The Killer At Home: House Cats Have More Impact On Local Wildlife Than Wild Predators

[JudyM]

What does an outdoor cat do all day? According to new research, it could be taking a heavy toll on local wildlife. A tracking study of more than 900 house cats shows when they kill small birds and mammals, their impact is concentrated in a small area, having a bigger effect than wild predators do.

...Kays and colleagues collected GPS data from cats in six countries and found most cats aren't venturing very far from home.

..."It actually ends up being a really intense rate of predation on any unfortunate prey species that's going to live near that cat's house," he said. ..."The big concern is where we have an overlap of people and cats with native species that are small and vulnerable," Kays said.

One study estimates that house cats, both domestic and feral, kill billions of birds every year.

"The simplest thing to do is to keep your cat indoors," he said.

The Small Home Ranges Of Pet Cats
Outdoor housecats tend to stick close to home, as three cats in Durham, N.C., showed over a few weeks of GPS tracking:


https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/820953617/the-killer-at-home-house-cats-have-more-impact-on-local-wildlife-than-wild-preda

[Codeine]

1. Keep kitty inside.

Better for the birds, and they don’t get squished by cars.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Mine are inside, too. Also cuts down on ticks and fleas which

is important since we live in a very Lyme-y area where deer come up to our porch.

[Codeine]

10. When we rescued our cat (abandoned feral kitten)

he was absolutely covered in fleas; it took weeks to completely eradicate them. I can’t imagine subjecting him to the possibility of that kind of infestation again.

Luckily Lyme isn’t an issue here that I know of, but cars and coyotes definitely are.

[logosoco]

2. I keep trying to tell my new cat this.

He is not quite one year old. He is the first cat I have ever had where I decided "no outside". He can watch the birds and squirrels from the window but he is not going out there to get them.

[JudyM]

23. Good going!

It may take a while, but they get used to it.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Cats belong inside.

[Botany]

4. Cats also kill snakes, toads, frogs, pollinators, butterflies, invertebrates, and mammals

Last edited Tue Apr 21, 2020, 06:11 AM - Edit history (1)

They are an ecological hammer.

[SharonAnn]

33. The got rid of the mice, voles, and moles in my yard and yards on each side.

My neighbors loved it!
No mice in the house, no tunnels in the lawn.

[BGBD]

38. It's not really a couple of house

cats that go or even live outside and kill some things in the yard that are the problem. It's more that feral cats band together into colonies and as a large group can decimate species in the area.

Cats are invasive in that role, and they become one of the top predators in lots of ecosystems.

https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/

[Botany]

42. A cat's predatory is very strong. That they just kill to kill.

Many of the critters that cats kill are key components of the ecosystem.
They are one of the reasons you almost never see a wood thrush or a garter snake
anymore.

[HAB911]

5. Recently read a thread on Nextdoor

about keeping cats inside. It was a portent of things to come like the current battle over social distancing and masks. That is to say, an all out war.

[Codeine]

11. To be fair, everything is a war on Nextdoor.

Everyone is so angry there; a lost dog post can erupt into a days-long flamewar.

[HAB911]

15. LOL, it finally got so bad someone deleted it all

[Horse with no Name]

36. Ours does that daily about gunshots vs. fireworks

Lol

[Horse with no Name]

35. Lol no joke there

It’s a bit frightening. And they know where you live. Lol

[Shanti Mama]

6. There are great collars you can put on your cat to warn off birds

Bells don't work, but I've read that the colorful large collars do.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. Doesn't keep cars from squishing them, or hawks or coyotes

from making them their lunch.

[GulfCoast66]

34. I used to see lots of cats in my suburban neighborhood.

Then I started seeing coyotes running around and lots of missing cat posters on telephone poles.

Must admit it made me smile. I’m a hunter and angler and spend lots of time in nature. As much as I can. The idea that humans introduced a predator against which our native wildlife has no evolutionary defense against being eaten by a native animal they have no ingrained defenses against seems like a karma I really don’t believe in.

My wife has 2 cats. They kill birds and squirrels every day. In their imagination. Looking out of the windows of our Florida room. Because they will never go outside in reality.

I hate House cats running free. Hope coyotes eat them all.

