Feeding the birds

[MikeF]

Why would anyone hate cats??

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

[Vorpal]

Why would anyone hate cats??

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

I have a cat. He is entirely indoors. He doesn't like to go out. I have only ever let my cats out supervised. We had 2 cats until last November, when one died They were litter mates. The one that died liked going out on a lead. He did once kill a bird that got into the house. I have a cat because I like them. We'll likely get some new kittens in a year or so.

p.s. they are affectionate and social with people that they have a bond with.

[MikeF]

Why would anyone hate cats??

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

I have a cat. He is entirely indoors. He doesn't like to go out. I have only ever let my cats out supervised. We had 2 cats until last November, when one died They were litter mates. The one that died liked going out on a lead. He did once kill a bird that got into the house. I have a cat because I like them. We'll likely get some new kittens in a year or so.

p.s. they are affectionate and social with people that they have a bond with.

You're exceptional in the extreme.

[old_windbag]

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

Really? You don't have to look after a cat........ there's the voice of someone who clearly has no idea about cats. One of the good points of cats and clearly one that gets to people, is their ability to hold onto their hunting instinct. They, in predator terms, are a joy to watch, seriously skilled animals that really do make dogs look pedestrian and clumsy which in most cases they are. You stop looking after a cat and it will either find a new owner or live wild which they can with ease( I'm not talking of the overbred scrunched up face pedigree mistakes, they're the crufts dog cat equivalents ).

They kill birds, mammals etc, yes true but I think you're going to have to eliminate all motorised transport( and humans after the car ) before you get to cats as they kill millions too( birds, foxes, stoats, badger, hedgehogs, toads, frogs........ and cats, the list is too long ). All that road kill then increases the corvid population including the magpie which you'll blame for song/small bird decrease. Cats don't need to be kept indoors and they are an outdoors( for a few hours a day ) animal. I've known cats kept indoors 247 and others who fulfil their instinctive needs. The only important thing is neutering and speying but that goes for dogs too I guess and perhaps should apply to us .

So cats are only a tiny part of the wildlife losses but still play a vital part in the food chain as general predators. All cats are different and have different niche animals they may prefer to hunt. They are as different as humans in their personalities but if you engage and interact with them they learn and become accustomed to our habits and routines. We humans have them as pets today but they came into our lives symbiotically in the sense they helped us in keeping rodent levels down on early farms..... maybe still do today.

If you take the time to study and learn about cats rather than simply spouting daily mail style comments then it may be worthwhile, but I think for many people they may dislike cats because they cannot "control" or "subserviate" them as they can with dogs. But we aren't all control freaks so cats make very affectionate, intelligent pets that you live with not in a master slave style relationship but on equal terms. They are a natural work of art in form and function( the retractable claw is great natural design ). Their larger relatives too...... but don't turn your back on one .

[Cyril Haearn]

Wikipedia reports that the next PM Mr Corbyn has a cat, anyone know more?

[hamster]

@old_windbag
The key issue with domestic cats is that an artificially high population level is maintained by feeding them. If they were wild they would eat their way through the bird population and then starve (like stoats etc). The fact that the population is mantained at a high level has a disproportionate effect on garden birds. My road alone has 10 cats in 100m of homes. If they were wild it would be one per square km or lower. Incidentally the same area of houses would support only a single stoat territory.

[old_windbag]

The key issue with domestic cats is that an artificially high population level is maintained by feeding them

I agree but the impact on animal species is not all the doom and gloom that people like to throw around as an argument for disliking cats. As I say there are many more serious issues when it comes to species decline. I feed the birds so I am creating an artificially high population of a dozen or so bird species, but that increase will be compensated for by all the other avenues of predation we've mentioned plus our lifestyle/resource impacts. Our own species is artificially high due to advances in food production and medicines etc.

I will intervene with cats if I see a "kill" about to happen, even this week I managed to let a vole escape its fate. But unlike god I don't have omnipresence so cannot see all eventualities but I do help where I can. I love wildlife of all varieties and don't have an axe to grind with any species outside of our own. But beyond cats I've seen the cruel side of nature thousands of times with other species involved, but thats how it works.

The proliferation of nissan cashcows and jokes etc on our streets and roads being more a concern I feel.

Oh and jeremy corbyn seems to have a cat and rides a bike so that definitely makes him a better more rounded person for No 10 .

[Ben@Forest]

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

By this rationale we should not like humans. We kill far more birds and other creatures every year though decimation of habitat, traffic and vermin control or pesticide use. Why is a cat killing a mouse more terrible than a householder killing a mouse? What about a farmer shooting pigeons to protect a cabbage crop? A few years ago I was at a farm in Scotland, two blokes had spent a day doing exactly that - they'd shot 200 pigeons. Do you want to buy cabbage at a supermarket? OK or not OK?

[MikeF]

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

By this rationale we should not like humans. We kill far more birds and other creatures every year though decimation of habitat, traffic and vermin control or pesticide use. Why is a cat killing a mouse more terrible than a householder killing a mouse? What about a farmer shooting pigeons to protect a cabbage crop? A few years ago I was at a farm in Scotland, two blokes had spent a day doing exactly that - they'd shot 200 pigeons. Do you want to buy cabbage at a supermarket? OK or not OK?

I don't understand your reply. It's a "what abouter" example ie diversionary to my original statement which is still true.

[Heltor Chasca]

Birds are great and I love having the wild birds visit the feeders.

I keep rare breed chickens free range and they have arranged a symbiotic relationship. Dropped seed from the feeders in return for security work. Chickens are great look outs and take on magpies and jackdaws.

