Cats should be in laps

[Neil Fitzgerald]

http://halo.org.nz/cat-petition/

(280.96 KiB) Viewed 5362 times

[Jim_j]

Sounds very reasonable to me....

cheers
jim

[Steps]

Done.. and passed on.
Autumn planting in the veggie has been the worst ever...
I plant after rain couple weeks back... rain and cat poo is stomach churning....
And even after removing the poo very deep in the compost bins, there is still heaps left and the smell, that doesnt go.

Get all sorted (except the smell).. cali, broccoli beetroot and last radish crop
1/2 the beetroot destroyed
Couple in each of the cali / broccoli rows and most of the radish.. gone.

We try to teach our children gardening , basic skills but just the cat poo alone is enough to put ANY person off for life... and it does

Then caught 1 inside the boat cabin spraying...makes fish with the grandchildren a very unpleasant experience....and thats on a fresh bait boat..
Not to mention the screaming at night in spring and summer, the stink in front and back doors and in entertainment areas....
And the missing.. well not really, the dead corpses of fan tails, black birds, thrushes and wax eyes in the gardens..

When is enough enough?

[GrahamB]

Too right but I'm in a bad place at the moment....
having to foster my daughter's little black cat after she moved into a no-pet apartment in Wellington. It has proved to a be a bloody skink-expert - three in three days and a blackbird 10 mins after one of these. All returned to the garden apparently unharmed but who knows what puncture wounds were invisible. Try to keep it mostly inside and certainly at night.
After a lifetime of swearing blue murder at these things I have one at home now. Purgatory!

Cheers

GrahamB

[David Hallett]

After following this debate for several years I decided to keep a record of my cats hunting. Everything that was killed was brought home, nothing was ever found in the garden or surrounding land. My home is in suburban Christchurch and borders a council reserve planted in natives.
In the 18 months that I recorded its kills there were 127 rats, 15 mice, 25 lizards and 3 birds, of the 3 birds 2 were released unharmed (finches).
I feed the birds in my garden in the winter and have large flocks of silvereyes and sparrows visiting, also daily visits by bellbird, fantail, grey warbler, starling with 2 resident ducks every spring and quail. 6 months after my cat died we had an explosion in the rat population and myself and 2 neighbours had to resort to laying baits. I believe feral cat pose a very real danger to our wildlife but believe the well fed pets preferred target is rats and mice.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

It's great that you kept a tally David, and willing to consider the effects of cats. It is not straight forward to study, but most things I've read point to a significant amount of kills (>30%) not being taken home, despite what owners find and think is the case, and it is not equal for all prey. Bigger trophies are more likely to come home than snacks. There is no doubt that rats are a favourite prey, but as far as I'm aware no one has yet shown that cats achieve control to levels that benefit other wildlife in NZ. That sounds like a devastating toll on the lizards, and I would much rather have a bait station or trap at every other house than a cat. At least they don't wander into my (or Steps') vege garden or bush restoration.

[SomesBirder]

Does putting a bell on the collar of a cat not help?

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Yes, it helps.

Nelson S.H, Evans A.D. & Bradbury R.B. (2005) The efficacy of collar-mounted devices in reducing the rate of predation of wildlife by domestic cats. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 94, 273-285
...fewer birds were returned by those fitted with a collar and bell (41% reduction)

And a CatBib™ is even better.
Calver M., Thomas S., Bradley S. & McCutcheon H. (2007) Reducing the rate of predation on wildlife by pet cats: the efficacy and practicability of collar-mounted pounce protectors. Biological Conservation, 137, 341-348
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0707000857

[David Hallett]

After seeing the rat population explode after my cat died I am in no doubt that it had a positive effect on birdlife in my neighbourhood.
I am also sceptical as to the figure of 30% of kills not brought back and would be interested in the methodology used to obtain that figure. As for only the trophies being brought home, about 80% of rats brought home were juvenile ( mouse size or smaller)
I agree it was not a great result for the lizards but I failed to mention that the majority were returned to the garden alive and lizard hunting seemed to be a phase that subsided, I still have a healthy lizard population in my garden.
There are all sorts of threats to our wildlife, cats being one of them, but I think we sometimes develop a Gareth Morgan style blinked view of the problem. Dogs are also a major problem, especially with uncontrolled dogs at roosting areas in Canterbury estuaries ( have posted photos of dogs chasing godwits while roosting on this site before) but there seems to be no appetite to enforce the bylaws.
Don't get me wrong I do agree with the suggestions at the beginning of this thread but think sometimes we need to look at the big picture. Lets not forget the detrimental effect we humans have on our wildlife, disguised as progress and driven by greed.

[SomesBirder]

I do not understand why dogs are not as infamous as cats when it comes to environmental destruction. A population of feral dogs anywhere in the country would be a death sentence for flightless birds; provided cats have the same effect, they are not as tenacious as dogs and so probably would not exterminate the population as quickly.
I fully support the suggestions in the original post; it is better than killing them on sight, as has been suggested.