It's difficult isn't it? My cats do their rodent hunting in the attic which is where they head for in winter. When it was a farm, the insulation between the beams was husks form the grain harvest so eprfect habitat for them and their descendants clearly have the attic gene. I very rarely find a live vole in the house and always liberate it outdoors in the shrubbery.
Given our bird feeding arrangents, their are more losses from the occasional nestling that falls out before it even has feathers than there are t this cat or teh sparrowhawk. They nest under the eaves at one end of the house so that attic is kept closed to cats.
I do not understand cat owners who do not sterilise their cats anddogs and who leave them to their own devices day and night. Boils down to education I suppose.
We don't get fox poo in teh garden but you can guarantee that if there is any to be found on walkies, Rasta will roll in it. Goose poo stinks too and we have wild Egyptian and Canada geese in the surrounding countryside.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Mmm, they are all interesting points. I would very much like to see people neutering and spaying their cats. I have never actually gone out to get a cat. Mine turn up at the house starving after people from the town come and dump them, expecting them to be able to survive in the wild. The house I live in used to be rented by nuns, who didn't neuter the cats, and when they moved away most of them starved to death. Nasty situation.
They really do go after the rodents. We had one bird death last year (food spilt on the way to the 7 foot high, fortified bird table). All my cats are very well fed, so they stack the rodent corpses on the mat, that helps me a lot in checking if the bird fortifications are doing there job. That is another thing that I get cross about. Silly fools who have cats and then have a titchy, icky, bitty little bird table with no fortifications. But that is all country stuff, not stuff that would make much sense in the town as every one should have fortified bird tables - to expensive for most people to bother with I suppose.
Cats and cars don't mix either, so the getting squashed factor would probably keep the population in check in towns if neutering was more popular. The Cats Protection League have a neutering/spaying scheme for people on benefits, such great people! Interestingly, a study was done in Scotland to see what was the best way of controlling the numbers of domestic and feral cats. There reason for doing it was that the Scottish Wild Cat (the real McCoy) was about to become extinct because of interbreeding with domestic cats. They found that if you cull the domesticated cats in an area, it doesn’t just upset people, the cats from outside the areas moved into the territory, and being owner-less they’re not neutered and quickly multiplied. I think they tried it out in Australia, where cats are not at all native. So, neutering was the answer! Hurray for the Cats Protection League! you guys are the mustard!
Cat pooh was what my God parent slipped in many many years ago ,they did not have cats but the neighbour next door had eleven . The cats used my grandparents small garden as a toilet, .my God parent got cat pooh on his face when he slipped on the grass where the cats hadn't buried it .he got an infection , he lost part of his cheek and he lost his nose as the infection spread .the doctors arranged for a pair of glasses with an attached false nose to be made. Not having a nose caused him numerous health issues plus he was diagnosed with breathing problems.
I have heard that tescos lemon room spray works and lemon peel too. I live in an end house near a lot of trees, but tge cats all seem to stop at my garden. It's horrific. If I want to grow vegetables I grow them under a large cloche or tgey would be badly tainted
Just to clarify when I stated that cats are not effective at controlling rodent populations in rural areas, that does not necessarily mean they do not kill them.
It means that however many they kill, it has no overall impact on the the rodent populations. This is why other methods are employed such as baiting and shooting rodents.
Studies have shown that with an abundance of easier prey the cats prefer to prey on these instead. So my concern would be that people let cats out in the belief that it will control rodents, yet the impact on wildlife, not just birds but small mammals (other than pest species), reptiles and amphibians can be quite devastating.
I have observed this first-hand myself. The birds left our garden, a colony of common lizards was practically wiped out and rats actually moved into our garden when neighbours with 5 cats moved in. I have to control the rats to this day with bait and a .22 air rifle, not something I enjoy doing but it is a small garden and like most people I wouldn't want rats coming into the house. The fact the 5 cats are not impacting on rats in the garden is plain for me to see.
Something else of interest was a study from the University of Sheffield regarding the effects of cats on nesting birds. It was shown that a cat just being present was enough to alter the parent birds behaviour. Alarm calls, mobbing the cat, interruption to feeding the chicks. One can see that this is going to have an effect on the chicks development and survival in the long-term. Many of the nests were also raided during the study by crows and magpies. The conclusion was that previously hidden nests were being exposed to other predators when the parent birds reacted with alarm calls to the cats. So cats do not actually have to directly kill birds to impact on their populations, they only need to be there.
