Cat-loving Brits are blind to the vicious truth about their ‘pets’
Let me begin by stating for the record that I like cats. I have owned a veritable TS Eliot-worth of them: Mutti, Fungus, Solenoid, Steve, James Corden. Oh, sorry about that. The excruciating sight of him prancing about as Bustopher Jones is seared on my retina. Yours too now.
My point is that I harbour no lazy generalised antipathy towards cats per se, although I do reserve the right to loathe them on an individual basis – something they demonstrate with impunity towards random human beings. Which is all by way of saying I fully acknowledge they have their place. If only they would stay in it.
The problem is that they don’t. Hence several experts in the fields of bird life, domestic animals and biodiversity at the Cheltenham Science festival have called on cat owners to keep their “murderous” pets indoors at night to spare the lives of 250,000 bats and 27 million birds annually.
No, that’s not worldwide. That’s just in the UK. Shocking doesn’t begin to describe the carnage these soft-pawed assassins leave in their wake, not because they are hungry but because they can. So they do.
If dogs caused a quarter as much death and mayhem there would be hell to pay, but cats get away with mass decapitations of endangered species on a nightly basis because “it’s in their nature” and (let’s not beat about the bush) those who care for them are too craven to intervene.
The late Christopher Hitchens deftly summed up the striking difference in perspective: “Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.” Quite so.
Not so long ago my lovely neighbours acquired two sweet kittens. They were irresistibly furry and purry, sitting at the window for however many weeks until their vaccinations kicked in. Then they were allowed out into the garden.
It was as though mercenaries had been let loose. This pair of pretty-yet-pitiless predators wasted no time in establishing a reign of terror that has seen nests emptied of chicks, frogs tortured and voles disembowelled. There’s also been a suspicious exodus of squirrels. Were they expelled or exterminated? My money’s on the killer that got the cream.
I get that cats are great at keeping the mouse population under control. But is it really such heresy to suggest the collateral damage – shredded pipistrelles and butchered blue tits – has become extortionately high? Yes, we all feel a little bit privileged when an immaculately groomed cat comes and sits on our lap but that’s only because they are really good at licking off bloodstains (they get a lot of practice).
The upshot is that as cats are considerably less biddable than almost any other species, it is the owners who must bear responsibility. An estimated 1.3million British cats are un-neutered, and given that a female can produce 18 kittens a year – for a decade or more – there’s no point in hand-wringing over our bird populations without a curfew on cats.
And by day, make them wear collars that tinkle, or better still, scream so their tiny victims have at least a fighting chance of escaping the fearsome feline felons bringing senseless suffering to suburbia.