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Cats - is all the murder acceptable?

This scheme is normally for animal victims where humans are perpetrators but I think we can tinker with it a bit and trial it in animal v animal cases.

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Courtroom Animal Advocate Programs (CAAP)

Courtroom Animal Advocate Program (CAAP) laws allow advocates – supervised law students or volunteer lawyers – to advocate for animal victims in criminal cruelty cases.
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Chz said:
And the babies, if they can get to them. Birds are dumb and build nests in accessible places sometimes.
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Birds are not dumb. A significant number of them nest on the ground and have evolved camouflage both in their eggs and their nests to mitigate against predators. That's pretty clever. As is the research that shows some birds exhibit phenotypic plasticity - meaning they can vary their clutch size dependent on perceived risk.
 
Supine said:
Birds are really good at eating other baby birds, so it’s not all on cats.
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And over millions of years, these things have worked themselves out. I get the impression on this topic that people look at individual acts of hunting by cats, link them to overall numbers of things killed by cats and think that must mean fewer birds or whatever around the place. That's not necessarily the case at all.

Even killing young - in fact, especially killing young - can have next to no effect: depending on the time of year, the birds can often have another family, and most chicks don't survive their first year anyway, hence the number of eggs in a clutch. Also, birds improve in their parenting skills over the years. For their next clutch, they may avoid a mistake that led to them losing their chicks to a cat. Killing healthy breeding adults would have the most effect, but they're specifically the ones that cats generally don't kill.
 
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My neighbour's cat dumped a swallow on my path a few days ago. It was alive and I put it in a bush and it flew away but I'm not sure it stayed that way. I don't know how the cat managed to catch it as I thought swallows didn't come to the ground? Or am I thinking of another type of bird?
 
Iona56 said:
My neighbour's cat dumped a swallow on my path a few days ago. It was alive and I put it in a bush and it flew away but I'm not sure it stayed that way. I don't know how the cat managed to catch it as I thought swallows didn't come to the ground? Or am I thinking of another type of bird?
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Swifts
 
Chz said:
Most corvids are perfectly capable of keeping a housecat away from their nests, even if they were in a stupid place. My cat regrets the day it picked a fight with the magpies out back. :D
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According to Middle Q, the Demonbeast bushwacked a sparrowhawk once, there apparently followed an awesome battle that left both battered and bruised before the sparrowhawk managed to escape leaving both fur and feathers scattered across the lawn. Deffo agree about magpies though they are hard little fuckers. I leave out food on the bird table for local birdlife. The pigeons use their superior size to force out smaller birds but not the magpies they fight back. They're the avian equivalent of the Ukrainians.
 
farmerbarleymow said:
Humans are an invasive species given the huge damage we do - maybe the answer is to ban humans from Earth, and leave the other species to sort out their differences between themselves.
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8ball said:
We really need to look at getting rid of humans, since they are a prime cause of
pets and also do a massive amount of damage in themselves.
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The problem with this line of argument is that you will both be invited to lead by example and show us how self removal can be done.
 
Re. Cats with outdoor access and killing: apparently if you get your cats to play with something they can pretend to hunt and kill, they do a lot less murdering. Ideally, they’ll have an hour or so’s interaction with a human and a cat toy, at dusk and at dawn. I’ll try and find the article.

Re. Indoor cats: I used to think this was wrong. But since having a string of foster cats, I’ve changed my view. Some cats are quite happy living indoors given enough space, entertainment and exercise. They like somewhere to sit that has a good view. They need to run around and play/hunt some inanimate fluffy bouncy things for an hour or two a day; something to scratch & sharpen their claws on; and some grass to eat on occasion. Cats who have been free to roam and are still young and energetic probably won’t adapt well. But I’ve had older foster cats who had lived part of their lives indoors who were quite content. No attempts to leave, and appeared to like staying here. There's plenty of different spots for them to lounge in and some trees with bird populations to look at.

One of my friends adopted a cat who had FIV and had been injured in a road accident. It was a condition of adopting that he'd live indoors. I've seen other cats listed for adoption as indoor cats becuase they're pedigrees who might get stolen and used for breeding. There's a list of other reasons that some cats would have a better life indoors AFAIK.
 
Chz said:
And the babies, if they can get to them. Birds are dumb and build nests in accessible places sometimes.

There are some master ninja cats out there who can catch healthy, adult birds. But most don't stand a chance against something that fast that can fly. Even the fat, dozy wood pigeons around here seem proof against cat attack. So the birds are mostly safe, and I don't give a toss about the rodents. Obvs a bit different in a place like Australia, but cats have been around Eurasia long enough by now that they're part of the ecosystem.
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The woodies round here aren't safe.
IMG-20220601-WA0000.jpg
Our living room floor on Wednesday.
 
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: Frequently there must be a beverage.
Woody Allen
 
oxygenthief said:
I did suggest that but apparently it was a bit too mangled. I didn't see it myself, I was already at work.
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With a YouTube video, a sharp knife, a strong stomach and box of elastoplast I bet its not to hard to gut and kill brer pigeon
 
Haven't read the thread, sorry, but isn't it only most but not all cats that hunt birds? I'm wondering whether that's genetic. Alternatively I see someone's suggested muzzling cats (good luck with that :) ).
 
We've had 3 baby birds in the house over the last two days. First we thought was stunned but turned it over and it had a big hole in it so definitely dead. Other two were stunned and petrified. Managed to rescue from our cat and put them in a nearby hedge the cat can't get to. They haven't come back so maybe we saved two? Think they all fell out of the nest attempting to fly. Our cat isn't that mobile so doubt she climbed a tree to get into the nest.

We've also had a live pigeon brought into our bedroom at 3am and, most memorably, there was a time I could hear the cat flap like something was trying to get in but couldn't. Opened the door and there were our two cats (one of whom has now died) and a large, headless pigeon which they had been attempting to get through the flap. :eek:
 
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