I love your writing and all the information you share. I am feeling very tender right now because I lost my beloved dog Monday so perhaps I shouldn't comment. But given all the work I did to train her to not chase wildlife and to sit quietly and appreciate it with my, it would be unfair to her not to comment. I find the idea that pets lives are more valuable than wildlife disturbing. [Certainly they are to the individual pet owner but in the total picture all are equal.] Song bird populations are crashing and outdoor cats play a huge roll in that [along with a myriad of other also human caused reasons.] I have had to pick up and bury birds in my yard which is gardened specifically with them in mind because of neighbor's cats. If people do not want their cats taken by coyotes, they need to keep them inside. I have no problem with escaped indoor cats not having bells because they are generally not the problem. But if someone insists on having an outdoor cat they need to make the tough choices between their pet's safety and wildlife.
I’m sorry about your dog. I don’t disagree with you. The solution to cats killing birds is that, first, they should be kept indoors if at all possible, and second, cats need to be spayed and neutered at a much higher rate so we don’t have an excess population of cats. When I have had to pick up the boys of a dead bird, it has certainly made me sad, and I definitely want humans in general to do everything they can to stop decimating bird populations, which are plummeting all across the globe. If one of my dogs was killed, I would be inordinately upset, by many orders of magnitude, compared to how I would feel if a bird died unfairly. That may not be logical or right, but it’s how i feel, and it’s how I would imagine a cat owner would feel. If you own a cat, please keep your cat indoors at all time, for the sake of your cat and for the sake of the birds. Whether or not you can keep your cat indoors, please don’t put a bell on your cat’s collar. Try to come up with another method of protecting birds.
I love your writing and all the information you share. I am feeling very tender right now because I lost my beloved dog Monday so perhaps I shouldn't comment. But given all the work I did to train her to not chase wildlife and to sit quietly and appreciate it with my, it would be unfair to her not to comment. I find the idea that pets lives are more valuable than wildlife disturbing. [Certainly they are to the individual pet owner but in the total picture all are equal.] Song bird populations are crashing and outdoor cats play a huge roll in that [along with a myriad of other also human caused reasons.] I have had to pick up and bury birds in my yard which is gardened specifically with them in mind because of neighbor's cats. If people do not want their cats taken by coyotes, they need to keep them inside. I have no problem with escaped indoor cats not having bells because they are generally not the problem. But if someone insists on having an outdoor cat they need to make the tough choices between their pet's safety and wildlife.
I’m sorry about your dog. I don’t disagree with you. The solution to cats killing birds is that, first, they should be kept indoors if at all possible, and second, cats need to be spayed and neutered at a much higher rate so we don’t have an excess population of cats. When I have had to pick up the boys of a dead bird, it has certainly made me sad, and I definitely want humans in general to do everything they can to stop decimating bird populations, which are plummeting all across the globe. If one of my dogs was killed, I would be inordinately upset, by many orders of magnitude, compared to how I would feel if a bird died unfairly. That may not be logical or right, but it’s how i feel, and it’s how I would imagine a cat owner would feel. If you own a cat, please keep your cat indoors at all time, for the sake of your cat and for the sake of the birds. Whether or not you can keep your cat indoors, please don’t put a bell on your cat’s collar. Try to come up with another method of protecting birds.
The ecosystem is much more important than any cat’s life, if anything it would be great for more coyotes to kill these invasive cats. No thanks