The reasons why the majority of cat owners don't stop their cats killing native species

The Daily Mail talks about waging a war on killer cats. The deadly domestic cat. Humans need to wage a war against them to stop them preying on precious wildlife. There is already a news media war against the domestic cat especially in Australia where the citizens of that fine country are gradually being indoctrinated into believing that the domestic cat is the embodiment of the devil; something like the belief of Europeans in the Middle Ages. The era of witchcraft.

Cat predation on crested lark curtailed by Walldorf's administrators. Image assessed as being in the public domain. The cat is starting to be seen in the same way as they were in the Middle Ages.

I don't think it is wise to talk about "waging a war" against the domestic cat because it is likely to encourage animal abuse. But certainly, the predation by domestic cats, a so-called invasive species, on native species is highly problematic and is beginning to upset a lot of people.

Natural process

But it doesn't upset, enough, the cat owning public across the planet (except Australia!). I think the truth of the matter is that most cat owners - and this certainly applies in the UK - are aware that their indoor/outdoor domestic cat occasionally kills wildlife but they don't mind enough about it. They see it as nature taking its course.

It seems that cat owners see the domestic cat as just another wild animal which should be allowed to prey on small mammals and marsupials because it's nature in action. What right have people got to prevent domestic cats expressing their natural desires and motivations? I think that is the reasoning behind a lot of people allowing their cat to go outside unsupervised and kill animals.

Pet owners simply don't care enough about small native species being killed by their cat companions. That's the raw truth of it I believe.

Speciesism

Perhaps this is an example of speciesism. This is when people favour one animal species over another. And it is probably normal and natural for a cat owner who adores their loved domestic cat to favour their pet above small rodents, the typical prey animal of the domestic cat. And birds. Birds are favoured above rodents by nearly everybody and cats kill birds and rodents. They don't mind about rodents being killed but the birds are another matter. This is another example of speciesism.

RELATED: Domestic cats are NOT an invasive species everywhere.

Don't care enough about nature. More concerned about the home

To be brutally frank, I don't think people are sensitive enough to the predation of animals by domestic cats. They just don't see it as a problem in terms of ecology and conservation. Cat owners see domestic cat predation as a problem for them because the cat can bring the animal back into the home and cause a bloody mess. 

Or the mouse runs under some furniture and you can't get it out and the animal starves to death and starts to rot making a smell in the home. Once again the problem with domestic cat predation for most pet owners is not the killing of prey animals but the disruption to the way of life of the human caregiver that predation causes.

Until the wider public have been indoctrinated into believing that it is their duty to protect wildlife and the planet in general, I don't think we going to see a big change in attitude by cat owners in the UK and other countries.

Perhaps another reason why many people are distanced from nature and therefore don't want to really get involved in protecting nature is because they've become emotionally distanced from the natural world. People often live in the urban environment and are not really connected with nature and wildlife. Global warming is an example of how humankind has become distanced from nature and addicted to products and a way of life which harms the planet. Think big diesel SUVs (still sold) and sport hunting (still prevalent).

A lot of people enjoy wildlife and one can't generalise because there are many people who really are sensitive towards wildlife and nature and the natural world. I'm afraid not enough people are genuinely concerned about the predation of native species by the domestic cat which is an invasive species. Although, we have to question the phrase "invasive species".

Invasive species?

How long has the domestic cat got to live in a country to become native to that country? There are no hard and fast rules on that.

RELATED: Making the case that domestic cats are not an invasive species in America.

We can't pass the buck

Whatever happens next, people need to remember that it is humankind who domesticated the North African wildcat and created 500 million domestic, stray and feral cats on the planet. It is the work of humans. The cat is an innocent victim of human behaviour. Anything we do needs to be humane and decent. The problem is ours. We can't pass the buck onto the domestic cat.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

New Zealand's state sanctioned animal AND CHILD abuse by indoctrinating kids to kill non-native species

New Zealand's Ministry of Education encourages children to kill non-native mammals including cats which they label 'pests' (yeh, not 'pets'). It is state sanctioned animal abuse and the abusers are indoctrinated kids. Horrible.

