Yet More Misinformation By Bird Scientists About Feral Cats

tarasgirl06

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I don't understand why some people have trouble with how nature works. Animals hunt to feed and live. Humans have always. Why is it bad for cats to eat birds? I love birds and try to always help if I see an injured one or a baby. But it's like not wanting a lion to eat a zebra or something. If it's a natural predator/prey situation I don't think humans should intervene. Unless the prey is injured or young because then they don't even get a fighting chance. Ok sorry for me rambling.
I agree, as do most other sane people who understand how the world works. It's the fanatics that want to push their narrow views on the rest of the world to further their hateful agenda. Unfortunately, it's costing untold numbers of innocent lives.
 

Dacatchair

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One of the things that really bugs me about the people estimating the number of birds killed by cats is I have yet to see anyone factor in the number of birds that don't get eaten by rats, for every young rat a cat kills. There is all these studies estimating how many birds cats kill, but I have only found one out of Australia that attempted to research nesting failure because of rats, and it suggested about 1/3 of birds reproductive potential is consumed by rats. I know the rats here climb trees and eat whole nests of baby birds quite regularly. I have also heard rats climb into my roof and start killing house wrens that were roasting in my roof.

Rats originated in Asia and have only arrived in Europe, and then the Americas a few hundred years ago. Rats don't just occasionally eat birds when they run out of berries, and many islands have had their bird species driven to extinction by rats. Unfortunately, as concerned as some people are with how many birds are being killed by cats, there seems to be very few studies of the effects of non indigenous rodents on birds on the larger land masses, but I suspect it is also substantial. House mice also originated in Asia, and cats, mice and human agriculture have been part of many healthy sustainable interdependent ecosystems for thousands of years. And even house mice interfere with the ability of some birds, (like blue birds) ability to reproduce. And the studies on how many birds cats catch also gloss over the fact that 1/3 of this projected number of birds killed in North America are themselves non indigenous and often compete with indigenous birds for nesting sights, food, and spread disease to native birds.

I don't doubt that cats can be a serious problem in some ecosystems, and I agree that endangered species need protection even if the predator they are being protected from was part of their natural environment for thousands of years, and other factors have tipped the balance. I also think it is a fact that an over population of any species will create imbalances in any ecosystem, but I think the information blaming cats for killing too many birds is often cherry picked and fails to consider ecosystems as a whole. I think an unbiased study would need to count the number of young rats and mice and non indigenous birds killed by cats and factor in the number of birds and other small mammals that will not be eaten by those rats killed by cats, or displaced by a non indigenous species, before tallying up the number of bird lives lost and saved due to cats.
 

tarasgirl06

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One of the things that really bugs me about the people estimating the number of birds killed by cats is I have yet to see anyone factor in the number of birds that don't get eaten by rats, for every young rat a cat kills. There is all these studies estimating how many birds cats kill, but I have only found one out of Australia that attempted to research nesting failure because of rats, and it suggested about 1/3 of birds reproductive potential is consumed by rats. I know the rats here climb trees and eat whole nests of baby birds quite regularly. I have also heard rats climb into my roof and start killing house wrens that were roasting in my roof.

Rats originated in Asia and have only arrived in Europe, and then the Americas a few hundred years ago. Rats don't just occasionally eat birds when they run out of berries, and many islands have had their bird species driven to extinction by rats. Unfortunately, as concerned as some people are with how many birds are being killed by cats, there seems to be very few studies of the effects of non indigenous rodents on birds on the larger land masses, but I suspect it is also substantial. House mice also originated in Asia, and cats, mice and human agriculture have been part of many healthy sustainable interdependent ecosystems for thousands of years. And even house mice interfere with the ability of some birds, (like blue birds) ability to reproduce. And the studies on how many birds cats catch also gloss over the fact that 1/3 of this projected number of birds killed in North America are themselves non indigenous and often compete with indigenous birds for nesting sights, food, and spread disease to native birds.

