What you need to know about house cats and wildlife

Through Several studies done using a kitty-cam in the past couple of years it has been discovered that domestic cats kill a lot more wildlife than previously thought.

The majority of people believe cats kill mostly birds and mice, but the kitty-cam showed cats killing more frogs and lizards than anything else. It was also discovered that cats bring home less than 30% of the prey they kill. Bringing the total of wildlife killed by cats annually into the hundreds of millions.

On top of this all cats carry a bacteria in their mouth called Pasteurella. These bacteria are usually deadly to wildlife. It is therefore not enough to simply take a caught bird away from your cat and let it fly off. The bird will perch somewhere, preen it's feathers and ingest the bacteria from the cat saliva on it's feathers. The bird will now die a painful death several days later.

All animals that have been inside a cat's mouth need to be taken to a rehab facility to receive antibiotics to kill the Pasteurella bacteria.

Two American Robin fledglings - on the ground learning to fly. Until the neighbourhood cat got them that is. The robin on the right had both wings fractured, and the robin on the left had puncture wounds through his chest wall. They were mercifully euthanized. The finder decided to keep them for a few days and fed them bread soaked in milk. The cat is still roaming the neighbourhood.	Eastern Cottontail Rabbit. Bite from cat punctured his heart the other went through his jaw. Imagine the pain it was in? Did he deserve to die like this??	American Goldfinch fledgling. Cat caught. Right wing fractured at elbow joint, where a cat had it in its mouth and carried it home. This songbird had to be euthanized. Its eyes are glazed and swollen likely from infection caused by the bacteria in the cat's mouth.

Being that the domestic cat is a feral species (not native to the area) you should consider keeping them indoors. I will make an exception here for livestock farmers who need a small population of cats around to keep the rodent population down in the barn (in an ideal world these would be spayed/neutered and vaccinated cats).

However, for all non farmers: Help reduce unnecessary dying of wildlife by keeping your cat indoors!

Can't be done you say...I disagree, I have a cat who never goes outside. He lost a leg as a kitten due to cruelty and with the help of some great people he is now fully recovered from that, but he still never goes outside. I want him to have a happy life, so he has a big home build cat climbing tree at his disposal. He loves playing on, in and around it. He loves playing with the dogs, but give him a cardboard box and he is good for hours of watching entertainment. In short, he is a very happy and active cat who never, ever goes outside...so it can be done...easily I might add. Cruel to the cat you say, Not true...The person who broke his front leg in four places and tossed him out of a car when he was a tiny kitten is cruel...

As a side not: reading some of the kitty-cam studies I was not surprised at all to find that several of the cats in the study had multiple homes. They would go to up to four houses a day to get fed and to get attention...

I recently read a quote: If cats could speak, they would still lie to us...

How true is that.