In an astonishing conclusion to his lengthy analysis, Michael C Morris of the Royal Agricultural University, concludes that "even the Ministry of Education resources, encourage children to kill non-native mammals, show them how to set traps, and emphasised to teachers how they need to impress on children the importance of eradicating pests."

New Zealand's state sanctioned animal AND CHILD abuse by indoctrinating kids to kill non-native species. Image: MikeB

Other organisations in New Zealand including four government agencies, three conservation NGOs and one education NGO, promote the killing of non-native species by children.

"Non-native" means a species of animal which has not evolved in the country concerned. The domestic, stray and feral cat in New Zealand is a non-native species. It is therefore an alien species and regarded as a pest by New Zealand's authorities despite the fact that there are many cat loving care givers with cat companions in that beautiful country.

Shame, therefore, that despite being visually beautiful, the mentality of the Ministry of Education is far from beautiful and indeed quite ugly.

All the organisations promote trapping and poisoning to eliminate feral cats and other non-native species. The objective? To preserve biodiversity. To conserve native species because feral cats are very good hunters.

Shockingly, no consideration whatsoever, according to Mr Morris, is given to alternatives "such as changing human activities, non-lethal contraceptive or gene drive techniques, more localised and targeted pest control or translocation techniques such as Operation Nest Egg."

Mr Morris has not mentioned a very well-established alternative with respect to feral cats namely TNR which is widely practised in America where they, too, have a feral cat problem.

TNR is simply not on the radar in New Zealand. Well, it might be in the minds of some decent citizens of New Zealand who want to help feral cats but it is not in the minds of the country's administrators.

New Zealand introduces words such as "war" and "invasion" to describe the "pests" that are the feral cats in their country. For me, it is the feral cats who are the victims as much as the native species upon which they prey. 

The feral cats of New Zealand were introduced to the country as is the case in Australia by immigrants to the country bringing domestic cats with them and allowing those cats to return to the wild and procreate.

The back story, the root of the problem, is not the feral cat which is the 'messenger' of the bad behaviour of humans.

It appears that New Zealand is unique in mandating and encouraging children to kill non-native species which are perfectly good and decent animals. It is entirely inappropriate to single out non-native species as a target for eradication. It's a happenstance due to human carelessness that they are non-native and feral.

For the state to encourage children to kill animals is a form, in my opinion, of state sanctioned child abuse. 

It is indoctrinating them to believe that the cute possum or the cute feral kitten is an enemy of New Zealand. These children probably love the sight of cute possums. That is their natural instinct. And then, the Ministry of Education reprograms their brains to think that they are pests to be killed. It is simply unacceptable.

There are studies which have found a causal relationship between children who've witnessed animal abuse to then being more likely to be animal abusers themselves. 

If the children are animal abusers (which is what this program makes them), they are certainly more likely to become animal abusers and even human abusers when they are adults.

Feral cats are a non-native species in Australia but will they become native?

The great debate about feral cats in Australia rages on. They are non-native to that country and therefore they are considered to be pests because they prey on native species, often small mammals which are endangered in any case because of human activity. The feral cat gets the blame. But, the question here is whether feral cats will remain non-native to Australia in perpetuity. Will there be a time when we can say that feral cats are no longer non-native in Australia? And I think there is. 

Australian feral cat. Photo: Pixabay.

Peter Banks

I like an article written by Peter Banks, Professor of Conservation Biology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia. He makes the point that there can be a time when a non-native species becomes native. He even sets out criteria for classifying whether a species can be considered to be native when at one time they weren't.

He applied his criteria to dingoes and concluded that they are now native to Australia. This is despite the fact that dingoes were brought to Australia from Southeast Asia about 4,000 years ago. Technically they are non-native or alien to Australia. But he says, interestingly, that most legal definitions consider dingoes native because they were brought to Australia before the Europeans arrived.

