Please don't let your cats out exactly because of this reason :/ They are extremely effective hunters and they decimate native fauna, many songbirds are being driven to extinction and cats are a non neligible part of why.
At least put jingle bells on the kitties to make the birds aware.
Also unless it’s a barn kitty you should keep cats indoors. Why you ask? Besides the bird issue there are other bird issues. Birds of prey will grab and eat cats.
Also other predators will eat cats like coyotes, wolves and Bobcats ( yes, bobcats ).
Last but not least there are crazy people out there that kill cats and then there are
Vehicular cat-I-cides ( run over ).
You can build pet cats a cat patio, and out door runs for fresh air.
Catio. My husband built ours a catio. It's essentially a box that sticks out the window with a wood floor, metal screen walls, and plexiglass roof. The kitties think they are outside. They kack at the birds and smell all the wonderful smells. Everyone is safe.
Isn’t ‘non negligible’ doing a lot of heavy lifting? I understood domestic cats were far and away the biggest killers of birds. Followed by windows about an order of magnitude lower.
I mean, I am not an ecologist, I assume that climate change and habitat loss are worse. But fixing climate change is really hard for people, keeping your cat indoors is stupidly easy.
yeah, but it doesn't make as big a difference as people think.
Estimates place the feral cat population in the US at up to 100 million individuals, compared to about 76 million TOTAL pet cats. Of those 76 million, only about 25 million are "outdoor cats".
in short, for every one "outdoor cat" pet, there are 4 feral cats. even if you eliminated "outdoor cat" pets entirely, there'd still be 100 million ferals ready to move into the territories controlled by pet cats.
You don't have raccoons in your area? I found 2 dead cats around my yard this summer and there's a whole posse of raccoons that are around my house. Every once and awhile at night I'll hear a cat shriek or howl like its being murdered, viciously.
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u/Gingersnapandabrew 3d ago
My cat Vi(olent) got put on a diet because she was getting a bit chonky. She gained weight. The field mice near us are clearly easy pickings