let them roam.

The wildlife thing is also a bigger issue for me, because I'm in Australia, where the roaming cat has wiped out entire populations of small marsupials and other mammals, in some cases actually rendering them extinct in former habitats (not totally extinct).

I'm an advocate of keeping your cats indoors or giving them restricted outdoor access, because it's better for the cat. I also believe there is a place for the rural, working cat in pest control, but AGAIN I don't believe the animals should just be left in the outhouses to feed themselves and breed like rabbits, with farmers drowning the kittens they don't want, for instance.

Farmers commonly retire their working dogs to being inside pets when they get too old to work - do you think that happens to many barn cats?

All I'm asking is that people take responsibility for their cats. If you don't want them killing birds - and as already mentioned, the current weather in Ireland puts this in 'shooting fish in a barrell' territory, then keep them indoors.

Denerick wrote: »

Do you not see how ludicrous that is? How can you expect a cat to know the moral difference between killing a rat and a bird? Its absurd!

The cat doesn't know the moral difference, but it is aware that there is a difference between a rat and a bird just as a dog knows that there's a difference between his food and my food and therefore he knows which he is allowed to eat and which he isn't.