By Ruth aka Kattaddorra
These photos were taken by a Cats Protection volunteer who gave me permission to use them.
The black cat is one of a small colony who have all been TNR (trapped, neutered and returned) to the place they live and where CP volunteers feed them daily.
As you can see the poor cat badly wants her dinner but the crows have taken it from her, we don’t know where the other cats were but they are all obviously very wary of those big black birds!
We have a crow living around here, he is huge and a cat would never be able to tackle him!
But we feed him so he’s a cat friendly crow lol
But my point is that those cat haters who go to great lengths to blacken the name of all cats in that they are causing the decimation of wild birds, are talking rubbish.
Fit healthy birds are well able to stand up for themselves (or should that be fly up for themselves lol) or fly away, they know when a cat is about!
Recently our neighbour disturbed a nest of blackbirds between our gardens, have you ever seen parent blackbirds defending their young? Our cats weren’t even interested in the nest, it was in a precarious position and in our garden every creature gets fed so it’s live and let live anyway.
Those blackbirds swooped and dived and shouted TKKK TKKK TKKK which may be their translation of CAT CAT CAT and poor Walter and Jozef who were happily relaxing on their sunroof, ran into the house.
Oh no, birds are not the poor tragic victims that cat haters make them out to be, they can fight back!
A funny tale from many years ago, our late mother’s first cat Kitty, decided to pay a visit to next doors hens, they were silly ignorant people who kept the hens on their lawn, with the gate open too! We heard a lot of squawking and Kitty came running home being hotly pursued by Henrietta, the brown leader of the hens!
We all know cats hate to be laughed at but we couldn’t help it that day, how I wish we had a photo!
But seriously, those of us who love cats have no illusions that yes cats do catch birds, Nature made them that way, but they only catch the weak birds, because rodents are so much easier to catch with being on the ground and they can’t fly away.
I wonder what the cat haters would have to say if all cats were eradicated from places? The rodents would be free to breed and to come near and into houses, because although I don’t know if it’s true, it’s said that rats and mice can smell cats and they steer clear of the immediate area where cats live.
I think cat haters should look to themselves and ask if they are so perfect in that they do nothing to harm birds.
Do they not use gas and electricity, drive a car, maybe smoke? Go on holiday in an aeroplane? All these pollute the atmosphere, the very air birds breathe!
Do they not breed and make more housing necessary, therefore taking more land, more habitat from birds. Do they not buy products which have been treated with pest sprays, causing the death of birds?
No, it’s far too easy to blame cats because they cannot defend themselves against the blame, but we can defend them and so I do and always will!
Hi Ruth great article I agree totally btw. Its so easy for an eminent scientist to declare that cats decimate the bird population. These types are dangerous because most people look up to them therefore they believe them 🙁 so if said scientist also happens to be a cat hater then they have it all sown up they can say what they want about the poor cats.
I have to say that we’ve had Honey for about 2 years now and she’s never caught a bird. She’s killed and bought home plenty of Voles and Mice (Voles especially). She leaves their bodies on the patio but usually a Magpie will steal them. We don’t get many Crows but we do get an awful lot of Magpies and Wood Pigeons (did you know that in Scotland they call a Wood Pigeon a Cushy doo?!)
Honey doesn’t tackle the Magpies but I have seen her sneaking up on the Pigeons a few times. The Magpies also steal the food we put out for the stray cat and make a hell of a mess everywhere.
“Eminent?” There are scientists, and then, there are “scientists.” The Science? often left afield.
Scientists still sh*t, eat and p*ss and arse around like anyone else and there is the same degree of bias amongst scientists as there is amongst the general population.
Hi Marc
Felis catus catus was unknown in N America until quite recently so maybe the bird population has not yet developed instincts and methods to defend themselves against small cats as much as say in Cyprus. There have probably been small cats in Cyprus for 9,500 years when the first Anatolian settlers brought that cat fossil which was discovered at a burial site at Shilloroukambos. Other nearby archeolagical digs in the same area uncovered remains of many more cats which suggest that there were enough to on the island at that time to have sutvived to this day. I have never seen my cats catching or bringing back a dead bird. I reckon they gave up thousands of years ago as the birds got smarter than the cats. . Never-the-less birds seem to be holding their own in N America which seem to indicate that bird predation by cats is vastly exaggerated. Cats the size of the Bobcat and Lynx would find it difficult to prey on small fast moving healthy birds, and pet cats prefer to stay neat the food dish, many having a range of few hundred meters that’s all. Large woodlands and forests would never see a small cat.