I appreciate the sentiment, no environmentalist or nature lover wants to see loss of wildlife.
This is a simplistic response to a complex situation. Do cats hunt, yes. Are cats any more invasive species to the global ecosystem than humans?
How many bird deaths are caused by driving, having windows, building sky scrapers, developing over sensitive land and habitat, and spilling oil and other toxins from micro plastics to farm fertilisers and teflon into the water way.
Cats did not build ships and import themselves to New Zealand or NA for example. Humans interfering because they thought they were wise and capable enough to ‘control’ nature and the ecosystem is the root cause of any such issue guaranteed.
To say just keep all cats inside is about as practical as saying we could keep humans inside, get rid of all the windows and sky scrapers and stop driving cars and fix anthropogenic impacts. We are in the place we put ourselves and there is no simple do this, and that will happen.
Will cats kill birds. Yes and so will a lot of other things. Some, not all, are talented and motivated hunters. The fact that cats with a home are well fed can also make them less interested in killing birds. The same happens with wild animals who don’t want to do more work than necessary. I feed birds on my property and the cats like watching them along with the squirrels. Do they go after them, they may have a couple times, is it a regular thing, no. I’ve seen one dead bird in years and it may have been a windows hit. I have footage and know one of my cats killed a mouse once in the last two years. Cats who kill often bring kills home, so I would have had a least a few presents if my cats were actively hunting. I had one cat who would hunt a variety of animals including snakes and baby rabbits. But should cats be held captive as prisoners because we decided we like them killing mice in our basement and barns but not birds. No, its not that simple.
Should we try to stop destroying habitat and wildlife, absolutely. Let’s start with the human impact on the planet before we start persecuting particular animals. Let’s stop the humans who take animals home only to dump them in the streets or woods when they become inconvenient. Large populations of any species will have effects, if each human hit one bird a year, we’d have 8 billion bird deaths per year but we don’t count road kill.
IMO, the problem of wildlife wellbeing is a much bigger problem with many causes but it needs to be considered in the broader context and in perspective.
Humans are basically an invasive species too, thats a valid point.
But unlike discontinuing the use of fossil fuels, outdoor cats is a problem that is EXTREMELY easy to solve, just dont let them out and you’ve saved billions of birds in north America alone… Keep your cats inside, and especially do not bring them to wild areas that are not already infested with cats.
This was actually what I was thinking. Natural killing machines reducing the natural wildlife.
Then there are the coyotes and hogs. And now an invasive lizard that likes eggs and hatchlings.
Years ago I found a black snake in a redbird nest. The babies were in its belly. I killed the snake, but they are great to have around if you have rodents. I won’t harm a snake now unless a poisonous one is near the kids.
I have 2 cats. They are great stalkers and killers of bugs. And cat food.
As pointed out, we are the most destructive animals on the planet.
Does a cat “camping” in a kayak count? Fortunately for the local wildlife he was an indoor-only cat. He was a large Maine Coon whose healthy weight was 26 lbs.
I used to have five cats and two dogs . It all depends upon the cat. We thought one of the cats would like to go on a walk. It was more of a drag.
Henry was declawed had a broke k-9 tooth and won every fight he was in. Including the vet tech.
Anna Banana was possessed by a demon. We left her alone.
We had our Siamese declawed and he became the terror of the neighborhood. Instead of trading licks with other cats, he went straight for the throat.
Not all Maine Coons like actually being in the water. The one we had only liked water dripping from the faucet for drinking. Water or snow in larger quantities was not his environment.