Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: on pet cats / feral cats

[Wayne Tyson (landrest]

Most cats prefer birds. They do eat rodents, on an opportunity basis. Dogs 
are also rodent killers, often more efficient than cats. A cat enclosure can 
keep out dogs and other cats and animals that might harm the cat, spread 
disease, etc.  A wandering cat is in danger, and causes a lot of harm and 
inconvenience (such as grabbing a cat turd whilst gardening). On reason 
people let cats out is so they will not accumulate pussy bon-bons in 
litterbox so quickly, and the neighbor will have the privilege of having 
unsanitary, odiferous sandboxes for the children to play in or make concrete 
with. This is not "cat-bashing," it's just what they do. You will have more 
fun with your indoors and in its enclosure than having to scrape it off the 
street, have it seriously injured with 5-figure vet bills, or have it eaten 
or injured by wild animals.

WT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Naomi Anderegg" <naomi_anderegg [at] yahoo.com>
To: <rlkohl [at] earthlink.net>; "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 12:27 AM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ on pet cats / feral cats


> Richard wrote:
> "Before we moved in, our tentative pet policy said that cats could not run
> free.
>
> Then we were told that if our cats weren't out, the neighborhood cats 
> would take
>
> over the territory (does anyone know if this is true?).
>
> So then we modified the policy so that cats could run free."
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> If you have rodents, like the rest of the world, then you'll have 
> predators.
> Probably not wolves, which presumably kept the rodent population in North
> America in check at least through the early 1900s. We've decimated their
> population, along with native feline species like the Florida Panther, in 
> most
> parts of country. You could have bobcats or coyotes or foxes, I suppose, 
> but
> they really don't like to be around people by my understanding, whereas 
> rodent
> populations flourish close to human populations. So, you're looking at 
> domestic
> cats, feral domestic cats, snakes, or possibly hawks & owls filling that 
> niche
> in the ecosystem. Domestic cats (feral or not) are well suited for 
> it--with all
> the cat bashing I've done a little reading and they're much more suited 
> towards
> hunting rodents than birds. They're also relatively comfortable around 
> human
> populations in comparison to the other predators. And the statistic that I 
> found
> was that 80% of cat kills were rodents, but I don't really know how 
> accurate
> that is. I suppose I can see cats being a concern if you have a threatened
> population of ground-nesting birds in your part of the country. (My area 
> is
> mostly wooded and with a significant density of large trees, and there 
> just
> aren't any ground-nesters small enough to be significantly threatened by
> domestic cats that I know of.) I'd rather have cats (feral or pet) than
> snakes--but perhaps I'm just prejudiced against snakes.
>
>
> There are some interesting articles about this at www.alleycat.org--an 
> national
> organization that advocates managing feral cat populations through "trap 
> neuter
> return" programs. They have research quoted on their website that would 
> indicate
> that there will be a cat population if there are adequate prey species to
> support them.
>
>
> A few articles addressing bird species loss / effect on wildlife of 
> outdoor cat
> populations: http://www.alleycat.org/Page.aspx?pid=324
> And there are some documented cases of attempts at eradicating feral cat
> populations in relatively small areas than indicate that the "vaccuum 
> effect"
> (on feral cat populations) does, in fact, exist--removing feral cats is
> ineffective because new cats just move in to take their place. (See 
> Richard's
> quoted "neighborhood cat" theory.)
>
>
> So. . . whether you allow outdoor pet cats in your community or not, 
> you're
> likely to have some cat population. But, the cat population that can be
> supported by the wild rodent population in your community would presumably 
> be
> lower/less dense than a domesticated pet cat population, since more people 
> feed
> their pet cats than would feed "strays" and this food helps to sustain 
> what
> would otherwise be an unsustainable density of cats.
>
>
> Naomi