It is refreshing to talk about the facts and evidence rather than being on one side or the other.
I'm just as concerned about the animal welfare issues with cats too, I worked at the Blue Cross for many years, another charity that at the time offered free neutering to those on benefits.
I'm painfully aware that the 'issues' around cats is a case of cats just being cats, but the more educated the owners, the better it is all round, for cats, wildlife and even us poor neighbours.
No, I don't think I'm getting you wrong really, it's just a matter of fields within fields. I'm not up for controlling rodents in the whole countryside, obviously - I love mice and rats, and save them whenever I can from the cats, but more importantly they are an important part of the food chain. I find it very handy to have the house and garden free of them, what with the Leptospirosis and all that, and believe me, the house and garden are free of them! but I don't see mice and rats as a sinister plague about to "steal the food from the cook's own ladles" so to speak. Not that I think you were implying that I thought that at all! but I like to keep things realistic.
I admit it, you have me there with the nesting, while others are feverishly "attracting wildlife to their gardens" I really don't think I'd like to encourage wild birds to nest anywhere near my house - it seems just silly out here in the wilds. They are far better nesting in the Bern or in the woods, or the hedgerow where the cats don't go! I do have quite a big garden with food put out every day at the feeding station, and birds adorn the nearby trees, but they really don't seem to be interested in nesting in the shrubs - or at least, I very much hope not! Any bird that did so would certainly be near the end of it's genetic line - the numbers just don't add up, and I can only hope they are frightened away by the rich predatory presence because of instinct!
Odd things that are not so obvious in towns play into the picture here though too. People don't often take account of whether they live on the Adret or Ubac side of a valley in towns. In more rugged parts of the country, those who's hillsides face south get lots of rabbits, birds etc. Those who live on the Ubac don't get rabbits anywhere near so much, and a lot fewer birds nesting - it's too cold and windy compared to the other side of the valley. Humans don't take much notice of such things (with the possible exception of gardeners) nor do mice and rats who prefer to live near human habitations and food stocks, livestock are fenced here, and pets, well their houses are heated and the lazy things spend most of there time snoozing, doing a spot of ratting, but generally waiting to be fed out of the desperately unethical, industrially produced meat-industry-surplus filled cans.
Yes I agree with your implication that the problem is, by and large, innovative humans and there many utterly wastefully made environments, than a problem with cats doing there catty thing. When we mess things up we get knock on effects. I've noticed the difference between rabbits, and too many rabbits, and how it affects the vegetation on the other side of the valley. I've also noticed the fox factor (and others have brought it to my notice) keeping the rabbit population lower than critical mass - a good year for rabbits means more foxes, but alas, more foxes take more lambs and "they are worth money you know!" And the critical mass thing is very scientific, the relatively recent introduction here of rabbit plague as an unstoppable alternative to predatory control works like this: when the concentration goes above a certain number of rabbits per acre, a new epidemic erupts, and you see them all dyeing in misery by the side of the road. The eagles and buzzards have a great time until the rabbits run out, or a shepherd starts sneaking out a few poison carcasses, in case the now more apparent buzzards and eagles take the lambs. It's all so much more complicated where we people are involved.
In the towns it's even more messed up, but I quietly hope that the ability of nature to eventually adapt will prevail "look at urban foxes and badgers" I think - "they are now making a good living in the town thanks to unfinished bags of chips". I suppose you could compare them to the domestic cat in that regard? And I think of the rise in Bee populations where urban gardens provide a variety of flowers at different times of the year - pat on the head time I hope, but it's a small hope.
The awful thing is that there is always a new threat looming on the horizon. We have a terribly cosseted and relatively trivial culture here, in other places people's priorities are the eradication of drought, storms, floods and major epidemics. Someone was asking me recently what measures were in place to stop rabies coming through the Channel Tunnel carried by rats. I have no idea. I just hope and hope like everyone else that it won't happen, because I am not in a position to stop it. Sometimes I even fall into thinking "at least it won't happen to us" same as the droughts, storms and flooding. It's still hard to keep a clear head to focus upon these things, we are still learning, but it doesn’t hurt to be truthful about your feelings now and then. So thanks for the chance to do so folks.
I agree Dinah it is good to have the chance to say things and I think it is a great opportunity to modify our own thoughts and perspectives to do just that on an open forum.
