Murderous moggies: should we be locking up our cats at night?

From time to time, on a regular basis, there are calls to restrict the movements of domestic cats in order to protect wildlife specifically birds and in this instance bats. So, the call is for a night-time curfew for domestic cats. The first point to make is that we don't know how many bats are killed by domestic cats at night. I strongly suspect that it is very few indeed. But it might depend where the cat lives. In the UK we just don't see bats flying around at night but perhaps I'm being too casual about it. On a more important point, bats are more likely to be carriers of rabies in the US, for example. This is not an issue in the UK. However, this must be a factor for keeping cats inside at night. 

Where a cat wants to be at night despite the rain. Image in the public domain.

And with respect to birds, I recently wrote about an RSPB statement that there is no scientific support that domestic cats threaten bird populations in the UK and I would suspect the same applies to other countries. Of course, domestic cats attack, kill and sometimes eat birds but the RSPB states that most often these are injured, infirm, and elderly and dying birds in any case. And therefore, the cat's impact on the bird population is lessened.

Impracticality

But here's the deal: the biggest factor in my view for the failure of a night-time curfew is that I don't think it is practical. This is the scenario: you let your cat go outside for 10 years as an indoor/outdoor cat. His behaviour is deeply entrenched. He goes out at night, every night and he sleeps throughout a part of the day.

You're going to have to put a barrier across the cat flap. Suddenly your beloved cat will be confronted with a barrier across his exit to the outside where all that excitement lies. And he's going to be thoroughly confused, bemused and ultimately pissed off. The problem is that he is going to be bashing at that closed cat flap. He is going to be head-butting it, clawing at it and bashing it with all his might in order to get outside.

He is going to be creating a lot of noise and quite possibly damage to the cat flap. And if he doesn't damage the cat flap the noise will wake you up. Then he'll start wandering around the house meowing and howling. He may well jump up onto your bed and wake you up. He wants attention. He is asking you why he has been kept inside.

You try and get back to sleep. He wanders around the house some more and head-butts the cat flap again. He settles down by the cat flap and snoozes because he has failed to get out. He stays there in the expectation that things might change.

Because he hasn't got outside during the night, he is more restless during the day and he tries to get outside again and finds the cat flap open. But he has to snooze and therefore, exhausted from the previous night's escapades he goes to sleep.

The next night he does the same thing all over again. Any persistently does this but day after day. This is because of his deeply ingrained habit of going outside at night. It is also because his natural body clock, his circadian rhythm, and his instincts drive him to hunt at night. It is almost impossible to train out of a cat's psyche these basic instincts. Domestic cats as you know are crepuscular: dusk and dawn hunters.

Eventually, though, he will admit defeat but I don't think there are many cat owners who could put up with the hassle of it all.

If you have a young cat who has always been a full-time indoor cat, it is obviously a different matter. They don't expect to go outside. There are no routines. However, for these cats there is a problem because very few cat owners enrich their cat's environment. It remains a human environment and therefore, in my honest opinion, they are doing their cat a disservice.

I know for a fact that if I tried to keep my cat inside at night, there would be mayhem. I know for a fact that it would simply prove to be impossible. He would make me miserable. So, I wouldn't try to do it.

And let's be honest again; your typical cat owner keeps their cat inside to protect their cat. They do not keep their cat inside to protect wildlife. People who allow their cat to go outside believe that they have to accept the predation of wildlife by their companion animal. They believe that it is part of the natural world. They don't like it but they feel that they have to accept it because to confine their cat is to prevent their natural instincts and desires flourishing which in turn will lead to a less than content companion animal. Good cat owners want to do all they can to ensure that their companion is content.

Enforceability?

Nighttime curfews are an idea that is probably impractical for the reaons stated and in any case how the hell can you enforce it?! Impossible. You'd need a hugely enlarged police force or some sort of animal control task force. It is just not going to work.

Cats can make a demand in a meow even though they do not want anything

You may have met with this somewhat baffling feline behaviour. I'll describe what my cat does. In fact, he did it about an hour ago when I came in from buying a newspaper. My cat and I have set up a routine. When I come in the front door he expects me to give him some prawns - a treat. 

Cats can make a demand in a meow even though they do not want anything. Image: MikeB

And over the years this has created habitual behaviour; a pattern of behaviour which includes a request by my cat in the form of a meow for prawns. The point is though that he will still meow and ask for prawns even though he does not want them.

