Mine don’t roam that far from my front porch. They need to be close enough to hear me pop the top off a can of catfood :lol:. Bingo - here they are. I have 32 acres and the neighbor has a dog that lies around out in the street so that is a deterrent to them leaving the property. Plus they are fixed so no reason to roam. I do know what they kill. They bring it and leave it for me. They are bringing me enough dead rats to know I would be having a HUGE problem if they were not here on the job. What am I supposed to do - put out poison? That is worse than my cats. I did have a hawk take residence once. It predated and ate all the birds I was feeding at the bird feeder.
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I had rats and I trapped them with a bit of success before the hawks moved in and got rid of them all.
When the hawks came I brought in my bird feeders so it wouldn’t be a buffet for them. Once the hawks decimated the rats and mice they moved on to their next food source area and then I put the bird feeders back out.
Also to add, in my experience and knowledge cats do not bring back everything they catch and kill. They don’t bring back the things they’ve either eaten or killed before they continue and finish their routine travels, they usually only bring back what they have when heading back to their home.
I had a wandering cat kill upwards of twenty starling fledglings at one time in my back yard and it left all of the carcasses and moved on. I’ve also picked up and disposed of many dead birds that were just left by wandering cats over the years.
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OP: fostering cats can be wonderful, my current cat (indoor!) is the most wonderful rescue. Yes, she has her boundaries! But I always wonder why on earth would someone dump such an intelligent animal?
For the skeptics on birds/cats and the idea they don’t really do that much damage: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncom…and%20mammals
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I have all sorts of birds around the place, enough that visitors often comment on the high population. Just recently when my dad and stepmom came to visit, she was noting my large number of birds and butterflies.
It’s very odd, like maybe once or twice a year, to find remnant feathers or a cat with a bird. On the other hand, I see evidence of former rodents all the time. Unless there’s something that selectively cleans up bird residue with multiple times more efficiency than anything else residue, the cats are getting far more rodents than birds. I think there is such a high rodent population in the fields and woods around the farm that the cats must take the easier game. I’ve lived here for over 20 years, always with cats, and I’ve never noted any decrease in the bird population, not even since 2015 when my cat pride had an explosion when I inherited that orphaned bunch. I love walking out in the mornings because birds are always singing around the place, greeting the morning, unless it’s dead of winter. And in the winter, there are the cardinals for a nice splash of color. I have always refrained from putting up a bird feeder, though, because of the cats. I don’t want to be responsible for luring birds to their death at a feeder. They are always around, though.
No, I work from home right now. They are sleeping on my patio 99% of the day, and in the house at night.
I know you’d like to make out that I’m willfully ignorant on something, but in this instance, I’m pretty sure I’m right.
I’m not claiming that they don’t kill animals, but they typically leave them on my doorstep so I have an idea of what they are. Mice, the occasional baby rabbit. Usually not moles; they won’t work that hard.
That said, they are not young. We had a feral tom cat come around a few years ago. I suspect he killed a lot of animals, and he ate them. He was a beast. We got rid of the bird feeder at that point in time because he could sit beneath it and jump up and grab the birds when they landed.
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Okey doke.
Your making this personal and it definitely isn’t.
I personally believe that the small cache of dead animals any cat leaves on the doorstep is only a small fraction of what they actually kill. I also don’t believe that any cat always stays on just their owner’s property, it’s not in their nature.
I used to have indoor/outdoor cats because it was how we did things on a large farm when I was a kid. After learning the amount of destruction they cause on wildlife, annoyance to neighbors and the potential diseases, injuries and death they face I went to indoor only.
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It’s simple. If you don’t want to have dead birds, put the cats inside during the spring during hatching season. As baby birds go through a fledgling stage where they are on the ground because they aren’t flying. That is when they are the most vulnerable.
When I had outdoor cats, I always looked for bird nests, checked those nests, and moved the cats inside for a week or two. I put up birdhouses and always checked them in the spring. The house wrens nest on my property every year. The mockingbirds used to nest here, but the crows got them every year.
It’s funny that they only consider bird fatalities due to cats. Snakes will eat baby birds, so will other birds, raccoons etc. Tons of predators. The blue birds nested one year and I am guessing a raccoon or squirrel chewed through a 1 inch solid wood birdhouse sometime during the night. Very sad because I was looking forward to seeing the babies.
As for bird fatalities here:
1 crow was electrocuted on the powerlines.
One nest of house wrens was destroyed by a storm, another nest was eaten by a snake… The crows and mockingbirds are bitter enemies and we have never had mockingbird babies raised successfully. The house wrens responded by making another nest and having 4 healthy babies…They were flying in my hay shed.
As for my cats, they have killed some baby bunnies and 1 or 2 birds. The cats usually carry their dinner to the house to eat. Most of the predation I have observed is not from the cats. Should we eliminate snakes or raccoons so the birds have a better chance?
Unless you have rare species of birds, I’m not too concerned about losing birds from cats. Snakes will climb right up into the trees or birdhouses, so i would guess snakes probably eat more baby birds then any other species, at least in this area.
