I think you are either a cat person or you are not. I am not, any soft bit of ground we dig they come and use as a toilet, scuff all the earth out onto the path, sorry rather have a dog.

I think people who put bells around their cat's neck, should have one around their own neck as well, to see how they like being jingled at all day long, wherever they go.

Birds carry over 60 diseases in their feathers and in their droppings ..... and some of them are dangerous. They are not welcome in my garden, and I'm glad my cat scares them away.
I have a cousin who became seriously ill after catching a disease from a bird, several years ago :o(

I'm not a 'cat' person. I like all animals, except birds :o(

Happy New Year Trevor and Carol. I hope you see many birds in your garden next year, but I hope you don't catch any diseases from them :o)

I love all animals... Especially on a plate with vegetables :o)

Trevor&carol if the weather is mild the birds will much prefer to feed naturally and, as I understand it, you have had mild weather.

Hywel whilst cats catch birds folk walking dogs loose in areas where ground breeding birds are nesting is far more of a problem. Oh and check out the posters in your health clinic for all the nasties on most wildlife… remember to include us though! We all carry germs and diseases!

Oh and T&C one of our son's cats got killed when the collar, sans bell, caught on something a the wee lad couldn't get free… Nature is raw in tooth and claw, we have a sparrow hawk fly through the garden several times a day; its food? The song birds. Nature isn't nice sweet or pretty packaged it is fight for your life for a lot of wildlife. Oh, and we are the worst transgressor!

You took the words right out of my mouth MG. I have 2 cats and my vet told me not to put collars on or anythintg else on them because cats like to crawl through bushes and fences and they tend to get caught on them by their collars and suffer a horrible death.

I've had loads of cats over the years, but only two who needed a bell on their collar. both were avid bird catchers, and worse, they didn't even bother to eat them, so after months of dead birds being brought into the kitchen almost daily during spring and summer, bells were fitted. Solved the problem, first cat died aged 18, the second at 19. Which is more than can be said for all the birds they caught...

T & C, just thought, have you moved the feeders or changed the feed you are putting out. Our feathered friends turn their beaks up if we try to change anything.

Birds do not desert gardens, they just do not always visit our feeders when there is an abundance of food for them to find elsewhere so it just seems as though they have, I have bird feeders all over my garden, birdtables as well, also 3 cats and two dogs, I'm watching the birds feeding as I write and I know the cats are in the garden as well, yes I have to admit that my cats have caught birds and dare say they will again but I do stop them as much as I can, having nearly lost a cat many years ago when it got caught and nearly choked to death, I will not put collars on them now except before they are old enough to venture out into the garden..
Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2014...


Incidentally when talking of disease spreading, how many of us wear protective gloves when handling money, have a look under a microscope, its scary.........

An elasticated collar would solve the cat being strangled , I would rather clean up bird poo than cat poo ? As lazy tom cats don't always bury their poo'.and when a cat buries their muck why do they do it in my flower borders?
T&c

T&C sadly an elasticated collar can still strangle a cat if it gets caught awkwardly in a hedge.

It's an interesting discussion and I love cats and have had many as pets during my life. A recent study found that 1 in 3 cats kill birds. Well I don't know how rigorous the study was but out of the 14 cats I have personally fed and loved, more than half were killers. Birds, mice, frogs and even a rabbit on one occasion; and they are the ones I know about.
Collars and bells cannot be the answer because of the choking risk.
An ornithologist I know reckons that cats are the main predators of garden birds, taking more than sparrowhawks and other birds of prey because of the sheer number of cats in this country.
Fortunately, we get few cats in our garden presumably because of the dog. But there are a great many in the neighbourhood and I sometimes find mutilated wood pigeon in the area.
I will never have another cat although I do appreciate them and miss that feline presence. I think my garden birds are safer as they are.

Tevor and Carol, the ground-feeding birds in my garden have only just started to take the food I leave. I stopped putting it down for that reason. The Greenfinches returned to the sunflower hearts feeder a couple of weeks ago. It's been so mild and I was told that birds will go first for their natural food. It's turning colder now in Exeter and I expect more visitors once the insects are no longer available and the berries depleted.

Merlin, we keep our peanut feeders full year round and then start feeding sunflower hearts and suet balls, again in containers, as the weather gets colder. The sunflower hearts go in less than a day… every day. I think it depends where you live and what your climate is. There is always going to be disagreement between bird lovers and cat lovers, Bulba and I are both, and would not stop having our siamese girls.

Oh our ground feeding birds hoover up the detritus from the feeders!

Waiting for the Fieldfares to appear to scoff the cotoneaster berries, they've desiccated the hawthorns so it won't be long.

I wouldn't put a collar on a cat, not just because of the possibility of it getting strangled, but also because I wouldn't like a collar round my neck myself and think cats should have the freedom of no collar. Whilst it's sad that birds and other small animals get attacked and killed by cats, that is life and the natural way of things. Cats are only doing what comes naturally to them, so I feel that we should live and let live. It would be wrong of us humans to change the nature of animals to please our sensitivities.