I can put them in a bowl and he can go up to them and licked them but he won't eat because he is not hungry enough to eat them. His meows are simply part of the scenario that both my cat and myself have created. Part of that interaction is that he meows for food. It can be a 'hollow' meaningless meow for food when he is not hungry and has no desire to eat it.

This is an example of where habits and routines outstrip reality. The players, humans and cats, create a situation in which the players do certain things and it no longer matters that the objective of the routine is unviable. The routine is the objective not the goal. 

The end result is that I have to put the prawns back in the box and put the box back in the fridge. I will bring them out at another time when I think that his demands are genuine. Although of course it is almost impossible to make an accurate decision about that.

It is a classic case of informal positive reinforcement training. The instigating action is my arrival at home. My cat gets an urge to eat prawns as it has been positively reinforced in him to do that. He has been rewarded for asking for prawns. He gets them which reinforces further his behaviour.

Cat owners are not great at understanding their cats' sounds out of context

A study carried out in 2003 and published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, probably discovered what we already know but I think it's worth briefly discussing here. 

They wanted to test how well cat owners understood the calls that their cats made. They used experienced cat owners and inexperienced cat owners. They classified domestic cat sounds into two groups: single calls and "bouts of calls". I take the latter to mean the situation when domestic cats produce a series of meows and meow-like sounds. 

Oriental Shorthair meow-honk. Screenshot plus words added.

They found that experienced cat owners were better at interpreting feline sounds than inexperienced cat owners, which is to be expected. They also found that there was a better understanding of bouts of calls compared to single calls. 

They also concluded that "classification accuracy was significantly above chance, but modestly so". This, on my interpretation, means that cat owners indicated that they understood their cat's meows but only slightly above a level of pure guesswork. This is why the title to this post is that cat owners are not great at understanding their cat's meow sounds.

ASSOCIATED PAGE: Why do feral cats not meow?

What do we take from this?

Well, I can't read the entire study which would help me because I am only allowed to read the summary. But the big point is this: cat owners interpret their cat's meows in the context in which they are produced. In fact the context is probably more important than the sound. It's the timing of the sound which is the context. 

The timing of meows is part of the routines and rhythms of human-to-cat interactions.

The meow sound is a request, normally. The study scientists refer to this as "negatively toned". They also said that the meows were non-specific. I get that but if you read a meow sound in context the sound is specific.

ASSOCIATED PAGE: What does a purr-meow mean?

So for example if you feed your cat when you get up in the morning and your cat makes a meow sound at that time then you know that your cat is requesting food. And if you let your cat out into the backyard at 4 PM every day through the back door and your cat makes a meow sound at that time then you know that your cat wants to be let out into the backyard! It's about context. Non-specifics become specifics under those situations.

But if you try and read and understand the meow sound out of context it is difficult because you know your cat is requesting something but you won't know what it is unless you put into context. This is because the meow is non-specific. They are all the same out of context.

The study: Classification of domestic cat (Felis catus) vocalizations by naive and experienced human listeners.

Cat Safety Collar With Bell

Is the cat safety collar with bell a product that is fair to the cat? Now, to those people who will go ballistic reading that simple and I think reasonable question, please calm down and read on.

Photo by Frana Blaylock (Flickr)

The reason I ask is because the argument for putting a cat safety collar with a bell on a cat is to prevent the cat preying on what might be described by some people as native wildlife that needs to be preserved and protected. I think that that argument needs to be tested and challenged.

The first point to make is that in a study it was found that putting a collar with a bell on an outdoor or indoor/outdoor cat is effective in slowing the rate of predation.

I am referring to a study entitled: Bells reduce predation of wildlife by domestic cats (Felis catus) by Graeme D. Ruxton, Sarah Thomas and Jessica W. Wright - Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, U.K. It is published by Cambridge Journals Online. I have only read the abstract as you have to buy the full document and I don't think it will add much to what I want to say.

The study found that over a four week period without a bell cats brought back to the home an average of 5.5 dead prey items. When the collar with the bell was worn the same cats over the same period brought back 2.9 items. The number of prey brought home had nearly halved (53%). An undoubtedly successful experiment if you want to stop cats behaving normally!

Update three hours later!: A study in Australia: Predation by house cats, Felis catus (L.), in Canberra, Australia. II. Factors affecting the amount of prey caught and estimates of the impact on wildlife concluded that "Nor did belling...have a significant influence on the amount of prey caught..." Well there you have it. This highlights the difficulty in achieving really solid so called "facts" through scientific studies.