The house wrens are doing great. They usually have 3-4 babies each year and are the most likely to raise them successfully. A well fed house cat probably isn’t going to have that much of an impact on bird species. They may kill something that is in the fledgling stage, at nose level in front of them, but so will any other predator that comes along. Cats may kill snakes and that would be beneficial for birds.
Humans, deforestation, and habitat loss probably has a far larger impact then the minor damage cats do.
I knew one barn that had a terrible rat problem and the fattest squirrels you have ever seen. They didn’t secure their sweet feed. Must have been hundreds of rats in that barn! I will take a bunch of cats any day, over hundreds of rats…
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It’s like a religion to some that cats must be stopped.
Reminds of the days where hate on wolves and bounties or the wild horses are destroying public lands so we need to kill them.
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I have done a fair amount of farm sitting and every barn seems to have a cat - and I find injured birds - adults as well as the entire nest of babies - and cats also decimate baby rabbits. Wildlife needs to eat the rabbits to survive as well as rodents in the pasture. I have an indoor cat and I put mouse traps in the feed room if I see evidence of mice. I honestly don’t know a barn that Doesn’t have a cat and I wonder what effect that has on birds and rabbits. Maybe donate some $$$ to the rescue and also write to your State Rep. and Senator and ask them to sponsor legislation for mandatory spaying and neutering, because we sure have a pet overpopulation problem.
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Yes but you personally don’t see my cats sleeping all day and they are in the house at night.
I am totally ok with them killing a few mice/week. I live on 20 acres, and am surrounded by hundreds of other acres of fields full of mice.
I have never seen evidence of any birds being killed; I don’t think they try that hard. My dogs take out a few in the spring; should I keep them inside too? They also kill frogs. 
The birds in my barn kill more baby birds than anything else I’ve seen. They toss the other birds’ hatchlings out of the nests. I refuse to bring them in my house, though.
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How people can be so concerned about the environment, climate change, trophy hunting by humans, on and on, and then refuse to see the damage that little fluffy wuffy kitty has on the environment just boggles my mind.
Cats are very hard on native wildlife. Yes, birds get killed by other birds, snakes etc. Those are NATURAL predators of those birds! Cats are an introduced species into the environment. They kill so many native species and the sheer number of them makes a big impact. Yes, birds die from other human influences, but that doesn’t make it okay or less of a problem because it is a cute little pet doing
the killing. And keeping them fed doesn’t make any difference, cats will kill for fun. I just don’t get the turning a blind eye to the destruction caused by cats. All because little fluffy wuffy, poofy woofy doesn’t kill birds or other wildlife, only mice. :rolleyes::mad:
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And it seems to be religion to some to deny that cats are harmful to wildlife…
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Honestly if my cats killed birds I would admit it. I am quite sure they don’t. My dogs kill a lot of things, birds included. So I think focusing on cats is kind of pretend environmental concern.
I mow over a lot of wildlife to maintain pastures for horses, who are extraordinarily unfriendly to the environment and a lot bigger than cats.
In general I think there is a way to manage a reasonable balance. Starting with altering all cats. I keep bees so I deliberately do not mow nearly 10 acres of open field so that the bees have ample native flowers, which also provides habitat for birds, monarch butterflies, deer, etc. I deliberately avoid chemical pesticides and herbicides, even though I wouldn’t mind a few less mice in my barn.
I have 2 cats that were dropped off…and I hoped they could be barn cats but neither wanted to live outside full time. But I think my cats are the least of the environmental stressors on my farm.
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OP I wouldn’t get outside cats if I were you. Listen to Wildlifer. Some cats hang at the house/barn, some don’t. Also ignore the posters who don’t live on a farm and in fact live that city life because yes some cats love the house even though they are barn cats. The problem is, you won’t know what you’ve got right off the rip.
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If you are making the effort to reduce environmental impacts by not mowing for the bees, avoiding chemicals etc, why not take one more step and keep the cats indoors full time? It will save the wildlife that they are most likely killing, even though you think they aren’t. Focusing on cats is not a pretend environmental concern, and excusing the damage cats do by playing the whataboutism game is not helpful the our native wildlife population.
Altering all cats is a good place to start, even better would be all pet cats indoor only. Safest for wildlife and cats. And lastly, no more trap, spay and release of feral cats, but rather trap and rehome to indoor homes or euthananize. Altered cats kill wildlife and a lot of times don’t have a nice life.
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Because they are miserable and obnoxious if they can’t go out. They were not raised indoors.
But yes I think focusing exclusively on cats is pretend concern for the environment. As I said, my dogs kill a lot of animals. For some reason that seems acceptable…but not for cats?
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I don’t think it is acceptable for dogs to kill birds either. However, I haven’t seen any studies that show that dogs have the same impact on killing of wildlife as cats. Maybe that is something that @wildlifer could give us some insight on.
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Carry on…it’s not worth discussing this with you.
As I mentioned, willful ignorance for convenience.
I’ve seen my cat come up with a bird (dead, head gone, that seems to be the tasty bit) and 3 minutes later there is zero evidence of a bird at all. No feathers, no parts left.
So just because you see no bits of birds doesn’t mean that there are no birds being killed. FWIW.
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