Are Cats Bad for the Environment?

[douglas9]

A little black cat lives in the crawl space under my house. Some weeks I see him every day, darting back into his burrow as I pull into the driveway. Then he'll disappear for weeks at a time, and just when I'm sure that he's found cushier digs, he comes back, like the cat in the old children's song. He's not much of a charmer—skinny, mangy, limping, and so feral that he bolts at the mere sight of people. But I can't help feeling sorry for him, so a few months ago I began leaving out cat food. I congratulated myself on this great solution: He'd get a square meal and maybe keep the mice away, too. But when I told an ecologist I know, she was horrified. "Basically," she said, "you're subsidizing a killer."

http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/06/cats-tnr-birds-feral?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+motherjones%2Fmain+%28MotherJones.com+Main+Article+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[HopeHoops]

1. Only when they crap in my vegetable garden.

[RedCloud]

7. Exactly. Who needs those "catalogs" in their salad?

[HopeHoops]

8. I thought they were Lincoln Logs.

[RedCloud]

2. Dogmatically speaking, "Arf! Arf!"

[Bake]

3. All animals are killers.

It's nature's way.

Bake

[Kali]

4. I remember a few flame wars about this in the past

:popcorn:

[hamsterjill]

5. Oh, good grief! Cats are not bad for the environment.

Cats are a part of the environment.

Now, as to your little black buddy...any chance you could borrow a humane trap and get him fixed, and have that limp looked at? I know it's asking a lot of you. There are vets who will treat ferals.

Either way - thanks for helping him out with some food. I'm sure he appreciates it!

[Arugula Latte]

6. Oh FFS

This is ridiculous.

Humans burn great swaths of rainforest, take the tops off of mountains, dump nuclear waste into the ocean, poison the air, and kitties are the problem?

:eyes:

[freshwest]

11. No, they don't hold a candle to us.

[hedgehog]

9. I commented on this last night, asking whether the fact that cats

take out rodents has been factored in. Some of those rodents eat the same food as birds, and rats will raid nests.

[AtomicKitten]

10. My Renfield is a one-cat killing machine.

Gophers, mice, etc., but not birds because he tends to hang out in the garage and not the backyard. I put a bell on his collar to even the odds, and the next morning I woke up to find a dead gopher with his collar and bell lying next to each other on the floor. I think it was a message to me about what he thinks about the bell on his collar.

:scared:

[LoveMyCali]

25. Renfield sounds like a good candidate

for season two of Animal Planet's "My Cat From Hell", they are casting now and I thought my cat's meowing was a problem. ;)

[AtomicKitten]

26. You have no idea how right you are!!! LOL.

Here's a picture of Ren telling my dog, Seven, what's what.

[Arugula Latte]

31. Ah ha ha!

Sick 'em, Kitteh! :rofl:

[mike_c]

12. I'm an ecologist, and I disagree with your friend's assessment....

Most urban and semi-urban environments are severely degraded by LOTS of factors. On the one hand, domestic cats are invasive species, but that's largely a management issue that argues for habitat management solutions (if people paid more attention to the reproductive habits of their pets, or discharged their responsibilities as pet owners better, the feral pet population would be much smaller and have less impact on native prey populations). Not all their prey are native species, however. Many, like european starlings, are just as invasive as the cats that prey on them.

I rescue feral cats. I feed them, turn them in for spaying or neutering when I can, then release them. Many are not truly feral at all, i.e. unsocialized with humans-- most are abandoned pets (there's that irresponsible habitat management issue again!) and in many cases they become attached to their caregivers and can often be brought back into human habitation where they can be better managed. We're doing this with a young female stray kitty at my partner's workplace right now (she's already spayed, marked, and released, but now she's becoming somewhat social and attached-- and since she's well fed, she hunts less).

Further, natural predator/prey relationships have been disrupted FAR more by human activities unrelated to pets than by all the pet cats (and strays) in the world. In many cases, cats simply replace other predators who have been extirpated. They're not direct ecological replacements because they often have different population dynamics, different foraging strategies, etc from natural predator populations but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, as long as ecosystems can adapt to them. Most of the concern seems to be about song birds, but if I recall correctly cats are rarely a severe threat to songbird populations except in settings where songbirds are generally doing relatively well, and where the real threats have more to do with things like habitat loss.

[csziggy]

14. I would think if humans had not modified the environment

There would be bobcats, foxes, weasels and other small mammalian predators that would be impacting the local habitat in a similar way to how cats do.

We've owned varying numbers of cats here on the farm and few have hunted birds - the birds are too fast and too aware of where the cats are lurking to be caught very often. I've seen the resident red shoulder hawks take more song birds close to the house than the cats have ever caught.