If one were to try to come up with a systematic scheme for reducing wildlife it might go along the lines of:
1) Render vast areas unsuitable for the majority of species
2) Destroy any remaining pockets of habitat
3) Introduce a non-native predator with an unfair advantage
Which here in rural East Anglia looks remarkably like
1) Intensive arable farming
2) Building development and unsympathetic management of hedgerows
3) Domestic cats
Take away the first two factors and cats are not even an issue.
I very much think it is a choice today between attracting a truly diverse range of wildlife to gardens or cat ownership. Which is why when people say 'if you love wildlife, why don't you like cats', my answer is I do like cats, however I would prefer to choose to see a much wider variety of native wildlife in my garden over seeing cats.
My own experience was that choice was taken away from me by my neighbours. We established the wildlife garden when there were no free roaming cats in the village. Seeing the effect of them introducing the cats to the environment was at the least dramatic and the worst heartbreaking.
But do they really have the right? That has to be the real underlying issue on a gardening forum. Morally does my neighbour have the right to make that decision for me?
I think this is what is hard to voice and make other people grasp. The more closely we live together, the less diversity in the environment we see, the more these issues seem important. The problem with free roaming cats is that the neighbours have no choice but to also become 'cat owners'.
Here we go again ,recently i said i used Jeyes spray to keep cats of Our property as iv stated time and again I sprayed it on the exterior boundaries of our garden as im NOT having my partner in tears due to the disgusting mess being made of our garden which cost us a lot of money,,at NO time did I say hurt any animals ,Im now being told to be careful as cats hate the smell of it THATS THE POINT they stay away and dont get hurt ,It worked for us instead of falling out with the PR-T next door who at no time apologized for the damage to the gardens or offered to pay for the new fence WE had to errect to keep his cat of OUR gardens, he knew alright but like so many ( But Not All cat owners ) refuse to admit there cats are a menace. WE MOVED.4711 does not hurt animals,OK
Don't think anyone was attacking you - I know from things you've said before that you'd never harm a living creature (vine weevils and lily beetles excepted).
However, this is a public forum and people come and go and it's a good idea to remind people of dangers - not everyone knows that cats find Jeyes fluid pleasant to drink - and that doing so will cause them a horrible death.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It's the most frustrating thing isn't Alan, only the people who wouldn't hurt a cat would be posting here to find solutions, yet I see again and again we are instantly branded as irrational cat haters.
Posts
It's difficult isn't it? My cats do their rodent hunting in the attic which is where they head for in winter. When it was a farm, the insulation between the beams was husks form the grain harvest so eprfect habitat for them and their descendants clearly have the attic gene. I very rarely find a live vole in the house and always liberate it outdoors in the shrubbery.
Given our bird feeding arrangents, their are more losses from the occasional nestling that falls out before it even has feathers than there are t this cat or teh sparrowhawk. They nest under the eaves at one end of the house so that attic is kept closed to cats.
I do not understand cat owners who do not sterilise their cats anddogs and who leave them to their own devices day and night. Boils down to education I suppose.
We don't get fox poo in teh garden but you can guarantee that if there is any to be found on walkies, Rasta will roll in it. Goose poo stinks too and we have wild Egyptian and Canada geese in the surrounding countryside.
Mmm, they are all interesting points. I would very much like to see people neutering and spaying their cats. I have never actually gone out to get a cat. Mine turn up at the house starving after people from the town come and dump them, expecting them to be able to survive in the wild. The house I live in used to be rented by nuns, who didn't neuter the cats, and when they moved away most of them starved to death. Nasty situation.
They really do go after the rodents. We had one bird death last year (food spilt on the way to the 7 foot high, fortified bird table). All my cats are very well fed, so they stack the rodent corpses on the mat, that helps me a lot in checking if the bird fortifications are doing there job. That is another thing that I get cross about. Silly fools who have cats and then have a titchy, icky, bitty little bird table with no fortifications. But that is all country stuff, not stuff that would make much sense in the town as every one should have fortified bird tables - to expensive for most people to bother with I suppose.
Cats and cars don't mix either, so the getting squashed factor would probably keep the population in check in towns if neutering was more popular. The Cats Protection League have a neutering/spaying scheme for people on benefits, such great people! Interestingly, a study was done in Scotland to see what was the best way of controlling the numbers of domestic and feral cats. There reason for doing it was that the Scottish Wild Cat (the real McCoy) was about to become extinct because of interbreeding with domestic cats. They found that if you cull the domesticated cats in an area, it doesn’t just upset people, the cats from outside the areas moved into the territory, and being owner-less they’re not neutered and quickly multiplied. I think they tried it out in Australia, where cats are not at all native. So, neutering was the answer! Hurray for the Cats Protection League! you guys are the mustard!
