Gareth Morgan trots out the usual cat hating bollocks.
For thousands of years, New Zealand’s birds flourished with no predators. Some species, such as the kiwi, even became flightless. But the arrival of mankind and its introduction of predators, including cats, dogs and rodents, has wiped out some native species and endangered many others.
“Imagine a New Zealand teeming with native wildlife; penguins on the beach, kiwis roaming about in your garden,” Morgan says on his website. “Imagine hearing birdsong in our cities.”
Yes, cats are hunters. They aren’t always very good at it – although a couple of ours are very efficient ratters. And as the article points out, rodents that prey on birds’ eggs are themselves feline prey. As Darwin noted, some species actually benefit from the presence of cats – bumble bees for example as the hives are prone to attack from rodents and what keeps the rodent population down? Oh, yeah, cats.
Anyway, it seems that the Kiwis have told Morgan where to get off in no uncertain terms and good for them. I do agree that neutering is sensible – we neuter ours. I don’t much like it and always feel a bit guilty, but the consequences of more and more kittens is the price of not doing it. We had a neighbour in France who just let his get on with it and the outcome was a sickly colony of inbred cats – so, no, I’ll do the decent thing and get them snipped. But not replace them when they die? Morgan can go take a hike. None of his business telling others what to do. Nor would I keep cats imprisoned indoors.
His insane idea of registration ignores what UK legislation has always understood – that cats are semi-wild. Keeping them restrained and registered as you can with dogs is nigh on impossible – besides, only the responsible owners would comply and those feral colonies won’t be lining up for their registration documents.
Morgan stops short of euthanasia of peoples’ animals:
He does not recommended owners euthanise their cats: “Not necessarily, but that is an option,” he admits…
Only because you realise that it is beyond the pale and would elicit even more of a backlash you nasty little shit. If you thought you could get away with it, that is precisely what you would be suggesting.
Cats have been hanging around mankind for millennia. Ours is a symbiotic relationship. Get used to it.
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As is usual, we get the cat hating fuckwits spilling their bile in the comments below the line. Why are cats treated differently to dogs, we are asked. Er, because cats are a different species would be the answer to anyone with a functioning brain cell…
However, comment of the day has to go to Sisyphus2:
…given the internet is a lot like ancient Egypt – everyone writes on walls and worships cats.
It’s all very confused thinking. He’s taking present day New Zealand an entirely altered ecology from pre Maori times and suggesting that removing a species symbiotic with humans will somehow help restore a pristine world. Most of the pre-human species have gone they can’t be brought back by any means and the ones which are left are ill adapted to the modern New Zealand, it would require an entire re-making of the place and isn’t going to happen. Is he also planning to remove the introduced bird species which have done quite well as the country was altered to look something like a less populated Britain ? No Blackbirds ? That must be the logical end to his argument. The destruction of New Zealand’s native fauna began with the arrival of the Maori and was well advanced by the time Europeans arrived, I may be wrong but I don’t think the Maori had cats.
Quite so. He ignores the elephant in the room – or should that be hairless ape?
Or the elephant bird… 😈
No Moa of that please.
I hate cats! I hunt them,I shoot them,I mass murder them………
Ive become quite adept at poisoning the little critters. I also tie little plastic mice to strings and toss out as they wander in their yards to lure them into my clutches. Ive even murdered them in their mommies wombs and cut their precious souls out of their mommies wombs. I am indeed a cat hater.
How did this come about,I was tortured abused with sickening cartoons by Tom and Jerry growing up. Taking up for the little guy I had motivation of a moral purpose.
I crusaded to protect mice and rats from these nasty predators……
I am Willard…….
Watch my movie and you shall see my wickedness and savory appetite for mice and rats!
Willard is a meek social misfit with a strange affinity for rats. He lives in a large mansion, with only his cranky and decrepit mother for company.
On his 27th birthday he leaves the party out of embarrassment. While sitting outside he sees a rat and tosses it pieces of birthday cake. His mother gets upset with him for leaving the party and she scolds him later while also discussing how badly the house is falling apart. The next morning he goes out and feeds another rat (this one has babies with it) while imitating their squeaks. His mother starts telling him that he needs to kill the rats that have been running around their yard, to which Willard refuses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_%281971_film%29
Or the RATS, which are & were the principal killers of smaller native NZ wildlife …..
That comment is so true – LOLCats is fantastic. The internet is worth it just for that.
All this notwithstanding – they do slaughter our garden birds in ever increasing numbers. I like to see birds in the garden – cats don’t interest me (awaits torrents of abuse). 🙂
Our neighbourhood is cat city. Our immediate neighbour doesn’t have cats any more but does put up bird feeders. Currently, there are at least two breeding pairs of blackbirds, multiple tits, finches, robins, sparrows and a pair of jays.
If we see two bird kills a year from our cats it is unusual. They tend to stick to rodents – mostly these days, rats. Birds have a distinct advantage that cats lack – they can fly.
“they can fly”
Not when pinned down by claws and their heads in the cat’s mouth they can’t.
And they are likely to be the weak and injured. That’s how predation works. Cats are not particularly good at taking healthy birds because they have the ability to fly at such short notice – unlike slow worms, for example. I’ve spent long enough watching them to realise that all too often, the bird they are stalking will never be within their reach.
“And they are likely to be the weak and injured”. How likely?
“That’s how predation works.” Always?
“they have the ability to fly at such short notice”. Even if they don’t notice the stalking cat?
“slow worms”. Red herring.
“I’ve spent long enough watching them”. How long?
Methinks you do protest too much. 🙂
Wow, not too many straw men there. Is over four decades enough for you? And I didn’t say “always”. And for how predation works, a little study of predators and their hunting habits will tell you the obvious – that the weak and injured are less able to flee and are more likely to be taken by predators as a consequence. This is good for the herd. No, slow worms are not a red herring – they suffer predation as do other small animals.
I am not protesting too much at all. I am merely pointing out the obvious; that the “cats slaughtering garden birds” meme is hyperbole. The RSPB agrees with me.
And:
Maybe they are protesting too much as well, eh?
Birds and cats live side by side where I live, despite there being multiple cats with overlapping territories. It is not an issue.
One of my cats is a very good hunter and she can jump amazingly high, unfortunately she does catch birds but her favourite prey is probably worms. Cats catch, and eat, a large amount of invertebrates but you never hear anything about that because insects don’t have the bird’s good PR. My solution to the bird problem is not to put much food on the ground and only in the open and to reduce feeding to a minimum in summer, it still upsets me to see birds being caught but so does the catching of butterflies and frogs, perhaps fortunately I don’t get slow worms in my garden. I do what I can to minimise predation and try to draw a distinction between personal dislike of dead things and an actual impact on wildlife, there are far worse causes of the latter than cats.
My neighbour uses bird feeders in his trees. While the cats can climb the tree, trying to catch the birds from a wavering branch is too much for them – and, frankly, we only have two who even bother to try.
We did, once, have a cat who could leap up and catch a bird. In all his seventeen years, I only ever saw him pull it off once, though.
When it comes to frogs, they tend to pick them up and bring them indoors alive. We then have to catch it and take it back out to the pond.