I don't doubt that cats can be a serious problem in some ecosystems, and I agree that endangered species need protection even if the predator they are being protected from was part of their natural environment for thousands of years, and other factors have tipped the balance. I also think it is a fact that an over population of any species will create imbalances in any ecosystem, but I think the information blaming cats for killing too many birds is often cherry picked and fails to consider ecosystems as a whole. I think an unbiased study would need to count the number of young rats and mice and non indigenous birds killed by cats and factor in the number of birds and other small mammals that will not be eaten by those rats killed by cats, or displaced by a non indigenous species, before tallying up the number of bird lives lost and saved due to cats.
An interesting perspective and one I have not seen before. You might want to contact Animals 24-7 with this. I am sure they would be very interested in reading it.
 

jefferd18

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I don't understand why some people have trouble with how nature works. Animals hunt to feed and live. Humans have always. Why is it bad for cats to eat birds? I love birds and try to always help if I see an injured one or a baby. But it's like not wanting a lion to eat a zebra or something. If it's a natural predator/prey situation I don't think humans should intervene. Unless the prey is injured or young because then they don't even get a fighting chance. Ok sorry for me rambling.


The people who gripe about cats eating birds will tell you that the cat is an invasive species in America and most other countries as well. I disagree, because although the house cat isn't native to this country, it still has been over here for well over five hundred years, so in my book nature has had more than ample time to adapt.
 

tarasgirl06

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The people who gripe about cats eating birds will tell you that the cat is an invasive species in America and most other countries as well. I disagree, because although the house cat isn't native to this country, it still has been over here for well over five hundred years, so in my book nature has had more than ample time to adapt.
We call cats an adaptive species, just like humans and many other species. They definitely have every right to be here. Humans brought them here. Humans need to be personally responsible for spaying/neutering and adopting for life, caring for them well, respecting and protecting them.
 

Willow's Mom

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I don't have my links any more, but isn't toximoplasmosis more like the chicken pox than the flu? I know it can cause miscarriage under certain circumstances, but as a lifelong cat person, I knew that I wasn't at risk by pregnancy #5 and was both annoyed and amused when my employer kept asking me to change her litter box every five minutes. She was allowed to do that even though she wasn't allowed to fire me for being pregnant. The kid was fine and born full term. At home. To an "elderly multigravida".

With pregnancy #1, I was also single and didn't know any better than to feel guilty for not having a friend to change Wallaby's litter box, but of course that kid was also fine and also born full term.
 

jefferd18

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We call cats an adaptive species, just like humans and many other species. They definitely have every right to be here. Humans brought them here. Humans need to be personally responsible for spaying/neutering and adopting for life, caring for them well, respecting and protecting them.


Of course,we wouldn't even being having feral cats if we had gotten our act together a long time ago. Although nobody knew five hundred years ago the importance of spaying and neutering cats, humans are still responsible for bringing them over in ships and then strategically placing them in certain places to keep rabbits and the rat population down. We have only ourselves to blame.

I agree, they have as much right to be here as the decedents of European Man- perhaps more so.
 

tarasgirl06

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W Willow's Mom Love the name, "Wallaby" for a cat. Willow, too. And yeah. Before society was turned into such an over-(and often mis-)informed paranoiac mess, everyone who kept cats and had cat boxes used to scoop and change the boxes. And informed, caring people did not betray and abandon their cats due to "new baby", either. I was one of those "new babies" born into a home "with cat" and have grown up far healthier, and absolutely more caring and mentally/emotionally balanced, than the vast majority, if not all, of those without cats. Because of the cat, and because of my very caring, compassionate, loving, common-sensical parents.
And TYSM, jefferd18 jefferd18 . As a person of mixed Indigenous/non-Indigenous ancestry, I heartily agree with you.
 

tarasgirl06

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I don't understand why some people have trouble with how nature works. Animals hunt to feed and live. Humans have always. Why is it bad for cats to eat birds? I love birds and try to always help if I see an injured one or a baby. But it's like not wanting a lion to eat a zebra or something. If it's a natural predator/prey situation I don't think humans should intervene. Unless the prey is injured or young because then they don't even get a fighting chance. Ok sorry for me rambling.
*Exactly, @mailynsca!* Of course compassionate people wish no one of any species ever suffered. That is not the way nature has been set up. Carnivores and omnivores eat meat. Sad fact, but one that has been hardwired into them and I'm certainly not going to think for one second that I'm smarter than the Creator or have better ideas than nature already provides. Humans can and should intervene to protect and provide help when necessary, to domestic animals especially. But for people to be so arrogant as to think THEY (we) aren't the main problem worldwide, is just ludicrous.
 