[Codeine]

12. I keep a bell on my indoor cat

so I know when he’s hiding under a couch ready to ambush someone’s ankles!

[JudyM]

24. Lol

[leftyladyfrommo]

9. Tell my neighbors that! nt

[MissB]

13. I have a ton of birds on my property

I create/maintain habitat for them. I don’t feed them, though I can see my neighbor’s three feeders from my veggie garden at the back of my property.

I live in a wooded urban area, right at the edge of a large city. I’m surrounded by trees and forests, which is quite lovely.

I also have mice. I prefer mice not make my home their own. I also have moles in my yard.

So far the count of mice/moles this spring is about 20. Birds? Zero.

My cats have free range of the inside and the outside. My youngest cat hangs out on the porch in the afternoon sun and in the backyard when I’m gardening. She may leave the property but I’ve never seen her wander off the half acre here. She mostly hangs with me, and she prefers to sleep on our bed all night.

My oldest cat sleeps all day inside, hanging out in the late afternoon on the porch chair in the sun. He starts hunting when we go to bed, and generally snags a mouse before we are asleep. After he’s done with his snack, he sleeps on his bed on the porch. He’s approaching 14 years of age and has slowed down quite a bit. He’s on a thyroid medicine twice a day.

If I lived in the city proper, I’d feel differently about inside vs outside cats. But I don’t live in the city. My cats are adorable little killers of mice (and the occasional bunny). I’m ok with all that. If they only aimed for birds, I’d feel differently. I specifically adopted my youngest cat because I knew she’d be a good mouser. It’s their job.

I’ve seen these wars before. There is a strong city/rural divide. I don’t have barn cats but they serve the same purpose, just with way more human interaction.

[womanofthehills]

21. I also live way out in the country and my cat is too lazy to kill anything

I think he has seen so many birds that they are of no interest to him. He loves to lie in the sun. He also is an older cat.

The mouse catcher is my half husky 2 yr old dog. My dogs will also occasionally get a bunny or a dove. Usually the bunnies can outrun them. I also have a 100 ft by 50 ft run with lots of trees for all my animals. It has a six foot fence and a doggie door. I have had a raccoon and some squirrels come in my doggie door at night. My dogs and cat are not running around outside the run unless I’m around.

[JudyM]

26. Have you tried peppermint oil to rid the house of mice?

Works well and smells great. Just dab some on cotton balls and place them around.

[MissB]

29. They aren't in the house.

The only way they make their way inside is thru the cat door in my oldest cat’s mouth right before it becomes a snack.

In the early years in this house we had issues with mice inside. We’ve since redone the foundation in the area they were pouring in.

[Marrah_Goodman]

31. I also live in a very wooded area (in the middle of state preserve land)

We used to have a cat that could go in and out of the house at will, before one of the kids moved away with her. We still had and have huge amounts of birds in the yard, tons of types of small rodents, etc. I can see the impact of cats maybe being more of an issue in populated areas.

[Alex4Martinez]

14. Spay neuter, spay neuter, spay neuter....

Pet and feral cats free to breed create kittens, which are precious and kept or given away when found.

It's not that anyone wants more cats, it's not like there's a market for cats like there is for puppies, it's just that they reproduce so profoundly.

It's absolutely irresponsible for any human to take on a pet and not neuter that pet and then let it outdoors to reproduce.

Period.

Thank you for shedding light on the consequences.

[mokawanis]

16. There are 3 that patrol my neighborhood

and I always make a point of going outside and chasing them away whenever they enter my yard. I have an elevated deck and several bird-feeders and I hate seeing cats coming around to prey on the birds. Of course I can't be on watch most of the time so they do occasionally kill a mourning dove or blue jay.

[Wounded Bear]

17. Of course they do...

"wild" animals are part of the ecosystem, which kind of self regulates most of the time. Predators and prey tend to balance out.

Pet cats are added into the ecosystem by humans and are largely protected themselves while attacking local wild prey. In a suburban setting, they skew the balance much more so than on a farm, say, or rural residence.

[LakeArenal]

18. Wow. I said this stuff once and I was called a cat hater

That cats aren’t so bad on birds.

This person kept on me all morning.

Lots of proud folks feeding feral cats. To be fair a couple people say they try to save them take them to be neutered, then plunk them back in the environment to kill.