On the basis that bells do curtail successful preying, should we stop our cat companion behaving normally and enjoying what comes naturally to them, if no harm is done? I am sure you would agree with that.

The only question that remains therefore is whether a domestic cat preying hurts the populations of wildlife such as birds and mammals, usually mice and rodents.

This is where things become murky and statistics from studies are used to support almost any argument so I'll simply report on a study in Bristol, England and a report by the RSPCA in the UK. Please remember that "estimates" and "projections" are essentially guesses and to be ignored.

Both support the view that wildlife populations are not harmed and in respect of birds, for example, domestic cats tend to catch the ill and dying, birds who would die anyway. Cats will always prey on the easiest animals to catch whether they are big cats such as the lion and tiger or the humble domestic cat. And mice, ground living animals are much easier to catch than fit and healthy birds.

There are the studies:

• Domestic cat preying unlikely to effect population size of prey species
• Domestic Cats Do Not Decimate Bird Populations

Also please see: How Feral Cats Affect Wildlife

Conclusion: lets not be too hasty in deciding to curtail our cat companion's natural behavior. We have a duty to allow our cats to behave as naturally as possible consistent with modern life and the cat's safety. Natural behavior promotes contentment. Cat contentment is our ultimate objective.





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Cat Experts Aim Too Low

When cat experts give advice about cats they often aim too low. What I mean is their advice is too heavily compromised and modified by what suites us and not what is in the best interests of the cat.

Let me give you a good example. The expert in this instance is Linda P Case who wrote a book I sometimes refer to and which is called, The Cat, It's Behavior, Nutrition & Health. She writes on page 180-181 about, "Undesirable predation". How can predation by undesirable for the cat? It is completely natural for a domestic cat to prey on small animals. We all know that. This advise is too people orientated.

In order to stop this undesirable behavior we are advise to bang up our cats, indoors, on a permanent basis. Job done, problem solved. Or is it? A lot of cats who are full-time indoor cats will find alternative outlets for their desire to hunt and some of these will be abnormal behavioral conditions; conditions that are stress related such as overgrooming or OCD conditions such as tail biting. The cat might suffer hair loss through stress in my opinion.

More importantly, I feel that the advise should be more optimistic and more adventurous and certainly more in keeping with the best interests of the cat. And it should seek to provide as natural an environment as possible surely?

The better and more absolutely correct advice is to encourage people to build enclosures. In my view, in an ideal world we should be thinking much wider than simply forcing the domestic cat to acclimatise to an unnatural life indoors to suite us. Of course a cat indoors can't get run over by a car. But if we gave more effort to figuring out how to protect cats from cars or keeping cars away from cats or slowing down cars, that sort of thing, then we would come up with a better solution for us and that cat in the long term.

For instance, in an ideal world no one should keep a cat unless that person had safe enclosed land to allow the cat to roam and behave naturally. And people who keep cats should sign a declaration that they accept all of the cat's behavioral traits. We need to accept the fact that our cat might bring in a half alive mouse and then play with it. If we can't accept that don't keep a cat. How simple is that?

The bottom line answer to "undesirable predation" is to relabel it "desirable and acceptable predation" and to thoroughly accept it. To bang up a cat to stop it behaving naturally is little better than declawing it.

Linda, for me, your advise is too conditioned by conventional human experience and knowledge. It is not expansive and novel enough. It is predictably American and in America there is a tendency to see the cat as a fluffy moving object whose purpose is to amuse people and not as the most effective predator on the planet.



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Sleepy Persian Kitty

This is a cracking sleepy kitty video and I think the cat is a little sleepy Persian kitty. When I watch this I think of myself! Or any person usually older people. This behavior is so human. How often do we see this on the train, for instance.



What makes it extra cute is the position that this kitten is in when she or he falls asleep. You know, it is not the most comfortable position in the world. One minute he is peering over the edge of the basket and the next.....gone, gone to the world.

Oh My Cat Loves to be Hoovered

God, I wish! I wish my cat liked to be hoovered. Think of the benefits. You could even groom your cat at the same time so all the dead hair got hoovered up. Even just hoovering without grooming sounds great.



Hey, got the best idea I have had for a while. Hoover should manucfature an attachment for their hoover (!) that has a Furminator head. Furminator make probably the best grooming tool as it gets to the undercoat and weeds out the dead and loose fur. This may take off.