Dacatchair

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Here is a link to the only study I have found looking at the effect of rats on tree nesting song birds on larger continental land masses... (mentioned in a previous post)

Nest Predation by Commensal Rodents in Urban Bushland Remnants

Another article with a lot of information on rats and a whole section on using cats to keep their populations in check

The ‘modern’ management of rats: British agricultural science in farm and field during the twentieth century

And then there is this so called study that has been republished over and over and over...

Cats Are Surprisingly Bad at Killing Rats

I have no idea why the cats in this study only managed to kill 2 rats, and I can show pictures of the 4 or 5 young rats my indoor only cats have caught over the past year and a 1/2 (some are 1/2 eaten), and other indoor outdoor cats I have had also regularly caught rats, even before they were full grown cats. I documented some of this, so even though some organisations seem to love republishing anything that is anti cat, something in the methodology of this study must have affected the results. Maybe the group of rats being studied were all full grown adults?

From other research I have seen, cats mostly tend to kill whatever is most abundant, and this varies by location, so probably it would be difficult to do a study that would be universally true for all places. But I am really curious if the critters and birds saved from being eaten by rats, that get killed by cats, were counted /removed from the total, whether this would change the total number of critter/bird deaths attributed to cats. I suspect it would, though it seems likely the good done by cats only neutralises some of the harm, and may not entirely make up for the deaths caused by cats. But if this hasn't been studied, and studied in several ecosystems, it seems no one really knows...
 
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muffy

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This is pissing me off.

I know there is a history of conflict between bird conservators and cat rescuers, but I didn't know it was this ugly.

This article: (These Bird Scientists Say Feral Cat Advocates Are Lying About Science Just Like Climate Deniers) not only tries to claim that TNR (Trap/Nueter/Return) is ineffective in reducing population blooms in feral cats (which is hogwash; I've been doing cat rescue for 7 years now and I know it's an effective solution, not even counting in the simple fact that a sterilized cat "automagically" stops that cat from contributing more to the population), but it goes on to claim that toxoplasmosis (a parasite that is zoonotic-can infect most warm-blooded mammals and can be transmitted from an infected cat to a human) is [emphasis mine] "..THE leading cause of death from foodborne illnesses" in the US then provides a link to an information page about toxoplasmosis on the CDC website. The article also implies, almost explicitly, that cats are the sole reason for those deaths.

A quick study of the CDC page itself (CDC - Toxoplasmosis) however, reveals, in the very first sentence no less, that [again, emphasis mine] "Toxoplasmosis is CONSIDERED to be A leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in the United States." Not "THE", but "A" leading cause. And "IS CONSIDERED" not "IS", meaning this is something that is still being worked out and does not have enough data to make a concrete determination yet.

I was curious, then, as to just how dangerous is this situation and how much do feral cats, or just cats in general, contribute to this "epidemic" the content of the article seems to imply?

First, let's look at if the CDC CONSIDERS toxoplasmosis to be A leading cause of death from foodborne illnesses, how "leading" is it compared to other foodborne illnesses, how many deaths are we talking about, and are cats the leading cause of transmission?

According to the referenced CDC page, "More than 40 million men, women, and children in the U.S. carry the Toxoplasmaparasite, but very few have symptoms".

Another CDC page (CDC - Toxoplasmosis - Epidemiology & Risk Factors) states "In the United States it is estimated that 11% of the population 6 years and older have been infected with Toxoplasma." It goes on to state that humans aquire toxoplasmosis through "three principal routes of transmission: Foodborne [raw or contaminated meat, poultry or fish], Animal-to-Human (Zoonotic) and Mother-to-Child (Congenital)" with additional rare forms of transmission as well. While I was unable to find out on the CDC website what proportion each of these routes of transmission contribute to the overall number of infections, this study from The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (Neglected Parasitic Infections in the United States: Toxoplasmosis), states "The proportion of human T. gondii infections acquired by eating meat containing infective cysts versus ingesting oocysts from cat feces contamination is not known for a representative sample of the general population".

Okay, so you getting all this so far?