[Flaxbee]

15. great reply

thanks, mike_c.

You covered everything I was thinking, but as only someone who is an ecologist could (that is, authoritatively).

[TreasonousBastard]

16. Dupe.

[TreasonousBastard]

17. dupe

[TreasonousBastard]

18. I'll meet you half way there...

Around here we have a huge problem with abandoned cats, and they have decimated shorebirds like least terns and piping plovers. Summer people take off in the fall and figure the cats can take care of themselves out here. They can't, of course, but they do multiply and hunt, and often get fat from people like me who leave food out.

Raccoons, foxes, crows, hawks, owls... plenty of predators out there to eat the birds without the cats, but the cats are completely out of balance.

Having said that, yes, EVERYTHING is out of balance and there are probably as many plovers killed by beach activities from off-roading to simple curiousity about the exclosures we set up.

(what wierdness happened with these posts?)

[mike_c]

19. I'd say the problem isn't the abandoned cats...

...it's the humans who treat their responsibilities so cavalierly!

[MicaelS]

20. Humans who abandon cats are at fault, but so are humans

Who treat cats like Little four-legged substitutes for human children, and then defend cats as if they really were human beings. If humans took a more dispassionate view toward cats, we wouldn't even be having this debate. Feral cats would be recognized as invasive vermin and they would be exterminated.

[TZ]

21. Yeah, your post actually is completely inaccurate

You know that feral cats kill the much more dangerous to humans disease ridden rodents? I'm sorry but I suppose I could let you have a case of Black Plague (still around) or Hantaa virus (drown in your own fluids) from being overrun by mice and rats.
You sir are why the Humane Society exists because people believe the complete and UTTER BULLSHIT you just posted and leave to horrible behavior like feeding ferals rat poison and anti-freeze.
You might want to actually read the sound ecology behind Mike_C's post, but what does he know he's just a ecologist. And clearly my years of testing rodents for diseases leaves me completely ignorant on the horrible threat they convey every day.
You sir win the prize for most idiotic post of the day.

[stuntcat]

24. I won't "took a more dispassionate view toward" any animal

except for humans, the most invasive species in any part of the world now :hi:

I don't mean to fight you (much) but your "substitutes for human children" part was silly.
I have pretty interesting squirrels whose lives are more important than my fecund neighbor's toddlers!

[XemaSab]

32. Urban environments are degraded by lots of factors

and cats are yet another factor.

One of the things that frustrates me is that so many feral cats live in areas such as Turtle Bay in Redding (a semi-wild open area). There are at least two feral cat colonies over there.

Feral cats are terrible in breeding areas. They completely decimate fledgling birds.

[mike_c]

33. that's like saying that litter was a HUGE problem in Hiroshima...

...after it was bombed! :rofl:

Yes, feral cats are a factor in urban degradation of natural habitats. So are concrete and asphalt, electromagnetic radiation, heating/cooling disruption, land conversion to nonhabitat uses, light, sound, air, and water pollution, disruption of natural fire regimes, human overpopulation, disruption of natural migration and movement patterns (I'd hazard that EVERY paved and traveled road in the world kills more small mammals than the local cat population preys upon, for example).

The list goes on and on. Yes, somewhere in there cats contribute to habitat degradation.

But consider this: first, feral cat populations are a direct result of piss-poor population management by humans. I talked about that in my original reply. Blaming cats because people don't take their responsibilities seriously is not going to solve the real problem, is it? Managing pet populations is pretty straightforward, if people would simply do it, and the results are dramatic. Case in point: have you ever seen a feral domestic ferret population? No, you haven't, even though California has more pet ferrets than any other state (illegally, of course). That's because virtually EVERY one of them is neutered. That's something of a happy accident for ferrets-- they simply don't make acceptable pets when reproductively intact-- but the efficacy of universal and RESPONSIBLE population management is pretty obvious. In fairness, domestic ferrets have some other reproductive peculiarities that contribute to their lack of feral success, but the main cause is effective population management by humans. Pity people don't discharge their responsibilities to cats as well, but again, that's not the cat's fault, is it?

