How can cats be stopped from hunting birds?
THERE was devastation on the kitchen floor: blood mixed with small feathers. My Maine Coon cat Peig had been hunting again, and the battered cadaver of a small bird could be seen at the centre of it all. One of the paradoxes of cat ownership for many animal lovers is the fact that our precious “fur babies” are carnivorous predators beneath their friendly, purring facade.
It’s been estimated that there are between 300 to 500000 cats in Ireland, although nobody has ever carried out a cat census. If Irish cats kill birds and small mammals at the same rate as their UK cousins, this means that they may be killing over six million creatures every year. This may sound like a lot, but if you average the figures down, that’s like each cat catching prey once a month, which seems feasible. Studies show that cats only bring home around 20-30% of the prey they catch, so owners probably underestimate the killing rate of most cats.
Studies show that mice, rats and rabbits make up two-thirds of the total, garden birds like sparrows, tits and blackbirds make up one quarter, and the remainder comprises frogs.
From my own household, these totals make sense: that’s the proportion of kills that Peig brings back through the cat flap.
Many cat owners dislike the fact that their pets are so blood thirsty, and bird lovers are aghast at the death toll of their feathered friends. Over the years, different methods have been used to try to stop cats from taking so many lives. A recent study at the University of Exeter has come up with some new and interesting information about what does- and what doesn’t - make a difference.
The traditional answer was to place a small bell on a cat’s collar. The idea is that as the cat stalks their prey, the tinkling of the bell would alert the creature to the approaching danger, and they would flee before they could be hurt. In reality, cats turned out to be too smart to be outwitted in this way: they soon learned to creep towards their prey even more slowly and steadily than before: arguably, bells may have even taught them to do this more effectively than before.
A more recent innovation was called a Cat Bib: this is a brightly coloured silicone sheet that fits onto the cat’s collar that resembles the type of bib that parents put on children at mealtimes. The cat can walk around normally, but if they crouch down and pounce forwards (as they do when catching prey), the bib gets in the way, preventing a successful kill. These bibs seem to work reasonably well, but when I tried them, my cats learned to wriggle out of their collars, losing the bib in the process.
The Exeter study used another, similar type of device, called a “Birdsbesafe” collar (www.birdsbesafe.com), which is a brightly coloured bandana type scarf that fits around a cats normal collar. Earlier studies had already been shown that cats wearing this collar caught 87% fewer birds, but in this study, the reduction was only 42%, which is significant enough. Interestingly, the collar did not reduce kill rates of small mammals: the researchers explained that this is probably because while birds can see in colour, and they are out and about in the daytime, rats, mice and rabbits tend to have poor colour vision, and they are hunted when they are active, at nighttime, when collars are not so easily seen.
The study followed 300 cats while they also trialled three other interventions.
First, they gave cats a puzzle ball toy, which released dry kibble biscuit in small amounts as cats played with it. The idea was that this would mimic hunting, so that cats no longer felt like the real thing.
In fact, cats that played with the ball toy ended up hunting 33% more than before: the researchers believe that the cats were just hungry, after getting frustratingly little meals from the toy.
Second, cats were engaged in regular periods of play with their owners, using a feather toy on a wand, allowing cats to stalk, chase and pounce in the same way as they would do in a real hunt. When owners did this, the amount of hunting was reduced by 35%, a significant improvement.
The third intervention was the most interesting: the diet of the cats was changed to include higher levels of protein derived from meat than regular cat diets. Again, the cats in this group reduced their hunting rate by 35%. Nobody knows exactly why this is, but the theory is that cats, as obligate carnivores, enjoy eating meat, and if they don’t get it at home, they’ll go looking for it. Again, this tallies with my own experience: when I have stopped giving my cats as much moist food (tins and sachets), they seem to have caught more prey.
These studies are interesting, but they just provide part of the answer to this conundrum. The obvious, and ultimate, solution is to keep cats indoors all the time, and in some countries where native wildlife is vulnerable, cats are legally obliged to be kept indoors. But we know that cats get bored indoors, and they suffer from more stress-related illnesses, so it’s not an ideal answer.
Finally, we need to consider what happens if cats stop hunting rats and mice altogether: we could accidentally create an unwanted plague of rodents.
The best answer? A bit more play with our cats, some more meaty food, and after that, let’s just let nature run its course.