[at-l] Re: cats and birds and rocks and things

[AThiker at smithville.net (Felix)]

Jim Bullard wrote:

> At 10:55 PM 9/11/2004 -0400, George (Tin Man) Andrews wrote:
>
>> And this from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
>>
>> Americans keep an estimated 60 million cats as pets. Let's say each 
>> cat kills only one bird a year. That would mean that cats kill over 
>> 60 million birds (minimum) each year, more wildlife than any oil spill.
>
>
> There's a major flaw in the assumption above. My daughter has 2 cats. 
> She lives in an apartment complex and they never go outside. I 
> wondered how many others keep their cats inside. A quick search of the 
> web produced this San Diego study 
> <http://www.fanciers.com/npa/sdresults.html> which indicates that "The 
> percentage of cats kept indoors only was 37.2" or over one third of 
> all cats.
>
> This is not to say that cats do not have an adverse effect on bird 
> populations but rather that you cannot base estimates of that effect 
> on casual assumptions such as the above


The only way Willie is going to kill a bird is if one flies into him by 
accident. And, that's possible with his size these days. This all makes 
me wonder...how many birds are killed by cars, or airplanes, or timber 
operations, or storms, or bush-hogs, or dozers...I doubt that cats kill 
any more than those things. (I'd almost bet there is a damned website 
that has those exact stats somewhere, too.)  (As we know, 47.5% of all 
facts are made up on the spot)


-- 
Felix J.
ME-->GA '98
"Your Move"
ALT '03 KT '03
http://Felixhikes.tripod.com/