Cats are the ultimate predators

IN September, the Outdoors page carried a piece on domestic cats and the damage they do to wildlife.

Kerrie Anne Loyd and Sonya Fernandez of the University of Georgia had fitted ‘kittycams’ to cats, hoping to unlock the secrets of their lives. The camcorders revealed that only 30% of the pussies ever caught anything. The number of victims was 2.1 per cat each week, 13% of them birds. This suggested that house cats kill about 500m birds every year in the United States. Feral, or ‘stray’, cats were not included in the study.

We don’t know how many pet cats we have in Ireland but, assuming ownership patterns are similar to those in the UK, there may be about 700,000 here. The ISPCA claims that there are a further 200,000 living rough. If predation rates for American and Irish cats are broadly similar, we would have about four million bird casualties annually.