RELATED: Make Australia’s native species more cat savvy rather than try and kill all the cats.

Deciding if a species is non-native

So here is his "ecological definition of nativeness". To put that another way, these are the three criterion that should be applied when deciding whether a non-native species has become native.

The first is whether the introduced species has evolved sufficiently into its new environment. The second criterion is whether native species recognise and respond to non-native species as they do to other species. And the third is whether the interactions between established native species and non-native species are the same as if they were interacting with native species. This last point is asking whether the impact of the non-native species is exaggerated because native species don't know how to relate to them.

RELATED: Does Australia have a native cat?

Vulnerability of native species to alien species

The last point is important because in Australia some native species haven't learned how to defend themselves against feral cats. It takes a long time in evolution for a species to build up defences against a predator. Therefore, when you introduce a strange and alien creatures into the landscape the resident species are nonplussed and are therefore very vulnerable to predation by that animal.

How long has the non-native species been in an area?

Applying the criteria mentioned, he decided that dingoes are native. And clearly, a major factor as to whether a non-native species become native is the amount of time it has been in that environment. With respect to dingoes it's 4,000 years. That provides enough time for this species of dog to fully integrate to the point where you can't tell the difference between them and native species in terms of interactions.

On this basis, there will be a time when the feral cat in Australia becomes native to that continent. Peter Banks says that cats have not been on the continent long enough to qualify as native. He said that they have not had enough time "to get past the exaggerated impacts on local species".

Non-native animals need not be non-native for ever

What I like about the article by Peter Banks is that he is saying that non-native species need not be non-native forever. There is a cut-off point which is directly linked to the amount of time that they have been alien to a particular country or place. I have always believed that.

RELATED: Exterminate the cat from North America because it is non-native!

Feral and domestic cat in North America

You could apply that rule to the domestic cat in America. It is believed that the domestic cat was brought to America by European settlers which means they've been in America for about 400 years. But they are non-native to America. Americans unlike Australians don't want to exterminate all feral cats. Americans have a more sophisticated attitude towards feral cat predation on wildlife. And I don't think Americans consider feral and domestic cats to be non-native or if they do it is a very weak point which is rarely if ever raised.

Feral cats are the costliest invasive species of Australia (but they forgot about people)

The people of Australia are not an invasive species because the aboriginals were there 50,000 years ago. But the feral cat is an invasive species and a study has decided that they are the costliest of the hundreds of individual species studied. They estimated that feral cats account for over AU$10 billion in damages and management expenses. Rabbits, pigs and rodents follow closely.

Australian feral cat. The enemy to millions of Australians. Image in the public domain.

In all, invasive species including plants have cost Australia at least AU$390 billion over the past 60 years. The researchers shone a spotlight on plants and animals. I would suggest that they also turn the spotlight around and point it at themselves. To the best of my knowledge, no study has looked at the amount of damage that humans do to the Australian economy in terms of damage and management expenses incurred.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the cost of humans to the economy is far greater than all other invasive species. The difference, of course, is that people also create the economy; they make the money. However, if you want to cut back on damage and the associated costs, I think it would be useful to take a spotlight to human activity as well. At least put them all together; humans and animals and plants. It would allow politicians to more accurately see where improvements can be made.

There is a call to invest more money in managing invasive species in Australia. Included in the damage done by non-native species, is the destruction of native animals, marsupials and mammals. Australia has a lot of very cute, small marsupials of which they are very proud. Understandably they don't like feral cats and foxes preying on them and eating them. Some are endangered.

From my standpoint, I see a huge distortion in the way that the Australian authorities are looking at these issues. Recently there were massive floods and wildfires in Australia. It is said that these were caused by global warming. Australia contributes to global warming by mining coal and selling it internationally. That's the kind of human activity I'm referring to and which should be put under the spotlight. The damage caused by these fires and floods I would argue are far greater than that caused by the invasive species.