Cat pooh was what my God parent slipped in many many years ago ,they did not have cats but the neighbour next door had eleven . The cats used my grandparents small garden as a toilet, .my God parent got cat pooh on his face when he slipped on the grass where the cats hadn't buried it .he got an infection , he lost part of his cheek and he lost his nose as the infection spread .the doctors arranged for a pair of glasses with an attached false nose to be made. Not having a nose caused him numerous health issues plus he was diagnosed with breathing problems.
All this , and the cause of it cat pooh.
Hi Dinah,
Just to clarify when I stated that cats are not effective at controlling rodent populations in rural areas, that does not necessarily mean they do not kill them.
It means that however many they kill, it has no overall impact on the the rodent populations. This is why other methods are employed such as baiting and shooting rodents.
Studies have shown that with an abundance of easier prey the cats prefer to prey on these instead. So my concern would be that people let cats out in the belief that it will control rodents, yet the impact on wildlife, not just birds but small mammals (other than pest species), reptiles and amphibians can be quite devastating.
I have observed this first-hand myself. The birds left our garden, a colony of common lizards was practically wiped out and rats actually moved into our garden when neighbours with 5 cats moved in. I have to control the rats to this day with bait and a .22 air rifle, not something I enjoy doing but it is a small garden and like most people I wouldn't want rats coming into the house. The fact the 5 cats are not impacting on rats in the garden is plain for me to see.
Something else of interest was a study from the University of Sheffield regarding the effects of cats on nesting birds. It was shown that a cat just being present was enough to alter the parent birds behaviour. Alarm calls, mobbing the cat, interruption to feeding the chicks. One can see that this is going to have an effect on the chicks development and survival in the long-term. Many of the nests were also raided during the study by crows and magpies. The conclusion was that previously hidden nests were being exposed to other predators when the parent birds reacted with alarm calls to the cats. So cats do not actually have to directly kill birds to impact on their populations, they only need to be there.
It is refreshing to talk about the facts and evidence rather than being on one side or the other.
I'm just as concerned about the animal welfare issues with cats too, I worked at the Blue Cross for many years, another charity that at the time offered free neutering to those on benefits.
I'm painfully aware that the 'issues' around cats is a case of cats just being cats, but the more educated the owners, the better it is all round, for cats, wildlife and even us poor neighbours.
No, I don't think I'm getting you wrong really, it's just a matter of fields within fields. I'm not up for controlling rodents in the whole countryside, obviously - I love mice and rats, and save them whenever I can from the cats, but more importantly they are an important part of the food chain. I find it very handy to have the house and garden free of them, what with the Leptospirosis and all that, and believe me, the house and garden are free of them! but I don't see mice and rats as a sinister plague about to "steal the food from the cook's own ladles" so to speak. Not that I think you were implying that I thought that at all! but I like to keep things realistic.
I admit it, you have me there with the nesting, while others are feverishly "attracting wildlife to their gardens" I really don't think I'd like to encourage wild birds to nest anywhere near my house - it seems just silly out here in the wilds.
They are far better nesting in the Bern or in the woods, or the hedgerow where the cats don't go! I do have quite a big garden with food put out every day at the feeding station, and birds adorn the nearby trees, but they really don't seem to be interested in nesting in the shrubs - or at least, I very much hope not! Any bird that did so would certainly be near the end of it's genetic line - the numbers just don't add up, and I can only hope they are frightened away by the rich predatory presence because of instinct!
Odd things that are not so obvious in towns play into the picture here though too. People don't often take account of whether they live on the Adret or Ubac side of a valley in towns. In more rugged parts of the country, those who's hillsides face south get lots of rabbits, birds etc. Those who live on the Ubac don't get rabbits anywhere near so much, and a lot fewer birds nesting - it's too cold and windy compared to the other side of the valley. Humans don't take much notice of such things (with the possible exception of gardeners) nor do mice and rats who prefer to live near human habitations and food stocks, livestock are fenced here, and pets, well their houses are heated and the lazy things spend most of there time snoozing, doing a spot of ratting, but generally waiting to be fed out of the desperately unethical, industrially produced meat-industry-surplus filled cans.
