Who are you to determine what animal is “native” or not? Cats migrated to your country centuries ago, and have been completely assimilated to the environment. Tha natural habitat of the cat is the human settlement, which is, in fact, where you live. If anything, the* birds* are interlopers. If they can’t adapt, they have no right to exist.
Animals migrate. Deal with it.
Yes, daring to suggest that untrained individuals should refrain from wandering the neighbourhood killing animals (possibly owned ones) is pretty irrational behaviour. Sorry, I won’t do it again.
:wally
This is not The BBQ Pit. If you wish to bitch, go to the approprate forum an start a thread. If you wish to complain about a post or poster, use the report this post button.
It’s a trifle hard to take your post seriously - as near as I can tell, none of the points you make is correct (except that I live in a human settlement).
The cats in question didn’t migrate to my country - they were brought here by humans as pets and some have become wild, or partially so. Thus they are not native. The native birds they prey on have not had time (which would be measured in at least hundreds, probably thousands, of years) to evolve strategies to cope with this predation, and so some (especially those that nest near the ground, e.g. bobolinks) are seriously affected. Bird migration is not a response to local predation, but generally an instinctive way of dealing with seasonal changes (mostly in food supply).
Why did you have a trustworthy neighbor sound out the cat family instead of speaking to them directly?
Don’t you watch cartoons? Just make sure the birds have access to plenty of dynamite and sledgehammers, and they’ll be more than a match for the poor puddy tats.
So you have called Animal Control? If you have, I’m kind of surprised that they told you they won’t take any action. Their state Web sites provide a lot of information on how to contact them to take care of feral or stray animals. They also provide information on what services they do provide, one of which is to “impound stray dogs, cats and other animals” and either try to get them adopted or euthanize them. If you haven’t called animal control, but instead just called the Humane Society, I’d suggest you try animal control before taking action yourself. The Humane Society is often overburdened and tends to let cases they deem less serious slide (i.e., cases not involving severe abuse, neglect or animal hoarding), at least in my area, while the purpose of Animal Control is to, well, control animals.
I’d definitely throw my vote in with either a) call the authorities until you are absolutely certain no one will do this for you or b) trap the animal live and take it to the pound yourself, especially if you have kids in your neighborhood. Even if the poison you set out isn’t consumed by someone else’s pet or someone’s kid (my little brother used to climb into just about any small enclosure if you didn’t watch him, and he’d eat anything), if someone even finds out that you set out poison in the open and there are young children living nearby, you could get into some serious trouble.
If the neighbors say that the cats don’t belong to them, why on earth would they resent it if you trapped them and took them to the pound?
You may be pretty confident that you won’t get caught, but what happens if you do? I think they might resent you more for being underhanded.
In my own experience, being passive agressive and being neighborly don’t really go together. You’d be better off shooting straight with them.
–black455, indoor-only cat owner
I still don’t see why you would need to hide traps. Just set the traps on your property and if they complain, tell them the cats were trespassing. If they don’t care about the cats, they won’t retrieve them from the shelter.
Because I reasoned (correctly, it appears) that if they care enough about these cats to put out food for them, they would not take kindly to the idea of someone attempting to get rid of them. My neighbor and I agreed that he would be the scout, while the action would fall to me.
I don’t want to provoke hostility in the neighborhood. But I feel that the depredations on the wld bird population are unacceptable, and if I do nothing they will almost certainly continue unabated.
Today I contacted a friend who owns a “havahart” trap. I will wait until my neighbor’s out of town before setting it out (so he can’t be suspected of responsibility for any cat population shrinkage). If I’m able to trap a cat, I will take it to the SPCA for euthanasia. If they are unable to handle this, I’ll probably rig up a carbon dioxide arrangement to kill the cat (my understanding is that this is efficient and painless - input welcome).
Why does the cat have to die, though? Can’t you just give it to the SPCA?
I’m sure you are right - so I must take care not to be detected. I may be wrong, but I feel my course of action is the one most likely to preserve both the local bird population and neighborhood tranquility.
Good point - if they feel they can find a home for it, that would be fine. But my understanding is that adult semi-wild cats are not popular adoption candidates. I know from experience that these cats are far from affectionate.
Please don’t put poison out for them? It might reach unintended targets, and at the least the cats would die painfully, if they died at all. There is too much chance that poison might reach another animal that you didn’t intend to get rid of. Please set traps? You can cover them up, hide them in the grass or bushes. That would be a much better way, and maybe the cats are socialized enough to actually find a home. I’ve had cats as pets that were once feral, one is sitting at my feet right now, and doesn’t want to go outdoors at all. (She was a dying stray, barely weaned. She’s got “birding” instincts, but she hates the outdoors so it’s moot.) Sometimes a semi-feral cat can become a decent indoor pet for someone. It’s worth a try, to at least trap them and take them to be mercifully euthanised. Feral cats are indeed hard on the bird population, so I can understand your concern. Please though, be humane about this? I think you’d feel terrible if you came across another little omnivore that was killed by your poison in place of one of those cats. 
I agree that the poison idea is a non-starter. Trying to find something that is fast-acting, humane, and unlikely to be consumed by anything but a cat is probably futile.
Still, the SPCA will euthanize it themselves if they can’t find a home. That’s usually how those shelters work, if I recall correctly. Few shelters just let the cat run free again if they can’t find a place for it.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re just going to trap it, not poison it, though I still wish you would contact animal control. You did contact animal control, right?
I suspect Xema is just trying to get a rise out of people with this line of posting, especially in a forum like the SDMB with so many avowed cat lovers. His monotone, cold, repetitive lines about killing the cats, protecting the birds, and preserving neighborhood harmony sound a bit contrived and “made up” to me.
Maybe you are right, BBVL. However, I’ve known people who were fond birdwatchers, and heard the venom they had against feral cats. I can see why it would upset them, feral cats can ravage a bird population in short order. The bird watchers I knew however, merely trapped the cats and took them to the shelter, for the shelter to deal with as they saw fit. I think one even donated to the shelter, because they weren’t hard hearted, just concerned about wildlife, and rightly so.
Up until 5 years ago we lived in a suburb of medium-sized city, and cats were definitely problem in our neighborhood. Because it was illegal to discharge a firearm in the city limits, I would set out traps in the backyard. I was catching about one cat / week during the last summer we were there. I would take each cat over to my uncle’s house, submerse the cage in a deep spot in his creek for 15 to 20 minutes, and then dump the carcass in his 55-gallon burn drum.
We now live out in the country, and cats haven’t been a problem. (In fact, we have two “outdoor only” cats we keep on hand for critter control.) But if cats ever do become a problem, I’d have no problem shooting them with my shotgun.
Dogs, on the other hand, have been an occasional problem. I shoot them with my .308 bolt action.
I retract my use of the Wally smiley and apologise. The rest of my post stands however, and I believe it is orders of magnitude milder than the post to which I was responding. Unless labeling people “unstable”, “disturbed”, and “dangerous” is now acceptable in this forum, that is (but I see that has gone unremarked). Oh well.