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

[Feron]

96. I have both Indoor & Outdoor cats

Right now I have two indoor cats and one indoor/outdoor cat.

The eldest cat is only indoor/outdoor because she is the oldest and has always been that way. Rosie is only a threat to lizards and doesn't go out much anyway. I'm hoping to gradually ease her into being indoor only as she ages.

Wildlife concerns aside, indoor cats are a lot less stress and cost less to keep healthy.

You don't have to worry about (which have all happened to me/my family):

-An asshole shooting your cat with a pellet/BB gun and giving your cat an infected wound.
-Neighborhood dog mauling your cat to death
-Your cat getting into the trash after the possums finished pawing through it and getting sick because of it.
-Your cat getting into a fight. And then getting an abscess which takes off a large chunk of your cat's flesh. This happens repeatedly.
-Your neutered male cat encounters another male. Must. Spray.Everything.
-Waking up at 3 am to the sweet sounds of dueling cat falsettos.
-The goddamned cat door which is no more. And having to wrestle away prey my cat has delivered inside. Worst: live baby copperhead. How my cat didn't get injured I don't know. Weirdest: A live crawfish. Most disgusting: A decapitated and half-eaten squirrel I found in my bedroom. Got the most exercise trying to catch it: toss up between the garter snake and the mouse my cat dropped in the dining room unscathed.
-Uninvited cats coming in through the cat door. I did catch the neighborhood stray when the cat door malfunctioned and it got stuck in my house. Animal control picked him up.
-Sick cat wandering off. One came back and was euthanized after a month of unsuccessful treatments for what we believe was probably a hereditary liver problem. The other cat, Kramer, wandered off never to return. He was elderly and was going down from old age issues. In hindsight I think his life inside would have been better and a lot less stressful. FWIW, he was 16.
-Wild animals attacking and/or killing your cat.

Anyhow I think that a better approach for bird enthusiasts is to educate cat owners on how to enrich your indoor environment. It's a least a start.
I don't think that the knee jerk "cats bad" approach some overzealous birders have is productive. It just puts cat owners on the defensive and nothing changes.