Let's be clear:

[urbpan]

Free-roaming cats are harmful to the environment. Period. Full stop. The fact that other things are too does not mitigate that fact.

Comments

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Duh?

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

lol. exactly.

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Additionally, the environment is very harmful to your typical fat, lazy, domesticated furball. Which is why we're building an elaborate cat enclosure off of our deck =)

[octogirlie.livejournal.com]

Do you mean feral cats? Or all cats that are allowed to roam outside, even if they are spayed/neutered/flea-and-tick treated?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I mean all free-roaming cats, feral or otherwise. Free-roaming pet cats (that are otherwise well-kept) are less likely to act as disease vectors for wildlife, but are as harmful as feral pets when it comes to predation on small animals.

[yummykit.livejournal.com]

Back at the park I used to work at, there was a university that had been doing song sparrow studies within the park for something like 20 years. I remember one of them telling me that pretty much all the song sparrow deaths that they come across inside the park are due to cats. Sad.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

The first song sparrow I ever identified was fromt the carcass of one killed by my free-roaming cat. He also killed the only green snake I've ever seen.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Agreed, which is why my five do not go outdoors.
But feral cat colonies when managed (spayed/neutered/vaccinated) are useful for keeping rodent populations under control.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Possibly. There is some research that indicates that house mice and norway rats actually increase in areas that have cats, because the cats preferentially prey on native rodent species. House cats and house mice have lived alongside one another for several thousand years, and house mice are better at avoiding cats than native deer mice etc. With native rodents out of the way, house mice and norway rats are free to move into those niches.

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Australia has feral cats EVERYWHERE throughout the country.

We still get mouse plagues (house mice), yet many native species are now threatened or have gone extinct, including the little guy in my icon, who now only survives on offshore islands.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

sure. but keeping them neutered and vaccinated helps a lot.

I agree, but...

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Well, neutering helps prevent an increase in feral cat populations, and vaccinating helps prevent the spread of disease among wildlife and feral animals, no doubt. Neutering and vaccinating has no effect on the predation of free-roaming cats on small animals.

Re: I agree, but...

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

that's true. though predation on small animals is how they became domestic in the first place, and continues to be useful in context. we REALLY need another barn cat, but now that the street is as car-populated and the woods as coyote-populated as they are, our barn owner hasn't been willing to get one in a year (?) since the last one died. (i just found all our permission slips in a drawer disgustingly filled with small animal droppings....)

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Tru Dat. All of my cats over the years have been neutered and kept in of a night as well...

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

thank goodness for foxes, coyotes, and fishers, oh my. and sometimes owls and hawks.

when you enter the foodchain, you are not always the one on top - jacque cousteau paraphrase

#

[uneko.livejournal.com]

Just adding a "yep" and a "agreement" from this mother-of-four-inside-only cats.

That said, I do have a small colony of ferals that I've gotten all fixed. About half of them have died over the last 2 years. hate the "waste" of money of them, but looking forward to the day when they're all gone (I love some of those cats. But... i can't bring 'em inside). Until then, well, I'll enjoy the pest free house I live in. Well, mostly pest free. Hmm.. I wonder if I could get some feral anteaters...

[lyosha.livejournal.com]

Fact: the environment is harmful to free-roaming cats as well.