Efforts must be improved to keep cats from killing birds

Fifteen years ago I became a cat owner for the first time. Actually, I’m more of a co-owner, and in all reality, we are the ones who are owned. We have had a few barn cats in the past, but that was more akin to co-habitating on the same property than ownership.

Our now 15-year-old cat has been living the large life with all the creature comforts she can demand, but her life did not start out so rosy. I first spotted her with her mother, who was teaching three kittens that hiding close to a bird feeder made a strategic ambush position.

The lessons continued for a day or two while I hoped they would all move on, but then Mom was gone and the other two kittens were never seen again. Either they tricked the little black and white fluff ball and made a dash for it, or Mom advised, “Don’t worry these saps will take you in.”

Whatever the ruse, she was seemingly left to fend for herself on the mean streets of Crystal City. “We” went to the store to buy kitten food and placed it to be found in decreasing proximity to the back door: the patio, the deck, the screen porch, and eventually welcoming the food and kitten all they way into the house.

For a while it worked OK. She could get some dry kitten chow from us as regularly as she wanted, but then she was free in the woods to catch and consume whatever she could. When something bigger out there got its claws on the cat, the veterinarian bill convinced even the most cold-hearted among us, that our mostly outside pet needed to become an exclusively inside cat.

She still watches the bird feeder almost as intently as I do, but now the screen porch is as close as she gets to the outside world. While I admire our feathered friends, I’m pretty certain she is thinking, “I could catch that bird for lunch, if I wasn’t so comfortable on this padded bench.”

I recollected this old story after a Christmas break vacation to the warmer temperatures of Texas. We were repeatedly surprised by how frequently we saw cats on the prowl in each of the three towns we stayed in on our trip.

I always believed the Cornell Lab of Ornithology numbers to be a little fantastical, but what we saw was revealing. We started counting the cats we saw between where we were staying and where we were going each day, and the numbers were comical except in the ways they are not.

The bird brains at Cornell estimate that cats kill 2.4 billion birds each year in the United States. Habitat loss is the only things that has a bigger negative influence on bird populations in this country, and none of the other human causes are even close to the catastrophe we have created with free-roaming felines.

By comparison, collisions with building windows kills a mere 600 million birds, a fourth of the number caught by stray cats. Automobiles account for 200 million deaths. I know my vehicle and I have accidentally crossed a flight pattern or two in the past, but those incidents are relatively rare. Power lines and transmission towers are responsible for an estimated 37 million bird fatalities annually.

The best data on bird deaths caused by wind-powered turbines has been updated for 2022, and from most sources, the highest estimate is 1.2 million birds each year. That’s a lot of death, and improvements can be made, but the math indicates that it would take 2,000 years for all the wind farms in America to kill as many as prowling cats catch each year.

I understand and have witnessed the importance of a crew of cats for controlling vermin around a cattle and grain operation or other farm endeavors. But it is important to make strides where we can in limiting the number of feral felines.

All owned-cats should live indoors with the people they own. Pets and those that work alongside the livestock must be spayed or neutered, as should all the free rangers we can get our hands on. Being a deadly predator is inherent to a cat’s nature, but keeping them safe while protecting their victims is a measure we all must consider more fervently.

John Winkelman has been writing about outdoors news and issues in Jefferson County for more than 30 years and was the Associate Editor for Outdoor Guide Magazine.