The only downside is that most cats don't like the noise. But if we put the vacuum cleaner in a room, close the door (partially) and use a long hose maybe this could become the normal thing to do to groom our cat. And it is so satisfying for us to as we know we are getting rid of that damn hair.........Oh my cat loves to be hoovered, like hell she does.



Oh My Cat Loves to be Hoovered to Home Page

Domestic Cat Kills 16 Animals a Year

The domestic cat kills 16 animals a year, so say research scientists at University of Reading, UK. As there are an estimated 626 domestic cats per square kilometer that makes 626 times 16 animals killed by cats every square kilometer per year. The figure is 10,016. This translates to 92 million animals a year, of which 27 million are birds so the researchers say. How accurate is it?

There are some estimates and uncertainties (to me) in this:

• the figure of 16 per cat is estimated
• the figure of 626 cats per square kilometer seems to be estimated
• these estimates are based on the area around Reading, how typical is the area?
• Does the research differentiate between domestic cat and feral cat?
• the researchers say there are 9 million domestic cats in Britain. I don't know how accurate this figure is or how it was arrived at.
  

There has been a constant argument about the impact of the cat on native wild life none more so than in Australia, where the feral cat is persecuted for killing native wildlife (once again on the basis of disputable analysis). See Savannah cat ban and feral cats of Australia, for example.

The next job for the researchers is to track the cats over their territory using GPS devices to see how far they roam. This research, as I understand it, relates to "family pets" or a better description would be companion cats. If that is the case the figures would be very different in the United States as the majority of domestic cats in that country are full-time indoor cats.


Er, um, what did you guys say the domestic cat was doing to wildlife?

It was felt after the research that the domestic cat was responsible, at least in part, for the 60% decline in the sparrow in Britain since the 1980s. I am not sure that this research will finally clear up the argument of the domestic cat's impact on native species. The biggest factor for declines in wild life will certainly be from our activities. This was taken into account by the researchers in making estimates but I wonder how accurate they are when they say that the domestic cat kills 16 animals a year?

Photo:

Cat Habits

Maine Coon brother and sister. Perfect companions at 4 in the morning! Photo strictly copyright (please) Helmi Flick.

Some cat habits fit in with our lifestyle and some don't. One that doesn't is early rising. Cats are crepuscular. This means our cats are more active at dusk and dawn. This is hard wired as it is the best time to go hunting. Mine always asks to be let out to the garden at dusk and she plonks down in the garden and looks and dozes, waiting for something interesting to come along, which she ignores. Cat habits die hard or never die so she still goes out but the hunting instincts have faded a bit.

She also wakes early at dawn. This can be a problem for me but wasn't really one until I started living in a ground floor apartment with access to a quiet garden. I think her natural cat habits are coming out and she now wants to be fed (or find her own food) and let out at dawn.

What I am saying is she wakes me up at some unearthly hour. But we cannot complain. In fact we must celebrate this. This is a cat's way. We must accept it. If we live with a cat we fit in with the cat and yes she should fit in with our lifestyle too. It's a kind of compromise.

Here are some ideas to modify cat habits in relation to early rising other than changing our habits and rising at the same time:

---try and make your cat have a lie in! If you can ensure that the area where she sleeps is as dark as possible at night and in the morning (think thick curtains) she may not recognize dawn until it is time for you to get up.

---it's not wise to encourage her cat habits by getting up at the same time and responding to her demands (unless of course you don't mind - I don't mind as it happens). Responding to her trains in cat habits that clash with our habits. We should never shout or frighten our cats, though; no matter how irritated we might become (I never get irritated but I can see why some people might).

---If we can get our cats to sleep really soundly and for as long as possible this might help. That means plenty of exercise in the day and evening. I'm not sure that this is all that practical for some people but as much exercise is always good for our cats as a lot are too soft and indoor too much; sleeping and eating and getting fat.

---Feed our cats late and not early (when she wakes us up).

---Although it is a big step, adopting a cat or dog partner for our cats if appropriate in terms of space, time and effort etc. could resolve the problem as she'll have another animal other than us to wake up and get active with. The thing is the dog partner will have to learn to open the patio door to let her out to do her dawn hunting.....

Cat Habits to Cat Anatomy

Cat habits - Source:

• Myself
• Dr.Jon