Here's a breakdown, using for the most part THE VERY SAME RESOURCE the bird scientists referenced:

- CDC "CONSIDERS" toxoplasmosis as "A" leading cause of death from foodborne illnesses. Not "THE" leading cause.
- An estimated "11% of the population 6 years and older have been infected with Toxoplasma" and although they carry the Toxoplasmaparasite, "very few have symptoms". I would think death is probably a good "symptom".
- Rather than portraying cats as the sole cause of infection as the article does, the CDC says that humans aquire toxoplasmosis through "three principal routes of transmission"
- Regarding those routes of transmission, the study from The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, says it "is not known" what the proportion of transmission is between the three. As opposed to the article's implication that contact with cats is the sole or even main route of transmission.

Okay, so now our final two questions: How many deaths are we talking about? And how "leading" is toxoplasmosis in US deaths?

From the CDC (Burden of Foodborne Illness: Findings | Estimates of Foodborne Illness | CDC):
"CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases."

That's 3000 deaths from ALL foodborne illnesses. In a country of 327.2 million people (as of 2018), 3000 deaths from ALL foodborne illnesses is 0.0000091687% of the population.

What are the top 5 (of 31) foodborne illnesses that cause death in the US?

- Salmonella, nontyphoidal - 378 deaths, 28% of total
- Toxoplasma gondii - 327 deaths, 24% of total
- Listeria monocytogenes - 255, 19%
- Norovirus - 119, 11%
- Campylobacter spp. - 76, 6%

327 deaths (or 0.0000009994% of population) attributed to toxoplasmosis. Proportion attributed to contact with cats: unknown.

Hardly (*cough*) an epidemic health risk requiring, as many in the bird conservatory community advocate, the systematic euthanasia of all feral cat colonies.

It gets worse.

On top of all that baloney, the scientists the article is about actually have the gall to accuse animal welfare enthusiasts and cat rescue groups of a concerted misinformation campaign, even comparing us to "climate change deniers".

To me, that is the most despicable low and base insult. To me, claiming we are engaging in a misinformation campaign while using their very own misinformation campaign is exactly at the level of stinky, slime-ridden politics and dirty propaganda apparatus that the Nazis employed while brainwashing the German public in the runup to WW2. Sorry I went there, but there's hardly a better comparison.

I truly wish this wasn't so. But hopefully, with the data I have presented here, you can see this is true.

Thanks for reading. I really needed to vent that out. I'd be happy to hear your responses.

many purrs
-Art Main
PAWSitivelySAFE
California
I agree with you 100%. I can't stand those people.
 

tarasgirl06

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I agree with you 100%. I can't stand those people.
Yeah. An ad states that 9 people die every day, and many more are maimed, as a direct result of accidents caused by drivers texting while driving. Not exactly an "epidemic" either, but do the math and 365x9=2,385. And I don't really know of anyone doing massive campaigns to kill texting drivers. Just sayin'.
 

Kaylee Skylyn

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Well its because cats are not a natural part of the ecosystem in the vast majority of the world where they now occure. They are a domestic species introduced by humans. Thats why they are not considered part of the ecosystem. They are not part of the natural predator/prey situation. It's another way we humans have messed up the ecosystems around us. (I'm not agreeing with the stats ect, and am against culling, just saying...they are NOT "natural". They are non-native, introduced, species).
 

Kaylee Skylyn

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And there is no way to edit posts???
Aperently the forum decided not to show me half the posts so I thought I was replying to the last post when in fact it was a post way back in the thread...THEN it said "show more posts?" so now my responce seems totaly out of place and random. Sorry about that. (and someone already made my point so my post is useless and yet I cannot edit or delete....)
 

Dacatchair

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Well its because cats are not a natural part of the ecosystem in the vast majority of the world where they now occure. They are a domestic species introduced by humans. Thats why they are not considered part of the ecosystem. They are not part of the natural predator/prey situation.
Actually cats have been part of sustainable healthy agricultural ecosystems in the vast majority of the world for thousands of years (meaning Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and UK) Additionally, over thousands of years, so called domestic cats in these areas are all hybridised to some degree with the local indigenous cats. Human friendly cats were part of these old world agricultural ecosystems when there was giant sloths and woolly mammoths roaming the plains of North America.Considering them unnatural when they have been part of nature for such a long time, seems to me to be incorrect. And although cats have only been living in North America for a few hundred years, up until recently they seem to have coexisted OK with indigenous species. (Maybe I am just ignorant, but I am not aware of any species in North America that have been made extinct by cats?) Removing all free roaming cats from the Americas might make sense if we also were going to remove the agricultural ecosystems that have largely replaced the original forests and plains, and if we also removed all the non indigenous plants, rodents, birds and everything else that wasn't here 500 years ago. But in some areas where there is a moderate population of cats, removing just the cats from an ecosystem that is reasonably healthy, may do more harm than good. It is complicated, but this has been the subject of some research... link below.

