Keeping the Cats Out

I like cats. This is important for me to say because of what I will be writing.

I like cats, just not in my backyard.

We all know people can get very attached to their pets, which is why I have to wonder why some of my neighbors here in suburbia persist in putting their cats outside where they can stalk and possibly kill the birds visiting my feeders.

Outdoor cats (RE Berg-Andersson)

Mind you, I have no objections to cats taking out those blasted digging chipmunks. I have seen a cat in the neighbor's yard chowing down on one. When done an American crow, like the turkey vulture a member of Nature's cleanup crew, took the remains away.

But cats and bird feeders don't mix.

The other day was the third time in two weeks I had to chase a cat away from my yard. Each time it was a different cat and not the first time they've visited. One short-haired tabby looked mean and pregnant. One long-haired, black-eyed cat was mangy. The third, a black short-hair with green eyes, wore a collar. When I chase this one off it always runs across my street toward the homes that abut the community garden.

These cat visits seem to come in cycles, but there is no denying that as the weather chills I am putting out more feeders and these are drawing more birds and those - both four-legged and winged - that can kill them.

When I mentioned these cat visits on a birding Facebook page the comments - mostly anti-cat - rained down. The one woman who wondered how we can consider ourselves animal lovers because we are pro-bird and anti-cat was forced to delete her comment, unfortunately. Cats have been venerated for millennia. There are cat-lover societies in the U.S. and abroad. There is even a group I recently found of people who paint nothing but cats. I have always found it sadly ironic that in one of the best birding areas in the U.S., if not the world - Cape May, NJ - there is a large feral cat community that is rigorously protected even as other residents fear the effect on the many migratory birds that pass through, particularly in spring and fall.

Some friends have cats and I like to watch them walk around the room. All these cats are rigorously kept indoors. They move the same way as their bigger cousins the lions, tigers and jaguars. Their personalities are as different as people. Some are skittish, some disdainful, some friendly and almost dog-like. One brother-in-law once had a cat that came when called. She would bring "gifts" of dead mice to the front step, sometimes into the house.

This may be one reason why people put out cats: It may go back to our rural past when cats were let out to kill mice and other vermin hiding and eating in our barns. Have you ever wondered why many old bookstores have cats? (I know, I'm dating myself here.) Besides entertaining customers (guilty) they kill the mice that could destroy inventory.

Cat on car (RE Berg-Andersson)

Another brother-in-law would always say, "If I have an animal it has to work." So the cats would be let out (luckily, they ignored the feeder birds) until he lost so many of them to predators or automobiles he finally started keeping his cats inside.

Many towns hire animal control companies that will come, lure and trap the cat and take it to a place where it can be adopted or put down if it doesn't have a tag identifying an owner. Too many unspayed loose cats, like the mean short-hair in my yard, could have too many kittens and before you know it you have a real mess.

Perhaps the owner of the black cat had it spayed or neutered. That doesn't make it right to let it go outside on a cold day to show up in my yard and take an interest in a visiting cardinal. This isn't a rural area. Maybe cats are smarter than the dead dogs, deer and other animals I've seen on the roadside, but maybe not, particularly at night.

I can only stay vigilant while hoping any cat I chase off isn't hit by a speeding car. As I said, I like cats.