Maybe the Crazy Cat Lady was right…?

Earlier this year, against my better judgement, I found myself involved in an online argument about cats, with a self-proclaimed ‘crazy cat lady’. The e-spat ended with her making a closing statement that I batted away with dismissive sarcasm. But recently I read something that brought her words back, and those words resonated. Something definitely rang true.  

Although I’m a conservation scientist, and an animal lover, I can’t say that I have ever been a domestic cat fan. I love wildcats and lynx etc. but domestic cats, I can take or leave them.

Being British, and a lover of small wild cats, the Scottish wildcat is an obvious draw. The reality is that the Scottish wildcat is in severe danger of becoming extinct. This is due to several factors, but the main one is hybridisation. Scottish wildcats and domestic cats are very closely related, and they are interbreeding. As a result, the genepool, or purity, of the Scottish wildcat is being lost. Feral cats, and domestic cats, are a big problem.

As part of my wildlife conservation degree final year project I was given the opportunity to research the ecology, biology and behaviour of feral cats. This included performing a TNR, or trap-neuter-release programme on a large colony of feral cats, to study their behaviour before and after the programme. This involved trapping cats, taking them to the vets to be neutered (so that they could no longer breed) and then releasing them back to where they were caught. As one the main actions of the recovery project involves implementing TNR programmes, I jumped at the chance.

That year, if I wasn’t trapping cats, watching cats, or driving cats to the vets, I was up to my eyeballs researching cats, reading books and scientific papers. You could call it my year of the cat.

Some of my research uncovered startling facts about the impact of cats on wildlife. The estimated numbers of birds killed by cats per year was shocking, the number of small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians killed by cats was staggering. We’re talking tens, if not hundreds of millions, in the UK, and billions on a global scale. The threat of disease spread by cats, especially Toxoplasmosis gondii, a parasite which is spread through cat droppings, which effects other mammals, including humans, is scary. The amount of extinctions (estimated 33, but could be more) due to cats is jaw dropping.

By the time I’d completed my thesis, I could truthfully say, that I could quite happily never hear, or see, the word cat again, but of course this wasn’t the case. The world had caught on. It seemed like I wasn’t alone in being aghast at the murderous intent of the killer in our midst. There were stories on television, newspapers, and online, especially on social media. This is where I got drawn in. On Facebook I posted (what I thought was) a harmless article stating the damage that cats cause to UK wildlife. It very quickly drew comments from cat haters “I’d shoot them all”, and comments from cat lovers “my little Tiddles doesn’t kill anything”. There didn’t appear to be any middle ground.

I found myself arguing with a friend who freely admits she’s a crazy cat lady. I’d replied to one of her comments defending cats, and she hit back at me with “why do you people always blame cats? It’s humans you should be aiming these things at”. I replied with “who do you think I’m aiming this at? I don’t know many cats with Facebook”, and I left it at that.

Fast-forward to now (2016) and the cat argument has hit mainstream media. A book published, by a couple of American authors, called ‘Cat Wars’ has set fur flying. In a nutshell the book details the devastating impact that the estimated 150 million free-ranging cats have on wildlife in the USA. By free-ranging they mean cats that are either feral, or allowed to roam by their owners. The book concludes by saying that free-ranging cats should be removed by any means possible, effectively saying that all these cats should be killed. The book also recommends that pet cats should be neutered and kept indoors. Around the same time mainstream media reported that New Zealand were going to follow Australia, who in 2015 promised to cull 2 million feral cats, vowing to kill every feral cat on its soil, and another story emerged from Hawaii, often referred to as the extinction capital of the world, which says that feral cats are a serious threat to Hawaii’s endangered birds, monk seals and dolphins, not by predation, but through the spread of Toxoplasmosis gondii.

And the arguments continue. The debate has never raged so hard. Both sides sat firmly on either side of the debate. Cat lovers on one side, and cat haters on the other. Either side refusing to budge. There seems to be no middle ground.

I recently read a scientific paper which brought the crazy cat ladies words right back to me. Her words resonated, and brought to mind a solution which may just offer some middle ground in the cat lovers versus cat haters war. Again the paper was about the effects of cats on wildlife. It was published in America and it was titled “Free-roaming cat interactions with wildlife admitted to a wildlife hospital”. The reader may be forgiven for thinking it’s another piece of anti-cat research but it opened with the line “free roaming domestic cats are a major anthropogenic source of morbidity and mortality to wild birds and mammals in the United States”. In layman’s terms this means “cats kill wildlife, but the blame lies with humans”. This is the first time I can recall reading something like this.

As the crazy cat lady said ““why do you people always blame cats? It’s humans you should be aiming these things at”, maybe cats are not to blame, maybe we should stop blaming cats, maybe we should start blaming humans? Instead of inflammatory headlines about cats, the headlines should be about humans? Maybe then we can find some middle ground? Maybe then we can stop arguing about cats and start doing something about it?

Why do we always blame cats, why don’t we blame humans?

Maybe the crazy cat lady was right…?