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After reading about cat problems in one of the local papers I had the thought about how much damage our domestic animals actually do to the wildlife inn this country. Dogs kill rabbits and cats kill just about everything they get there paws on. Do we turn a blind eye to these sorts of things or is it just nature? Do we encourage it by having more than one pet - 2 dogs or 3 cats or more.

rosco

kathy27

Do we encourage it by having more than one pet - 2 dogs or 3 cats or more.[/quote]

Ive got 5 dogs and a cat, when im walking the dogs they are all kept on leads (and i pick up there um....) my cat doesnt go out of my garden.
However a couple of years ago we had a neighbours cat come into our garden and kill some of our birds (yeah i have birds aswell) it ripped the heads off the birds through the wire and took them home, my neighbour then called the RSPCA because her cat was ill. I had a visit, the officer was more than happy with ALL of my pets and even said that maybe the law that protects sheep from dogs should also apply to cats and pet birds.

Bear · Bentlian Oldboy Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 826 Status:

Whilst pets are by definition domesticated animals they still have the genetic make up of there wild ancestors and as such they will still hunt and kill prey if the chance arises and I dont see how you will prevent this from happening.

Geddi · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 9:25 pm Post subject:

Dogs and cats differ in both law and habits.

Dogs will follow their 'leader', i.e. their owner and take their cue from the behaviour of their owner. Damage done by dogs is more disruption to nesting sites and so on than actual killed or maimed wildlife species.

Cats, on the other hand, are independent and superb hunters. I have heard some time ago an estimate that cats kill over 200,000 song birds each year in England and are the single biggest threat to soem rarer species.

Dogs are relatively easy to control and so reduce damage. Keep them on a lead or exercise them only within restricted private land. (there is a law which states all dogs within the UK should be controlled at all times in any public place.) Dogs which are left to run along river and pond banks, especially in Spring, are bound to do major damage to nesting water birds.

Cats need to be controlled in other ways and one successful way to give wild birds half a chance is to put a bell on their collars. If the dinky little ones don't appear to do the trick, put a bigger one in place ~ say a half lb one..
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