Error - Cookies Turned Off (No idea why this link says error cookies turned off but it does seem to go to the research article I was trying to link to- the title is
Cats protecting birds: modelling the mesopredator release effect
Franck Courchamp
Michel Langlais
George Sugihara
First published: 25 December 2001
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge,
 
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Kaylee Skylyn

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Wow and you blame the bird people for a scewed narrative? Way to only accept only what fits your preferred view.
I just give up. I guess "alternative facts" rule these days. Don't know why I bother. I truly have lost hope.
Lost all hope.
Goodbye.
 

Dacatchair

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Kaylee, I am really sorry if my comments made you feel I am not willing to listen to reason, or that I don't respect facts. I do respect facts and reason and personally I do my best to be as honest and reasonable as possible. I really don't know what the impact of cats is, if their killing non indigenous rats and mice is taken into account, though I am pretty sure it varies from ecosystem to ecosystem. Research on rats eating small song bird eggs on forested islands suggests between 3% to 80% of the eggs in watched artificial nests were consumed by rats, depending on the location, and these studies did not include the fact rats also eat nestlings and roosting birds. One study done on animals cats brought home in the UK, by the small mammal society, showed there was 32 times more birds brought home by cats than rats. But in North America studies show 1/3 of the birds caught by cats are non native, and these species often put pressure on native species, so assuming the finding in the UK could be applied to birds and rats in North America, ( and they probably can't be as every area is different) a rat would have to be eating at least 20 eggs or nestlings over the course of whatever life it had remaining when it was killed by a cat, in order for the effect of the cat also killing 20 birds to be neutralised... In my area, given what I have seen when it comes to rats eating nestlings, and the number of birds I see cats catching compared to the number of rats, (about equal in my observations) in my area, I suspect the effect of the cats on the general bird population is neutral and possibly beneficial. I may be entirely wrong about that, but the lack of research on this topic makes me uncomfortable about accepting it as the whole picture. I would really like to see more research that looks at the whole picture.
 
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SeanS

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Kaylee, I am really sorry if my comments made you feel I am not willing to listen to reason, or that I don't respect facts. I do respect facts and reason and personally I do my best to be as honest and reasonable as possible. I really don't know what the impact of cats is, if their killing non indigenous rats and mice is taken into account, though I am pretty sure it varies from ecosystem to ecosystem. Research on rats eating small song bird eggs on forested islands suggests between 3% to 80% of the eggs in watched artificial nests were consumed by rats, depending on the location, and these studies did not include the fact rats also eat nestlings and roosting birds. One study done on animals cats brought home in the UK, by the small mammal society, showed there was 32 times more birds brought home by cats than rats. But in North America studies show 1/3 of the birds caught by cats are non native, and these species often put pressure on native species, so assuming the finding in the UK could be applied to birds and rats in North America, ( and they probably can't be as every area is different) a rat would have to be eating at least 20 eggs or nestlings over the course of whatever life it had remaining when it was killed by a cat, in order for the effect of the cat also killing 20 birds to be neutralised... In my area, given what I have seen when it comes to rats eating nestlings, and the number of birds I see cats catching compared to the number of rats, (about equal in my observations) in my area, I suspect the effect of the cats on the general bird population is neutral and possibly beneficial. I may be entirely wrong about that, but the lack of research on this topic makes me uncomfortable about accepting it as the whole picture. I would really like to see more research that looks at the whole picture.
Can you share the articles or studies where you got those facts from?
 

