Birds and cats

  How do we stop cats from killing birds?

My 12-year-old daughter and I fish in that exact location where the guy shot the cats. It’s a beautiful area, full of birds: pelicans, red-wing blackbirds, terns, American avocets, roseate spoonbills, killdeer, plovers, sandpiper,white and blue herons, comorants, various types of gulls and many other species. In fact, we were out there just this past weekend, fishing within a 100 yards of the tollbridge at San Luis Pass at the west end of Galveston Island (where the shootings alledgedly took place).

Many of those birds are ground nesters. Also, during the winter, wintering duck and geese populations spend nights along or near the Gulf beaches, flying to rice fields in the early morning to feed, and back to the beaches at sunset.

Gulls, geese and pelicans are probably sufficiently aggressive to fend off marauding feral felines, but many of the other birds have no defense.

One of the problems is that, on Galveston Island, as on many of the other Gulf barrier islands, feral cats are the top of the food chain and the major predator (next to man).

There are occasional coyotes that make it over from the mainland, but those occurances are rare and very intermittent.
Add to predation by cats the encroaching growth of "beach homes," taking up much of the island’s indigenous wetlands, marshes and beaches. (I’m sure that many of the cats were introduced on the island by those same beach home owners.)

I’m not sure what to do about the situation, although I do understand the shooter’s reasoning.

In some states, where coyotes have become nuisances to livestock, special bounties have been placed on them and people encouraged to hunt them. However, our perception of cats as "pet" preclude us from acting in this manner.

I’m not anti-cat. We have a cat and a dog. The cat is kept inside always. The dog is allowed in the back yard when a human is present. He’s chased some squirrels, but they climb trees, and dogs can’t.

Having been raised in the country, I know how quickly cats (and dogs for that matter) can become feral. I have seen packs of feral dogs cut calves from herds of cattle, kill them and eat them. I have also found evidence that feral dog packs kill deer and other wild animals. And I’m sure that, hungry enough, a pack of feral dogs could and would kill a human, particularly a child.
But feral dogs are easier to see and track. They arfe pack hunters.

Cats are lone stalking hunters, leave little evidence and are hard to track because of their small size.

The solution is that if people want pets, they should have them neutered, or, if not, should be responsible enough to keep them from going feral.

If unwanted, pets should be brought to an animal shelter, not released on the side of the road.

I’m not sure what should be done. I don’t hate cats. Perhaps the state could be convinced to set up a humane trapping program, and relocate the cats or have them put down.

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