Associated:

• Australia is killing all their feral cats and now they have a mouse plague
• Make Australia’s native species more cat savvy rather than try and kill all the cats

The Barrier Reef is being destroyed by global warming. An iconic landmark of which Australia are rightly proud but they are contributing to its destruction.

And going forwards, it will get worse. And we have to project forwards. I think it is pretty clear that global warming is going to kill more Australian native species in the future than those killed by invasive species in the past. And global warming is a human behaviour issue. You cannot cut out of the equation human behaviour as studies always do.

Brutal Australians playing God after they screwed up over feral cats

Going back to the beginnings of the settlement of the continent of Australia we can see the origins of today's so-called feral cat problem on that continent. Those early settlers were careless with their cats. They let them roam and they left them behind when they moved. These are the foundation cats of what the 'experts' believe are millions of feral cats today in Australia. 

And it bugs the hell out of Australians. Not all Australians, but the conservationists, cat haters and those want to protect their cute native species which they prefer the look of. It's a heavy dose of speciesism and it is playing God. It is preferring one animal over the other and it is a rearguard attempt to correct the disastrous errors of the past.

A western pygmy possum trapped in the area of proposed killing of feral cats. Credit: see image.

But in doing this they quote information about feral cat predation on native species in Australia as if it is written in tablets of stone but it isn't. It is guesswork. They don't know how many feral cats there are in Australia and therefore they can't work out how many native species are killed by the animals. So give us a break please Australian conservationists.

And in playing God I don't mean creating something beautiful or even ugly. I mean the painful destruction on a grand scale of feral cats. That is what playing God means in this instance. And we are told today that one of the nation's biggest conservation groups has decided to work with the Western Australian government to put down poison bait to kill foxes, feral cats and rabbits as well. They want to restore the native animals to their traditional domain in the words of the journalist on The Age website.

They are targeting a conservation area of 5,000 acres owned and managed by Bush Heritage Australia. We have heard it before; feral cats have a big negative impact on the sustainability i.e. survivability, of particularly small marsupials, reptiles and snakes.

The Western Australian government has been baiting the areas that it manages for a long time but the proposed programme increases the baiting area by a factor of five and it's going to target rabbits, foxes and cats simultaneously.

They use a familiar poison called 1080 which is designed specifically the cats apparently. The project will last five years and cover 40,000 hectors. Then intend to protect pets and working dogs "as well as possible". That is a point of contention. It is accepted that some pets will be killed. They say that the poison degrades quickly after rain and it is not toxic to native animals. I'm not sure how that works to be honest. It is made from plant species found in south-west Western Australia.

And then the journalist quotes the usual figures saying that feral cats kill 272 million birds, 466 million reptiles and 815 million mammals annually. They quote the source as the WA Biodiversity Science Institute. Well, I'd like to know where that institute gets their numbers from. Yes, we know feral cats kill native species but you can deal with the matter in a less brutal and more humane way by, for example, using TNR programs which will take much longer and I would propose genetic engineering about which I have written recently in which you can read about by clicking here.

Are domestic cats native to North America?

No, domestic cats are not native to North America. In other words, the domestic cat does not originate from a wild cat species in North America. You can tell that because the only small wildcat that could possibly have been the precursor to the domestic cat is the ocelot which at one time lived in North America but no longer (although some people claim it still exists in America). The domestic cat could not have originated from the ocelot because it's too large. The domestic cat is a domesticated and socialised North African wildcat. So the domestic cat is native to Africa and the Middle East. The domestic cat exists in North America because they were imported by Europeans to the east coast in the 1600s.

The cat hating fraternity like to remind the cat loving fraternity that the domestic cat is an invasive species in North America. And because the cat is an invasive species and because they prey on birds there are some people who think that the domestic cat should be exterminated in North America. These are ornithologists and bird lovers! The problem with the idea that the domestic cat is non-native and an invasive species is; when do you start considering a cat to be part of the country? If a domestic cat has been in the country for 400 years I think you can say that the cat is no longer non-native. Well technically you can't say that but over such a long period of time the concept of "non-native" becomes a bit pointless.