Response to James Peers and his Crazy Cat Ladies and Mad Ecologists

My article/blog  was indeed a conversation piece, written to generate discussion. It was purposely left open-ended. I’d like to thank you for your eloquent response. It was not at all rambling, I think you under-sell yourself.

Firstly I have a two ‘issues’ to raise, before we get to the crux of the discussion.

Issue one; I am not a cat hater, like you i see no problem in keeping cats indoors. We have three pet cats, two of whom were ‘rescued’ feral cats from a trap-neuter-release programme we performed on a neighbouring farm to the colony of feral cats that I studied for my undergraduate thesis resided. So, i repeat, i am not a cat hater, but I am a hater of the damage that cats inflict on wildlife. It’s funny, because I am quite often called a cat hater, but I’ll return to this point later.

 

Purdey, one our rescued feral cats, and fat maggie (bambalam) with Aldo, a rescue dog from Ayia Napa, both house cats.

Issue two; I cannot say too much about the conflict between Scottish Wildcat Action and Wildcat Haven , but I can defend RZSS’s corner. You will not find a direct quote from Scottish Wildcat Action about ‘blasting cats in the face’ and that’s for one good reason; that quote came from Mr Wildcat Haven, Paul O’Donohue, who made this statement  after* gaining access to an application for a trapping licence that the RZSS submitted to Scottish Natural Heritage . O’Donohue, for some reason, seemed to take delight in going public with this. The application document stated ” “Any individuals which are obviously feral domestic cats will be dispatched according to standard predator control practices, by the land manager, with appropriate firearm in one shot with minimal time to death.”

Now I’ll explain the state of play with this issue. It was alluded that Scottish Wildcat Action were going to be trapping feral cats willy-nilly, but what they have done is some rather sterling work creating good relations with some of the big hunting estates, which is where the traps are going to go. This is crucial as the hunting estates cover  some of the parts of Scotland where the wildcat is currently hanging on by the skin of its claws. They have managed to get the gamekeepers to take a different approach to predator control when it comes to cats. Rather than going out at night, with powerful lamps, and blasting anything cat-like, they have abandoned this and are instead setting live cat-traps. This eliminates the risk of any Scottish wildcats being shot. The cats are then taken to the RZSS where they are pelage and DNA tested. If they are not wildcats then because the estates do not want feral cats released back onto their land (it is also probably illegal) they are humanely euthanized.

This whole issue was made to look like Tiddles was going to get his face blasted off (sorry to keep mentioning Tiddles) with a shotgun as part of some RZSS wide-scale cat trapping project. The whole issue is distracting away from the main topic at hand, but one last comment; the mud is only being slung from one direction. Wildcat Action are wasting valuable time, and resources, preparing responses to these accusations , time and resources that could be better spent on the task at hand; saving the Scottish wildcat.

Now I agree completely with what you are saying about our, as a nation, attitudes towards free-roaming cats, and the contradiction of this attitude when it’s applied to dogs. I agree completely that cats should be kept indoors, even from the angle that you suggest; for their own safety.

My ‘sparring’ session with the crazy cat lady occurred because I shared an advisory on what people should do with their cats to minimise their effects on wildlife. One of the things that the article suggested was a catio, caviary. or kittykat cat kennel . The article also stated numbers in regards to the damage that cats inflict on wildlife. This is where the “why do you people always blame cats” came from. Around that same time i was involved in several debates with cat-nutters. One in particular insisted that little Tiddles (him again) was simply filling the niche vacuum that would have once been filled by one of our once-native carnivores. Tiddles is sitting on his rightful throne at the top of the food chain. Therefore the damage that Tiddles inflicts is minimal. I can’t remember his answer when I suggested that we should let dogs roam free to fill the void left by wolves.

I did see a PhD that interested me. It was performing research on cat-owners attitudes towards their cats and their effect on wildlife. It interested me until less than a minute later i began to get cluster migraines at the mere suggestion of sparring with cat-nutters again. I’m sorry if this is confrontational, but some cat owners are clearly nutters. It goes beyond love. They think that their cat has a right to prey upon birds in neighbouring gardens and to shit in their flower beds for good measure..and to call anybody who has a problem with that, a cat hater.

I read recently that some new build housing estates in New Zealand are banning keeping cats as pets. I think that is a step too far, but i think that they’re on the right track. Instead I would like to see it phased in that free-roaming cats are outlawed. The RSPCA say that the UK is home to 8 million pet cats and an ‘unknown’ amount of feral cats. Going back to my dissertation, and off the top of my head, i think i found research which suggested we have 13-15 million cats in the UK – up to 7 million wild living cats. That is a problem that needs urgent action. My own research concluded that trap-neuter-release is limited, it is only effective when performed in conjunction with a euthanization programme. Sounds horrible, but it’s ‘our’ problem, and we have to solve it somehow. Unless you can think of a anything better?

*word removed. Thanks to Wildcat Haven for pointing out my unintentional misuse of the word “supposedly” – it was not my intention to mislead, my providing of a hyperlink to as reference is testament to that

 

 

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…?