Don’t believe everything you read about cats
THERE were two stories about cats making newspaper headlines last week, and both were misguided and misleading.
The first story headlined “Cuddling kittens can kill you, warn scientists” and the second stated. “Kill unwanted cats and keep the rest indoors, says academic”. Both of these stories were sensationalist interpretations of the facts, tweaked to fit with the individuals’ opinions, rather than some sort of revelation of a new truth. This is unfortunate: in both cases, the headlines are derived from biased beliefs rather than real science. The use of such statements in prominent places in the media leads to the unfortunate reinforcement of negative stereotypes about cats.
The bizarre “Cuddling kittens can kill you” headline refers to an extremely rare disease called Cat Scratch Fever. This is a bacterial infection that can be carried by cats, passed on by scratches. I’ve had it myself: it causes some redness and swelling around a cat scratch, and it settled rapidly with simple treatment. The disease is involved in 4.5 diagnoses/100,000 population, with 0.19 people per 100000 needing to go to hospital to be treated. That means around 5 people in Ireland per year might need to go to hospital for this, and nearly all will be treated successfully with simple antibiotics. And while people with weakened immune systems do need to take care about hygiene precautions when around animals, the risk of most people being killed by a kitten is similar to the risk of being struck by a falling meteor. It is a technical risk but so unlikely that it’s not worth worrying about. It’s a sign of newspaper’s neediness for readers that they use this sort of almost non-existent risk to create sensationalist and frightening headlines.
The second story headlined “Kill unwanted cats and keep the rest indoors, says academic” was prompted by the publication of a book titled “Cat Wars” by Dr Peter Marra, an academic who is the director of the Smithsonian migratory bird centre in Washington. His book makes a call for all cats to be kept indoors or on a lead to address the “devastating impact” that they have on wildlife.
He goes on to suggest that all feral (unowned) cats should be caught, and if they cannot be adopted, they should be euthanased. He has a vision of utopian cat-free world, where birds can flutter safely without the threat of a stalking cat around the corner.
Dr Marrano is entitled to have this opinion, but the problem is that he states that it is “based on scientific research”. In fact, while it’s possible to cherry pick supportive studies, the balance of scientific research does not support his claims. Even bird-loving organisations like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have publicly disagreed with his stance.
The Cats Protection charity was articulate in its dismissal of his claims, pointing out that there are many other factors than cats affecting the bird and small mammal species loss that has happened in the past century. This includes mismanagement and loss of traditional wildlife habitat, climate change and the increased use of pesticides and fertilisers in modern farming. Cats have been part of the European ecosystem for thousands of years, and while there are more cats now ( just as there are more people), this increase has happened gradually, and nature has adapted to this. The RSPB has done research that shows that species of commonly hunted garden birds are not in danger of serious depletion because of cats.
There’s no doubt that there are specif- ic circumstances where cats should be kept indoors, such as areas where there may be ground nesting birds with limited populations (such as certain islands or parts of New Zealand and the USA). But it’s just wrong to try to make this a globalised rule of cat keeping.
Apart from anything else, if cats stopped hunting, there would be a population explosion of rats and mice, and what effect would that have on wild birds?
A friend of mine recently kept a tally of the prey brought home by his three cats over the previous three months: Sid, Teabag and Murray had differing preferences for various prey items. It’s the ratio of rodents to birds that is most noticeable: between them they took 20 rats and mice, 6 birds and 10 frogs. So if those cats had been kept indoors, there would be many more rats and frogs, as well as birds.The entire ecosystem of the area would change, and not necessarily for the better.
Rather than looking for a complete ban on cats outside, it makes far more sense to ask people to take a reasonable approach to limiting the impact of their pets on wildlife. For example, if cats were only allowed out during daytime hours, they’d avoid the peak hours of hunting during dusk and dawn. A bell around the collar is another simple precaution. A recent study found that cats wearing a bell on the collar caught 34 per cent fewer mammals and 41 per cent fewer birds.
Some outdoor activity is good for cats: it keeps them fit and psychologically destresses them but they don’t need to be outdoors all the time. The newspaper headline would have been more accurate to say: “CATS SHOULD BE KEPT INDOORS SOMETIMES”. But that doesn’t grab the eye in the same way, does it?