how to stop bird catching/eating

[emay75]

(unsure if this is the right thread, please redirect me if I am wrong!)

A few months back, some quail on our property had 12 little chicks. There is now only one left, and my cat Helen is the only explanation.

To stop this happening again, re-homing Helen is now a very realistic solution, one I don't want to happen. 

I've had Helen for little under a year and love her so much, I wouldn't be able to deal with her leaving us. 

Please, if anyone has any tips or ideas on how we can stop her catching our wildlife, it would be most appreciated. I don't want to lose my baby girl. 

Thank you,

-emay75

 

[abyeb]

Keep her inside. There are so many dangers for outdoor kitties (contracting FeLv, FIV, FIP, getting run over by cars, into fights with other cats, or dogs, or foxes, etc.), so making her an indoor cat would be to both her benefit and to the benefit of the wildlife.

 

[emay75]

thank you for your reply! 

but im afraid having her as an in door cat is not a possibly. She was found as a wild kitten, so has all her wild instincts still and hates being cooped up inside. We also live in the country, so there are no other dogs around, or any neighborhood cats, also here in New Zealand we don't have foxes!

Again, thank you for taking the time to reply

-emay75

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

Keep her inside. There are so many dangers for outdoor kitties (contracting FeLv, FIV, FIP, getting run over by cars, into fights with other cats, or dogs, or foxes, etc.), so making her an indoor cat would be to both her benefit and to the benefit of the wildlife.

 

[abyeb]

It is possible to transition an outdoor cat to a safe, indoor lifestyle! Provide lots of outlets for her to play (cat trees, puzzle toys, catnip mice, no-bowl feeding systems)... spending time with her will help her get more used to human contact. There are still dangers for her outside. Wildlife can carry diseases, that she could contract from eating! She can also get fleas, ticks, contract heartworm,... if you live in the country, you must have country roads. These can be especially dangerous for cats, as there's no strict police regulation of the speed limit, so people like to drive especially fast on these roads.

 

[Kieka]

Build her a contained outdoor area. Usually called a catio, it is an enclosed patio basically. If you make it big enough and include some tree trunks and landscape aspects she should be fine with it.

You can try a collar with a bell so other critters hear her coming. But some cats do NOT handle bells well. Especially since she is older. Other cats figure out how to move quietly even with. If you do that make sure it is breakaway so she doesn't get caught on something and strangled.

To be honest, when you let a cat outdoors there is always the chance they will hunt. That said I would be very hesitant to say she is the "only" cause. The world is full of dangers for baby quails. A random illness. A heridetary defect could kill an entire clutch at once when they hit the point they can't survive it anymore. A food source that goes bad and poisons them. Other quails could attack and kill them(when we bred parakeets some females would kill other clutches for the nesting box. Rare but it happens). When when bred parakeets there were at least a few deaths every round from unknown reasons. Nothing can be done to prevent them.

Even though you don't see them there could be predators. I would have sworn my neighborhood had no foxes until the day I caught on trying to break into our rabbit hutch. Other cats could be in the area; ferals are very good at not being seen. A larger predator that circled through one night and had them all a thing once. Even small omnivores could decided to make a snack of a small quail baby. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that your cat was the ONLY thing or reason the quails are gone.... unless you caught her with one. Mine love to bring their lizards home to show off. Even then her getting one or two doesn't mean she got them all.

 

[emay75]

thank you for your reply!
i will try the bell collar, see how she handles it, and look into a contained outdoor area.
good points about other reasons for the quail deaths, i didn't think of those and now feel bad for blaming my lil girl

-emay75

 

[talkingpeanut]

Is your girl spayed? Staying in might be more appealing if she is.

 

[emay75]

Is your girl spayed? Staying in might be more appealing if she is.

ah yes I should probably mention, Helen is technically a boy, something we didn't find out till we went to get her spayed, but by that time the name Helen had stuck, and so had she/her pronouns

 

[talkingpeanut]

ah yes I should probably mention, Helen is technically a boy, something we didn't find out till we went to get her spayed, but by that time the name Helen had stuck, and so had she/her pronouns

Ha! So he is neutered?

 

[emay75]

Ha! So he is neutered?

oh yes, he sure is! we want as few cats as possible out in our wildlife, and if we can stop one more litter of kittens, we take the opportunity!

 

[lalagimp]

I can't blame a cat for being a cat, even though I want to. If it is turning out that your cat is the cause and you can't come up with an alternative then maybe having Helen isn't for you.
I know how it feels. My trusted cat who has grown up with guinea pigs his whole life from the times the others were 2 months old, going back to when he was 2 months old, and lives with them and is very nice to them...but he ate a new born in 2015 when he was 6. It didn't look like a guinea pig. It didn't move like a guinea pig. He thought he was doing the right thing to protect the house from vermin. I thought I had baby proofed the pen but apparently I didn't quite get it down right. I'd never had a piggy younger than 2 months around him. Completely surprised me when Lily exploded into 4 more tiny piggies overnight.
I didn't want to talk to him for days and my boyfriend encouraged me not to hold it against him. I'm not happy. I'm not going to forget. But he's a perfectly normal cat.
The rest of those guinea pigs are over 2 years old now along with their mother and my oldest guinea pig that turns 6 in August. 

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• lalagimp
• Apr 1, 2017

 

[IndyJones]

Have you heard of the cat bib? I have no idea how well it works but here's a link

https://catgoods.com/