Put a Bell on Your Cat

I've already written about this once, but its worth a repeat. House cats kill an enormous number of birds and small animals.  A new report puts the number at between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between  6.9 and 20.7 billion rodents and other small animals annually. These numbers are staggering but not surpising.  There are about 84 million feline pets in the U.S., and a lot of them are allowed to roam outside.

This situation hits home for a couple of reasons. My wife and I live in Portland, Oregon in a place where there should be lots of songbirds.  We just don't see them that often. 

I like cats. They can be wonderful pets, but they are what they are...very efficient predators. The cat next door is outside most of the time. He likes to hang out on our neighbor's roof.  He also visits us regularly, probably because he likes the catnip we grow in our garden. Several times, he has left dead mice on our back walkway. 

When I was growing up, my family lived successively in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania,  and Kansas. In each of those places, in the Spring and Summer,  there was a constant cacaphony of birds calling to eachother.  It's troubling to not hear any of that where we live in Oregon.  It's very green here and there should be lots of birds. 

If you have a cat, keep it indoors. That's the best way to prevent it from exercising its worst instincts.  If you must let your cat outside to roam, put a bell around its neck.  That will at least give its prey some warning and a chance to escape before its too late.



.