Dacatchair

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S SeanS I am not sure which studies I mentioned you are asking about... As I posted this a couple years ago, not all of my notes and book marks or even devices where I saved this, are still easy for me to find. But I went through a while of being really curious about this and did a lot of digging around. So I will do my best to find and post links.... And also add some links to some other info I found in the past couple years, as my thinking on this has evolved.

As you will have gathered from my comments I am skeptical of the concerns that cats are causing declines in bird populations all over the world, but to be clear, I am NOT at all skeptical this is a very serious problem in some areas.

The information that 33% of the birds that cats kill are introduced species comes from a Nature article on the number of birds they estimate cats kill every year.

The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States - Nature Communications

“On average, only 33% of bird prey items identified to species were non-native species in 10 studies with 438 specimens of 58 species”

If you do some research on specific non native species you will see they usually have some impact on the ability of native species to survive. Sometimes this effect is serious, others not so much... But the fact is, birds introduced to North America, like house sparrows, pigeons, and starlings are often more comfortable in urban areas with large populations of cats, and they are often the birds caught by cats.

And this gets even more complicated because unless this estimate included an autopsy on every bird peoples cats brought in, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, in the UK, most of these were already dying from other causes.

How Many Birds do Cats Kill? UK Bird Declines - The RSPB

The count of number of birds killed every year needs to be considered in the context of the number of birds hatched every year... this number is usually much greater than the two parents, so for the population to be stable, all these extra birds, either the old or the young, are meant to be some predators lunch. In urban areas where we have squeezed out other predators, that predator is often a cat.

Then there is the whole question of how exactly we define native and non native species. There is recently found evidence in caves in Poland that shows Near Eastern cats had followed the agriculture and were living in Europe as far back as 6000 years ago, and analysis showed their main diet was rodents that ate human grown grain... but they were not yet eatting cooked food shared with them by humans. Near Eastern cats are the same species of cat that are the main ancestors of our so call ed domestic cats...
Ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe: Isotopic evidence of a synanthropic diet

And the fact is, these agricultural ecosystems that included cats and birds survived just fine for thousands of years.

These same agricultural ecosystems, along with the rodents and cats that found a niche within them, have been moved all over the world, and talking about what is or isn't a natural species in a landscape that in no way resembles the one that originally hosted the indigenous species, seems to be scapegoating cats when clearing land for sheep, cattle, and food crops has done far more damage.

Both rats and house mice originated in Asia. And they do frequently eat songbird eggs, nestlings, and even roosting birds.

Invasive rats strengthen predation pressure on bird eggs in a South Pacific island rainforest
I am having difficulty finding the study where nest failure in some areas was as high as 80%, but I did see a study that found this, and doesn't seem unlikely looking at the studies done using artificial eggs, and the other studies showing predation by rats on real nests usually occurs over several nights... (not likely to happen with artificial eggs) and real rat predation includes not just eggs but live chicks.

But thinking about this over the past couple years I am guessing the presence of cats probably does little to mitigate this, and cats real benefit is protecting human food stores from rodents pooping and peeing all over everything. Without the protection of free roaming cats, humans probably would never have developed agriculture... and as someone who grows food, I think this is still the case.

What If All the Cats in the World Suddenly Died?

Also here is a link to the aforementioned Small Mammal society counting what cats killed
https://www.mammal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Domestic-Cat-Predation-on-Wildlife.pdf


That being said, I live with 2 active cats that have access to a large fenced yard and they do catch birds, both in their roofed enclosures and in the fenced area. And even though all wild animal die pretty horrific deaths, and they don't catch enough to put a dent in bird populations here, it breaks my heart when they get birds, and I even rescued an especially sweet and scared rat a couple months ago... Even though it is part of nature the suffering really bothers me... I used a 2X2 inch mesh for my enclosures and cat proof fencing, and birds get in, but the mesh prevents than from quickly getting out, and probably half the birds they catch would have gotten away if it wasn't for the fencing. I noticed their success seemed to go down when they were wearing bright colored walking jackets or a collar with a tracking device that flashed an LED light every minute. So there may be things we could invent that would warn birds while still allowing them to keep our food and homes free from rodents...

Cats place in our urban and agricultural ecosystems seems to be a really complicated topic, and the main point I was trying to make is it doesn't seem accurate to just count all the small critters killed by cats as unnatural or a bad thing that invariably damages ecosystems.
 
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