Do We Really Know That Cats Kill By The Billions? Not So Fast

[mike_c]

4. I fully admit to extreme bias in this regard....

I'm a quintessential "cat person." We have dogs too, but they're "the girlfriend's dogs." Most of my adult life I've lived with cats, usually more than, um, a few. I receive a great deal of emotional support from my relationships with cats. My cats' welfare and happiness is WAY more important to me than that of their prey. I'll cop to that without regret. On the other side of that, my cats are well fed and do not hunt much. Most are middle aged or older (currently), and a few have infirmities that make hunting success unlikely. None can reproduce.

Nonetheless, cats are meso-predators. That's just the way it is. They're far more efficient single predators than most dogs, with some exceptions of course, e.g. terriers and small mammalian prey. Most dogs are pretty hapless single predators, so they're relegated to omnivory to survive.

The argument that cats are introduced meso-predators simply doesn't hold much water with me (and I'm an ecologist by trade). Human activities cause way more disruption to bird and small mammal populations than cats ever will, although one might also argue that cat impacts are part of the human footprint as well, since we keep them as pets and allow them to breed beyond the numbers we can directly control.

edit-- I wanted to add that I think cat abandonment should be a serious ecological crime, as well as an animal welfare issue. However, the punishment should be directed toward humans who create feral cat populations, rather than toward the cats themselves. Feral populations of introduced pet species deserve care and attention, and should not be victimized further by people.