Personal Experience with Cats
When i read an article saying that the domestic cat was responsible
for the slaughter of 70
million birds (mainly garden birds) in the UK I was horrified. But after battling with the
plague of cats in my neighborhood for the last 8 years, i can fully
understand the numbers quoted. When the law and the onus of
responsibility was shifted against dog owners , there was a gradual
switch in the type of pets people owned. In my neighborhood there was
an explosion of cats and the dawn chorus of birds that we enjoyed so
much went silent.
I tried to encourage the birds back by providing food for them but
stopped after two years after seeing cats capture 7-8 birds and that was
what i saw over the weekends when i wasn't working, God knows what they
slaughtered when i wasn't home.(how
to stop cats killing)
There was also the problem of cats mess, this meant that my children
couldn't play in the garden on many occasions because they would have
been smeered all over as they played, although i would walk around with
a shovel collecting the cat mess that these selfish murderous animals
leave in my garden, it's a never ending battle because as all cat owners
know, cats will always try and deposit their mess in someone else's
garden, and cat owners rely on this, so the problem becomes someone
else's problem.
Since that time of stopping feeding the birds i have been looking for
non lethal ways of keeping cats out of my garden and here is a list of
what i have found.
- Plants that have a fragrant foliage. Cats hate pungent smells on
themselves so spreading these plants around your borders would help
to deter cats in that part of the garden.
- Bottles of water scattered about the garden also discourages them,
something to do with the electro-magnetic field that water gives
off, perhaps it makes their whiskers tickle.
- I shovel up their mess and place it where i find the cats entering
the garden they, like me cannot stand the stink of their own mess.
- Placing cat statues amongst the shrubs can also deter some timid
cats.
- You can buy lion dung, that is a succesful pussy deterrent. Then
there are a long list of chemical cat deterrents which you can
purchase although it can get expensive if like me, you are
surrounded by cats.
- There are some electronic ultra sonic cat deterents available
which seem to work with some cats.
As for protecting your seedlings or newly planted plants, then sticking
twigs in the newly dug soil can keep cats off. if i can get some i also
sprinkle holly leaves and bramble off cuts this usually keeps the cats
off freshly dug ground, although one year after i had covered all my
bets they did their business in some flower pots destroying some
Pinus
pinea seedlings.
Another terrible price that i see played out in my garden is in the
spring when the frogs come to spawn in my little pond, i would never
believe the blood curdling screams that the frogs make when caught by
the neighborhood cats.
Cat owners claim that their cats are intelligent so branding them as
murderous evil swine killing for fun is not far off the mark considering
that they usually have a full belly of kiti-kat when they go out on the
rampage.
I THINK IT IS NOW TIME for some decent
restrictions put on the ownership of domestic cats, all cats should be
registered and licensed, and a restriction on numbers in any one area
should be imposed, this could be administered by the RSPCA
who with their experience could be trusted to protect the wildlife
and also to be sympathetic to cat owners who cared for their cats
properly. This should also help to reduce the numbers of wildlife that are
slaughtered in any one area.
E.mail your
MP. I have a friend who has 3 cats, he once lived in an upstairs
flat where his cats couldn't go out and he used a cat litter tray, he
moved to a house with a garden and in the first week the cats brought
home 2 dead birds he was so horrified when he realized that this was only
the beginning of the slaughter that he got out the cat tray and banned
his cats from being able to run riot by keeping them in. Obviously he
loved his cats but in all common sense he decided that he also had
responsibility towards the local wildlife, i only wish all cat owners
were like him instead of shirking their responsibilities to the wildlife
and their neighbors. There has been much debate in recent years in the UK about the
disappearance of the Sparrow, well once you discover that the sparrow is a ground feeder you can quickly work out where all the sparrows have gone. I know that the last Sparrow i have seen in my garden was in the mouth of the
neighbors Cat.
Some new evidence regarding the parasite that lives in cats Toxoplasma
gondii has recently been discovered, here is an article
reporting the findings. |
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