Second, if feral cat populations are reduced by responsible population management, the remaining pet cats have much less ecological impact (and remember, we're having this discussion against the backdrop of HUMAN ecological impact, for cryin' out loud!). Well fed cats hunt only occasionally and with relatively low success. Yes, hunting is instinctual, but it's also very risky behavior, and cats forage WAY less if they don't have too, just like you and I. It is simply not true that cats are voracious and unstoppable hunters-- cats are extremely vulnerable meso-predators whose hunting puts them at tremendous risk of injury or death-- well fed cats simply are not driven to engage in prolonged foraging in the face of the risks it entails. The same is true for feral colonies too-- feed them regularly, and you'll reduce their ecological impact greatly, along with their suffering, especially if you also capture, neuter, and release them to control population growth. They'll live longer, healthier lives and create less ecological damage, but again, for humans to accuse cats of having a big ecological footprint is pretty much the height of hubris!

Third, since I know your primary consideration is cat predation on bird populations, most cats are far more successful hunting rodents and other small mammals than they are at preying upon birds, and in that context they do far more good than harm. They replace native meso-predators that have been extirpated or reduced to ineffectuality. They interrupt disease transmission cycles (small mammals and their parasites are vectors). They reduce rodent intrusion into human habitations and stored products, including food. As I noted in my original reply, the worst damage cats inflict on bird populations is confined to areas with relatively dense human populations where habitat loss and other disturbances are the PRIMARY threats to bird survival, not cat predation-- not even close. Turtle Bay is one such place-- an island of human development embedded in a sea of undeveloped habitat. I'll bet you don't lament cat predation in, say, the Trinity Alps because there isn't any to speak of (not house kitties, anyway!)-- it's only an issue where humans have already modified habitats and created the real ecological disturbances that affect bird populations the most.

Personally, I think it's something of an urban myth that cats "completely decimate fledgling birds." Do you have data to support that? If they do, then one would expect those populations to BOTH collapse-- birds from reproductive failure and cats from loss of prey. Instead, I think songbirds are marginal prey for cats at best. They're just too risky, difficult, and infrequently available for primary forage. I think they're just opportunistic prey at best.

And besides, birds are just nasty little feathered lizards anyway, right? And their blood is HOT, isn't it, Precioussssss? :evilgrin:

[Incitatus]

13. Not as bad as humans are for it. nt

[Arkansas Granny]

22. If I think about my own immediate surroundings, the answer would have to be no.

My own kitty is an indoor/outdoor rescued feral. She is payed and seldom, if ever, strays from our yard. I have two feral cats hanging around the house that are trying to adopt me. In this heat wave, I've been leaving water out for them on the front porch and dry food in the morning so it will be gone before it attracts the skunks and possums after dark. I do this because I can't stand the thought of them suffering of thirst or hunger. There are also several other feral cats in the neighborhood.

I have wrens nesting in my kitchen window. Mockingbirds, robins, mourning doves, brown thrashers, cardinals, blue jays and scissor tailed flycatchers are all over the yard, not to mention sparrows and starlings everywhere. The hawk that patrols my neigborhood probably takes more birds than the cats do. It's not unusual to find a pile of feathers on the lawn under the trees where he has perched while he peeled his meal.

[stuntcat]

23. they aren't too good for it but,

but they aren't as bad for it as each human is. Especially meat-eating 1st-worlders, a cat's nowhere near as bad for the planet.

Cats are in the wrong places thanks to humans moving them around. Feral cats are bad news, ALL cats should be spayed or neutered, but her hating on that particular one is silly.

I've gotten 4 ferals fixed and turned two of them into permanent housecats. People have given me a hard time for it, but I only did it after trapping one and taking it to be put down, since NO ONE else was going to do anything with them. And that cost me money, just to get one killed. So then I spent hundreds more to get the rest of their family fixed. And my neighbors will only disapprove of me, but this Spring there were no new cats. What if I stopped like twelve kittens from being made!
Anyway two of them are indoor cats now, still semi-wild but not catching the neighbors' attention.. the neighbors who weren't going to do anything, much less spend all it's cost me.

grr :rant: ok :D

[Rhiannon12866]

27. I feed feral cats

And I rescued my last cat from the outdoors after feeding her in my yard for four months, finally had to resort to a have-a-heart trap to bring her in when the weather got nasty. It turns out that she wasn't feral at all, just frightened and abandoned. After veterinary care, she almost became a lap cat. She was black, as well... :loveya:

And if you feed this cat and/or bring him in, he won't be killing anything in order to eat. The closest my cat got to the outdoors after I brought her in was looking out the window. She'd had enough of the outdoors... ;(

[stuntcat]

29. that's like the two ferals I brought in

One walked in and one I had to trap, that one's still wild but she learned the litter box right away thankfully.
They're sisters, short gray tabbies, and they have NO desire to EVER step back outside.

[Bertha Venation]

28. Where's BikeWriter? My old cheerful nemesis.

He needs to put in his two cents.

Most people know where I stand on this, and if you don't, just ask.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

30. maybe.