Killing Machines

[Thomas Bumby]

Newsmax
Study Finds Cats Are Killing Machines
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 01:07 PM
By: Andra Varin
Forget chasing balls of yarn or cavorting with catnip mice. What your cat really wants to do is go outside and kill things.

University of Georgia researchers found that the carnage wrought by prowling kitties is much greater than previously thought. About 30 percent of the house cats in a recent study succeeded in slaying an average of two animals a week.

"The previous estimates were probably too conservative because they didn't include the animals that cats ate or left behind," University of Georgia researcher Kerrie Anne Loyd told USA Today.

Researchers found the cats brought home just under a quarter of what they killed. They ate 30 percent and left 49 percent to rot.

For the study, 60 cat owners in the Athens, Ga., area attached to their pets’ collars tiny video cameras provided by National Geographic Society’s CritterCam program.

Lizards, snakes, and frogs made up 41 percent of the animals killed, while small mammals such as chipmunks and moles were 25 percent of the death toll. Insects and worms were another 20 percent, and birds 12 percent, the researchers said.

Although birds were not the felines’ most frequent prey, when you figure there are about 74 million house cats in the United States, they are doing serious damage to bird populations, said George Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy.

“Cat predation is one of the reasons why one in three American birds species are in decline,” he told USA Today.

[John Pearson]

It seems like I heard this kind of report 20 years ago too. My neighbor leaves her garage door up just a crack all night to let her cats come and go. I guess we should be happy that cats are not as beloved as dogs or else the numbers could be even worse.

[Thomas Bumby]

Now that we do not have our Jack Russell Terriers, I see them cruising my backyard at least once a
week. I find pile of bird feathers every other week around my bird feathers. I have not seen the
culprit yet.
My next door neighbor used to trap them and turn them in to the city pound. Most
of the trap cats did not have pet collar on them. He would call the pet owner if they cat had a
pet collar.
Lately I see more of them cruising my street and back yard. The midnight cat serenade
by my bedroom window was stopped when we installed our water sprinkler system and set to come on
at the time they were usually there.