Friends have told me their outside cat does not kill birds. That’s bs.

[yardwork]

19. My cats are indoors cats.

I never worry about them anymore. When I was growing up we had cats that went in and out. I was constantly worried about them, for good reason. They got into fights and got infected wounds. They were hit by cars. Sometimes they never came home and I never knew what happened to them.

[Betty88]

20. City cats move to the country

Our once peaceful city cats have become, well no better put than as to say, mass killers. When the weather turned cold a few mice decided to try and best the city cats and sneak into the place. Oh the blood curdling fun that has been had by my two old house cats. Heads popping in the middle of the night, I did not know mouse brains were so tasty. They work together like nothing I have ever seen. Like a SWAT team set on catching a nice snack and eating it raw on the bedroom rug. YUMMY

[Codeine]

22. My little dude kept staring at the dishwasher

for hours at a time; turns out a mouse had taken up residence under there. I pulled off the face plate to the bottom of the dishwasher and it was Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom in my kitchen.

[Betty88]

30. LOL

Years ago in Brooklyn, before our current crew, we had a girl cat that sat by a wall for two days after hearing some scratching behind it. What ever it was never came out, she was a good kitty.

[StarryNite]

25. It's safer for the cats to stay inside too.

It's a win for the wildlife and the cats.

[JudyM]

27. Seriously, yes. Missing a feline friend is heartbreaking.

Lots of time spent walking around the neighborhood calling her name. My indoor cat scooted out once when company was over and we spent way too long looking for her around the neighborhood... it was hours before she deigned to poke her head out of the bushes and meow at me. Better result than one of my friends, though, who never found out what happened to her beloved cat.

Not to mention there are seriously disturbed people who do depraved stuff to cats, would never want to have to think about that first hand.

[madville]

28. We had a bad feral cat problem in the rural area I live in

And our county only has a part-time animal control person. The animal control guy gave my neighbor several cage traps and he would get a few every night and then either drop them off at the animal control building or the guy would pick them up if he was working that day. They got over 50 in a few weeks and have only seen a few randomly in the last couple of years.

[cbdo2007]

32. Well, my dog used to hunt the neighborhood cats...she only killed a few though...

just the ones that came in our yard.

Poor dog, RIP, wish she was around now as the neighbors new cats are crapping in our garden again

[GulfCoast66]

37. A cat killing dog is a thing to behold!

And they can come in all sizes. I’ve seen a Jack Russell that would kill any cat it caught.

And seen bulldogs that would cuddle up to them. The worst(or best depending on you position) I saw was a Blue Leopard Catahoula cur that would hunt them. A very good natured dog, but something about cats made him want to kill them. Which he did very efficiently.

Personally, and I’ll win no friends here, I don’t care about any free roaming cat being killed. Because their owners don’t give a shit about all the native wildlife they kill. Wildlife not evolved with small cats. House Cats are really Arabian Wildcats released on American wildlife. And we have 2 of them living in our house. In our house. Not outdoors to kill the songbirds, reptiles and other native wildlife I love.

[roamer65]

39. I have 2 indoor cats and I feed 2 semi-ferals.

I figure if I feed them, they will hunt less.

Very rarely do I see wildlife carcasses around my lawn from them.

Both are TNR cats.

[Xolodno]

40. We have two indoor only cats....

...nothing in the house lives. Haven't had to buy a fly swatter in ages, one mouse made a mistake, a fatal mistake by going inside. We saved a couple of lizards....before they finished them. And saved a garden snake our alpha cat was toying with...I wasn't home and my wife has a great fear of snakes, thankfully a neighbor was home and rescued the poor guy.

Bottom line, cats are great social animals that provide much love, stress relief, entertainment, etc. But they are still predators. Add to that, where I live they can be preyed upon by coyotes, owls, mountain lions, bears, etc. So if your pet means anything to you...keep it indoors.

[Raine]

41. My cat is strictly an indoor cat 🐱

and never goes outside for his sake, other critters sake and so I don't have to worry about him something awful happening to him.

[KG]

43. had a next door neighbor that let their cats out. next thing, every cat for miles was in my yard

shitting, pissing, fucking & fighting. if ya let cats run around, don't call it a pet.