"Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. "
I agree with you @keeganst94 that cats are a scourge to wildlife, birds, frogs, snakes, voles, moles, chippies, flying squirrels, baby squirrels, rabbits, butterflies, etc etc.
Very interesting paper. I’m still curious about estimates on how much predation is done by feral cats vs domestic ones; I’ve read recent estimates that the feral population in the US is as high as 160 million, rather higher than that paper’s estimates.
Frankly, the feral predation needs to be addressed aggressively but that won’t fly in today’s culture.
I’m sorry, but this makes me laugh. I understand the concern about birds, whom I also love. Cats are predators, to be sure. When there is not enough prey, the number of predators becomes reduced, allowing the prey to increase in number and then the predators increase, and so the cycle goes.
But which species has been an environmental disaster? The answer is humans.
Yes, very true, I omitted the fact that cats on a farm or in the wild often don’t even make it to adulthood. Those that do, definitely have a shorter life than cats that are close to humans. Farm cats at least get fed, but in my experience most farmers don’t bother sending sick cats to the vet. House pets have the best deal.
My comment was based on a German TV program, where urban cats with a GPS collar were tracked.
I bought such a collar for one of my cats about a year and a half ago, but I could not get it to work. I could not get the home location to match my home. I finally sent it back.
From what I can tell, my two cats patrol the nearby allotments and a couple of fields, but don’t seem to go more than about half a mile away. Since they have plenty of garden space to roam in, they seem happy to stay closer to home.
I think your cite had a thing on the discovery channel where I watched a segment about a UK lady that had a cat that showed up on certain days and she couldn’t figure out where it went the rest of the week so they put a GPS in its collar and found out he had 1 or two different homes for each day of the week and followed a schedule that went in a 2-3 mile loop …
.he even would acknowledge the different names each place had for him but only in the specific house …once all his owners found out about each other they made a facebook group so everyone knew what the little freeloader was up to …
The cat with multiple homes/names was on “The Secret Life of the Cat” on BBC 2, not the Discovery Channel.
My aunt and uncle lived for some years in a large house that was split into two. I think it was aunt who officially owned the cats, but they had a habit of going to the other house and protesting that they were being starved and needed feeding immediately. Even when they had just cleaned out the feeding bowls at the other place.
Reminds me of a cat that used to live in my condo complex. He’d wander around and beg. We called him Moochie. Found out nearly a year later that his name was Jim, and he was a feral a neighbor had taken in. He regularly patrolled the area and demanded treats for his “work.” We thought he was a pregnant female at first. When we found he was just, well, a moocher and was getting regular meals, we stopped giving him treats.
True for ferals, but not cats that are fed by people. They get plenty of food AND kill things for fun. I’ve seen 6-8 different cats in a neighborhood park that could maybe sustain 1 if they weren’t being fed by people. Every year the ground nesting birds (eg Wood Thrush) come in the spring, start singing, then disappear after a couple of weeks as they get killed/eaten. It’s excellent habitat but baby wood thrushes do not get made in the park.
Not with cats, since us humans feed them. Thus the population does not fluctuate, so yes, they are a environmental disaster.
I wish people who stop denying this, and just keep their cats inside. It is amazing the amount of denial people will perform in order to scoop the litter box less.
The solution to feral cats is TNR- Trap, Neuter, Release.
While it was indeed a British production, it was shown in the U.S. on one of our science-oriented cable channels (I can’t remember offhand if it was, indeed, Discovery Channel, or maybe National Geographic Channel).
Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) is a program by which feral cats are trapped, spayed or neutered, and then released into the environment. Rather than immediately reducing numbers through removal, TNR practitioners hope to slowly reduce populations over time.
The scientific evidence regarding TNR clearly indicates that TNR programs are not an effective tool to reduce feral cat populations. Rather than slowly disappearing, studies have shown that feral cat colonies persist and may actually increase in size.
Interesting paper and website
I’m not denying. And, for the record, my cats are indoor cats but ferals and barn cats will follow the protocol that nature supplies.
You also seem to think that cats are a separate species than feral cats. They simply aren’t and not all cats are fed by humans.
When SWMBO decreed that (the late 
) Tonka would be an indoor cat, I enclosed the covered portion of the deck.
Huh, I’m surprised. It seems to have worked in my neighborhood. I used to foster stray kittens (to be neutered and adopted out as pets) and i know the same shelters were working on a TNR program for adult feral cats. Sometimes we got semi-feral kittens, trapped just after they were weaned, and tamed them. But I’ve been on the list for a couple of shelters for months, now, and they have no need for foster homes. Not a lot of stray cats breeding around here.
Wait, what? Your 14 cats have ALWAYS lived to between 16 and 20. So if you had three cats at a time, and they lived to the minimum of 16, that’s about 5 X 16 = you have had this succession of amazing cats for 80 years. Are you 100 years old or do you typically have a bunch o’ cats at once?
45 years of being owned by bunches of cats. Some of them were older when we got them. But you’re right, I overcounted. After making a list, there were only 12. That’s not counting the many foster kittens. I’m down to 1 very annoying cat right now.
A lot of humans feed feral cats, also.