Cats, they eat native birds but they also make really good pets so please vote for which option is what your opinion is, cats, no cats, or cats that live permanently inside. poll

For pets, yes, indoors with a catio or harness is best. What about “working cats” like barn cats, though? [Addendum: just saw @annainok already brought this up]

[image] mira_l_b: thoughts from the community on combining topics with an adjustment to the topic titles? I personally enjoy having a separate thread to read because I don’t have to scroll through everything. However, I’d understand completely if they were combined.

For rats, one study found that cats don’t actually reduce the population as they don’t catch very many, but they do change the rats’ behaviour so that you don’t see as many: https://www.wired.com/story/rats-vs-cats/ I don’t know if anything like that has been studied for mice.

Responsible pet ownership is the answer. Look at this website for a very successful ‘bird protection’ collar for domestic cats https://www.birdsbesafe.com/collections/all plus see the Responsible Pet Ownership brochure developed on Waiheke Island www.forestandbird.org.nz/what-we-do/branches/haurak…

[image] sue: very successful ‘bird protection’ I feel strongly enough about this issue that I am quoting myself from the cat culling topic: None of the proposed collars, bells etc. deal with the larger issues of environmental destruction as they are geared to “prevent kills.” Birds’ behavio…

Sometime in the future there will be large areas of the planet cleared of cats and declared cat free zones. The sooner the better! It has started already on small wildlife sanctuary islands and the areas will get bigger as technology allows.

Welcome to the forum, @dave_holland !

What about places like Egypt, where feral cats have existed for hundreds or even thousands of years?

This is mainly about domesticated/pet cats @youssefelnahas

Cats: good or bad

Nature Talk

haida_gwaii October 25, 2019, 9:14pm 32

Thanks, it was not a text link, so there I go again, ignoring symbols and looking for text. Thank you. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=733456435

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Cats: good or bad

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