Yes I agree with your implication that the problem is, by and large, innovative humans and there many utterly wastefully made environments, than a problem with cats doing there catty thing. When we mess things up we get knock on effects. I've noticed the difference between rabbits, and too many rabbits, and how it affects the vegetation on the other side of the valley. I've also noticed the fox factor (and others have brought it to my notice) keeping the rabbit population lower than critical mass - a good year for rabbits means more foxes, but alas, more foxes take more lambs and "they are worth money you know!" And the critical mass thing is very scientific, the relatively recent introduction here of rabbit plague as an unstoppable alternative to predatory control works like this: when the concentration goes above a certain number of rabbits per acre, a new epidemic erupts, and you see them all dyeing in misery by the side of the road. The eagles and buzzards have a great time until the rabbits run out, or a shepherd starts sneaking out a few poison carcasses, in case the now more apparent buzzards and eagles take the lambs. It's all so much more complicated where we people are involved.
In the towns it's even more messed up, but I quietly hope that the ability of nature to eventually adapt will prevail "look at urban foxes and badgers" I think - "they are now making a good living in the town thanks to unfinished bags of chips". I suppose you could compare them to the domestic cat in that regard? And I think of the rise in Bee populations where urban gardens provide a variety of flowers at different times of the year - pat on the head time I hope, but it's a small hope.
The awful thing is that there is always a new threat looming on the horizon. We have a terribly cosseted and relatively trivial culture here, in other places people's priorities are the eradication of drought, storms, floods and major epidemics. Someone was asking me recently what measures were in place to stop rabies coming through the Channel Tunnel carried by rats. I have no idea. I just hope and hope like everyone else that it won't happen, because I am not in a position to stop it. Sometimes I even fall into thinking "at least it won't happen to us" same as the droughts, storms and flooding. It's still hard to keep a clear head to focus upon these things, we are still learning, but it doesn’t hurt to be truthful about your feelings now and then. So thanks for the chance to do so folks.
I agree Dinah it is good to have the chance to say things and I think it is a great opportunity to modify our own thoughts and perspectives to do just that on an open forum.
If one were to try to come up with a systematic scheme for reducing wildlife it might go along the lines of:
1) Render vast areas unsuitable for the majority of species
2) Destroy any remaining pockets of habitat
3) Introduce a non-native predator with an unfair advantage
Which here in rural East Anglia looks remarkably like
1) Intensive arable farming
2) Building development and unsympathetic management of hedgerows
3) Domestic cats
Take away the first two factors and cats are not even an issue.
I very much think it is a choice today between attracting a truly diverse range of wildlife to gardens or cat ownership. Which is why when people say 'if you love wildlife, why don't you like cats', my answer is I do like cats, however I would prefer to choose to see a much wider variety of native wildlife in my garden over seeing cats.
My own experience was that choice was taken away from me by my neighbours. We established the wildlife garden when there were no free roaming cats in the village. Seeing the effect of them introducing the cats to the environment was at the least dramatic and the worst heartbreaking.
But do they really have the right? That has to be the real underlying issue on a gardening forum. Morally does my neighbour have the right to make that decision for me?
I think this is what is hard to voice and make other people grasp. The more closely we live together, the less diversity in the environment we see, the more these issues seem important. The problem with free roaming cats is that the neighbours have no choice but to also become 'cat owners'.
Here we go again ,recently i said i used Jeyes spray to keep cats of Our property as iv stated time and again I sprayed it on the exterior boundaries of our garden as im NOT having my partner in tears due to the disgusting mess being made of our garden which cost us a lot of money,,at NO time did I say hurt any animals ,Im now being told to be careful as cats hate the smell of it THATS THE POINT they stay away and dont get hurt ,It worked for us instead of falling out with the PR-T next door who at no time apologized for the damage to the gardens or offered to pay for the new fence WE had to errect to keep his cat of OUR gardens, he knew alright but like so many ( But Not All cat owners ) refuse to admit there cats are a menace. WE MOVED.4711 does not hurt animals,OK
Hi Alan
Don't think anyone was attacking you - I know from things you've said before that you'd never harm a living creature (vine weevils and lily beetles excepted).
However, this is a public forum and people come and go and it's a good idea to remind people of dangers - not everyone knows that cats find Jeyes fluid pleasant to drink - and that doing so will cause them a horrible death.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It's the most frustrating thing isn't Alan, only the people who wouldn't hurt a cat would be posting here to find solutions, yet I see again and again we are instantly branded as irrational cat haters.