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The First Cat War

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Re: The First Cat War

#41

Post by photochemsyn »

Dynamic ecosystems need predators, but this isn't an argument in favor of letting pets roam outdoors - it's an argument in favor of not hunting, trapping or otherwise killing foxes, true wild cats, and coyotes. Moving up the ladder into mountain lions, wolves and grizzly bears does fill people with rising alarm (while there is an active movement to protect mountain lions and re-introduce wolves to California, I have yet to see any 'bring back the Grizzly' proposals, even though it's on the state flag - and mountain lions are enough to keep deer populations in check).

From an ecosystem perspective, cats are very successful hunters (the record for % of hunts that end in success is held by a small African wild cat^), but if there's a healthy coyote population in the vicinity, feral cats quickly become scarce (as do any overly fat squirrels).

^ https://youtu.be/nl8o9PsJPAQ

Crows and ravens predate on baby birds and nestlings, but again this is a dynamic ecosystem norm. A backyard birdfeeder for songbirds tends to draw bird-hunting hawks too, which is fine, they're incredibly acrobatic and watching them hunt is quite the show - plus, natural (unsubsidized) predation removes the chaff from the wheat, improving the songbird population genetics. Young hawks in turn may be hunted by owls.

That's nature for you - and an argument for not letting pets roam outdoors unsupervised. Additionally, letting cats eat wild animals tends to lead to internal parasites, fleas, viruses etc.

Re: The First Cat War

#43

Post by bombcar »

photochemsyn wrote: post #41

Dynamic ecosystems need predators, but this isn't an argument in favor of letting pets roam outdoors - it's an argument in favor of not hunting, trapping or otherwise killing foxes, true wild cats, and coyotes. Moving up the ladder into mountain lions, wolves and grizzly bears does fill people with rising alarm (while there is an active movement to protect mountain lions and re-introduce wolves to California, I have…

Arguably the problem really isn't the cats so much as it is removing all the things that would eat feral cats.

Re: The First Cat War

#44

Post by Cthulhu_ »

permo-w wrote: post #28
nullstyle wrote: post #17

My understanding is that the dirty little secret of these types of articles is that many song birds actually die because of the harshness of winter (and from what I gather, growing occurence of extreme weather events.) Unfortunately, that is much harder to study that than killing and cataloging the gut contents of some stray cats and doing some statistics. --- That said, keep your cat indoors and spread cat-proof nes…

do you have any evidence for this "dirty little secret"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations

> Birds and larger mammals that eat insects can be directly affected by the decline.

Yeah yeah Wikipedia is not a source or evidence but it's a good enough starting point.

Pollution, global warming, ecosystem destruction, etc is causing bug population collapse which is at the basis of the food chain, including birds.

Cats may be part of the problem, but they are not /the/ problem. Compare also with the claims that windmills cause bird deaths (https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds).

See also https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-cats-for-destroying-w...

Re: The First Cat War

#45

Post by mlhpdx »

praptak wrote: post #19

"Most cats were considered working animals, and were expected to rid houses and barns of mice and rats" Cats don't generally hunt rats[0]. Before modern pest control the working animal to kill rats was a dog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Terrier [0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2018.00146...

Our farm cats certainly did hunt rats, and rodents were a far larger part of their diet than birds. Rabbits, too. Never a chicken (in the article) - I can’t imagine a cat hunting a chicken unless the cat was exceptionally large and healthy.

We’ve also owned a couple “suburban” Chartreaux cats specifically bred to hunt rats. Fearsome beasts that hunted nothing but kibble in reality.

Re: The First Cat War

#46

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lb1lf wrote: post #8
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't remember where I heard it but it rings true: We train dogs but we negotiate with cats.

Or, as a cat-loving friend of mine succinctly sums up the difference between dogs and cats and their relationship to us: Dog: The humans feed me; they must be God. Cat: The humans feed me; I must be God.

Counterpoint: Cats yell at you when it rains, because they have observed you make the rain (in the shower) start, therefore, you are a God that can control the weather.

Re: The First Cat War

#47

Post by nullstyle »

permo-w wrote: post #28
nullstyle wrote: post #17

My understanding is that the dirty little secret of these types of articles is that many song birds actually die because of the harshness of winter (and from what I gather, growing occurence of extreme weather events.) Unfortunately, that is much harder to study that than killing and cataloging the gut contents of some stray cats and doing some statistics. --- That said, keep your cat indoors and spread cat-proof nes…

do you have any evidence for this "dirty little secret"?

[flagged]

Re: The First Cat War

#48

Post by tetris11 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #12
tetris11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old roommate has two british shorthairs, they're basically his kids. They live on the top floor of a four floor house, and never leave the 50m² apartment. They spend their days sleeping and doing not much else. Down on the street, a neighbour also has a shorthair, almost an identical clone to my roommates. The cat has free reign of the neighbourhood, and the alertness in its eyes makes me realise that it has a muc…

> and the alertness in its eyes makes me realise that it has a much higher standard of living than my roommate's Or else the alertness in his eyes may indicate the number of times he has come close to dying. I would guess a lot of kids in war torn parts of the world have more alertness in their eyes than kids in the US or EU, but it wouldn’t indicate a higher standard of living.

he wasn't skittish, he just took interest in the world around him

Re: The First Cat War

#49

Post by sixothree »

zachmu wrote: post #39

> A paper that appeared in Nature in 2013 put the number of birds killed by cats in North America at somewhere between 1.3 and 4.0 billion birds every year, a total that is mostly driven by unowned cats.32 If this figure were accurate — a big if — it would dwarf the toll of every other direct cause of human-driven bird mortality. The chart which follows this quote does not include "habitat loss" among the "direct cau…

I feel like I can’t travel on a rural road for more than an hour without seeing a dead bird in the road. Never mind all of the pesticides we use. After some neighbors complained, the mosquito spray truck ran our neighborhood three times in a row. The next day I found 5 dead blue jays in and around my yard. My blue jays still haven’t returned. I think they killed the entire flock.

Re: The First Cat War

#50

Post by permo-w »

nullstyle wrote: post #47
permo-w wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have any evidence for this "dirty little secret"?

[flagged]

the incredibly adversarial tone of this comment, combined with the myriad studies correlating toxoplasmosis with aggression and poor decision-making in humans doesn't exactly help your case, does it?

go and shout at someone else

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