Since my enormous cockerel 'Hook' gained power, we haven't seen a cat even attempt a crossing of the garden, let alone a visit to the feeder. Legend has it, he hosts fondue parties occasionally. Eyeballs being a specialty [emoji872]

[pwa]

A cat is a pet for someone who doesn't want the bother of looking after it. And cats kill millions of birds each year, harm bats, frogs and many other creatures etc. Let alone dig and poo in neighbours' gardens instead of the owner's. What is there to like about them???

By this rationale we should not like humans. We kill far more birds and other creatures every year though decimation of habitat, traffic and vermin control or pesticide use. Why is a cat killing a mouse more terrible than a householder killing a mouse? What about a farmer shooting pigeons to protect a cabbage crop? A few years ago I was at a farm in Scotland, two blokes had spent a day doing exactly that - they'd shot 200 pigeons. Do you want to buy cabbage at a supermarket? OK or not OK?

A couple of blokes shooting pigeons to protect a crop is not the same as a cat owner releasing an animal that will kill a fledgling blackbird or a mouse in a hedgerow. We kill mice when they enter our homes, not out in the wild. I don't blame the cats, because they have no choice about being cats, but I do blame the people who get them and then release them to wander their neighbours' gardens without asking them if they mind. We used to have an old lady next door who fed the birds and watched them from a window. She knew all the species and every year she got upset because of the neighbours' cats coming into her garden to hunt the fledglings. At one time one of our neighbours had four cats, which roamed the other nine gardens in the street to the annoyance of everyone else.

[old_windbag]

but I do blame the people who get them and then release them to wander their neighbours' gardens without asking them if they mind.

I think what comes across in many peoples arguments are a sense of control and ownership. The concept of ownership is purely human and I think we can understand barring theives or burglars from entering that garden to reach your property, likewise freely allowing the postie to cross your boundary to reach your letterbox. Beyond that your garden to other species is simply part of the whole environment they inhabit. If you take cats out of the equation you still have many other species( especially whilst asleep and oblivious to them ) wandering through your garden and making use of it's resources. To many of those they will have marked up your garden and several others perhaps as "their territory" and have altercations over it. You may have the legal documents at land registry stating thats your land but it belongs to all the species using it. If you want to control what enters/leaves that space then you'd have to perhaps enclose it like the eden project. If I were to state that dogs are only allowed to inhabit their owners house and garden there would be an outcry, they need to walk, stretch their legs, run free. But why should we have them wandering our ountryside( on leads or not ) and also generating many unecessary car journeys to do so. So where cats and dogs are concerned you have to give and take as both aren't essential pets to most of the population............ but we like them and enjoy their company.

[Ben@Forest]

A couple of blokes shooting pigeons to protect a crop is not the same as a cat owner releasing an animal that will kill a fledgling blackbird or a mouse in a hedgerow. We kill mice when they enter our homes, not out in the wild. I don't blame the cats, because they have no choice about being cats, but I do blame the people who get them and then release them to wander their neighbours' gardens without asking them if they mind

But the law recognises that cat owners are not responsible for the 'normal' behaviour of cats i.e. roaming into other people's garden's and so on. And who would you ask - even very domesticated cats roam up to a km away and I see farm cats that go further (tho of course then they are still generally on the farm).

We used to have an old lady next door who fed the birds and watched them from a window. She knew all the species and every year she got upset because of the neighbours' cats coming into her garden to hunt the fledglings.

So basically she carries out the process of supplementary feeding (increasing the population of birds) and then gets upset when some are killed. It's a bit like people who 'don't like' magpies because they raid other birds' nests. It's what the magpie naturally does.

I've posted (on this thread I think) that we help sustain a population of house sparrows by providing nesting habitat, where our neighbours have decreased such habitat. It means that in terms of modern housing we are hosting an artificially large population of sparrows. Are some of those predated by cats? - almost definitely - but that is better than not allowing them to breed in the first place.

[pwa]

A couple of blokes shooting pigeons to protect a crop is not the same as a cat owner releasing an animal that will kill a fledgling blackbird or a mouse in a hedgerow. We kill mice when they enter our homes, not out in the wild. I don't blame the cats, because they have no choice about being cats, but I do blame the people who get them and then release them to wander their neighbours' gardens without asking them if they mind

But the law recognises that cat owners are not responsible for the 'normal' behaviour of cats i.e. roaming into other people's garden's and so on. And who would you ask - even very domesticated cats roam up to a km away and I see farm cats that go further (tho of course then they are still generally on the farm).

We used to have an old lady next door who fed the birds and watched them from a window. She knew all the species and every year she got upset because of the neighbours' cats coming into her garden to hunt the fledglings.

So basically she carries out the process of supplementary feeding (increasing the population of birds) and then gets upset when some are killed. It's a bit like people who 'don't like' magpies because they raid other birds' nests. It's what the magpie naturally does.

I've posted (on this thread I think) that we help sustain a population of house sparrows by providing nesting habitat, where our neighbours have decreased such habitat. It means that in terms of modern housing we are hosting an artificially large population of sparrows. Are some of those predated by cats? - almost definitely - but that is better than not allowing them to breed in the first place.

Cats do what cats do and I don't actually dislike them. I have been known to stroke them. But I believe getting a cat and, as you have to, releasing it into other people's gardens is unfair on people who don't want them in their gardens. Cats are not nature, they are pets. Pets that hunt and kill animals that other people like to encourage in their own gardens. Thankfully my rear garden is now practically cat-proof.

[JohnW]

Motorists do more harm than cats.

Now, please can we return to the subject of the thread, or shall I suggest to the mods that the thread is deleted?