Agree lijemc

I wouldn't put a collar on a cat. Although I have had cats in the past I wouldn't have one now. I wish them no harm but there are just too many of them and I'm sure Merlin's ornithological friend is correct. There is no doubt our songbirds are in decline.

I suspect the decline of our song birds has more to do with humans and climate change than cats to be honest Pennyf.

I think it is the huge number of cats kept as pets nowadays that does the damage to the wildlife. Where I live there are just too many, some of my neighbours have 2 or more cats and they all seem to be killers. I don't dislike any animals but I would never have a cat and add to their over-population. They are a very un-neighbourly pet, I hate having to clear up the mess that they leave in my garden, ie dead birds and poo. The worst thing is that there seems to be no effective (harmless) way of keeping them out of a garden.

Check out these links for information about what a cat gets up to.

10 cats were fitted with GPS and their movements plotted on Google Earth:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567526

Using mini cams attached to the cats... The truth about how many animals they kill:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUYXh2aP2ng

There's also lots of videos on YouTube that are taken by cats wearing mini video cameras that film their daily travels. They will surprise you.

Trevor: the cats use your borders as a toilet because that's where the soil is nice and loose and friable, unfortunately - laying thorny branches down helps to discourage them until the soil settles a bit again. As for un neutered tom cats, they are a right pain, spraying everywhere and pooing in long grass, never mind the border, not much can be done about them.

T and C, I wondered where that 'odd pigeon' had gone. Thanks for letting me know. Is it the one with a hat, and three legs?
Re the cats, I suppose the more we look after the birds, the better they will cope. They are the main predator, unfortunately. However, I frequently have a sparrowhawk sitting on one of the bird feeders in the garden centre. That's what I call hopeful.

I would hate to jingle whenever I move.
Our cat caught the moles that were disrupting our garden. She had three and we have had no more trouble. It was just frustrating that I'd just bought two ultrasonic repellers - not even installed them.
She has also brought in (and completely eaten) two young rats and she is welcome to as many of those as she is able to find. It is upsetting when she catches birds, but we had turkey for Christmas and are planning a pheasant lunch in the new year. To be consistent we need to be vegetarians.

Hortum our sparrow hawk flies through the garden at least once a day on its quest for a song bird and has been known to sit on top of the feeders waiting for the small birds to appear.

Stera I agree with your comments.

Well said Stera, ours was turkey with pork, neither the turkeys or the pigs stood a cats chance in hell unlike the birds in my garden.....

The difference between sparrow hawks and cats is that the sparrow hawk kills to live, the pet cats around here kill for the sake of killing, they are not hungry ( a lot of them look overweight!).

When our daughter cat kills a bird she eats it I'm always sad she has done so but she doesn't catch many, she also catches mice which we are extremely grateful for. I still feel that it is humans and their concreting of gardens, monoculture on the farms (plus all the pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertiliser) that is causing the birds far more problems, all be it indirectly, than cats killing them are.

Our cat eats her birds too, every last little bit including beaks and feet. She doesn't eat shrews though.
Yes MG, monoculture and concrete - ugh.

The only animals should be wild ones - domesticated animals are totally unnatural and are often an emotional prop for their "owner".

Domesticated animals (including farm livestock) cause more problems - disease being one - than anything else on the planet.

Wouldn't it be great if all the wild creatures could go about their lives without interference from us.

What's wrong with being an emotional prop for somebody who really needs one?
Would you really like to have to deal with marauding rats and mice in your house and garden?
I have been trying to imagine the world you suggest. Before the motor car nobody would have had any transport so would have had to live only on what they could grow. Life in towns would therefore have been impossible.

Babies whose mothers could not feed them would have died unless they were rich enough to afford a wet nurse.

Virtually the only protein would have been peas and beans - there would certainly not have been enough nuts for everyone and there would be no eggs or cheese.

Areas like the Downs and the Welsh mountains would be completely different without the sheep grazing them.
Only a small population could be supported and we would probably not be here at all.

Yeah - they would have been different, certainly not barren and denuded like they are.

I do think though Steragram, you have hit the nail on the head. The human population would hopefully have been smaller and the havoc we've wrought would have been so much less.

And incidentally there is adequate protein to be had in nuts seeds grains and legumes. Human health problems are in some measure down to too much and with it being from sources designed for different species with different growth rates, e.g. cow's milk.

But I do appreciate that as all of us on this site are gardeners we have a connection with and feeling for the natural world whilst at the same time dealing with the problems of living in harmony with that world in different ways.

Best wishes to all of you for 2014.

Let's take a look at the diet of a Highland crofter 200 years or more ago. They grew potatoes, turnips, kale and oats and not a lot else - because the land was too poor to support much else. In the season they caught herring which they salted and if they had the money kept a milk cow. The mainstay of their diet was oats. Remember the Irish famine because of potato blight? I am not saying we have the right to do as we like to animals -anything but! The meat we buy comes from Scottish livestock reared naturally, outdoors on grass, neeps and silage - we also only eat a very small portion of meat in comparison with our veggies. Fish we have virtually stopped eating because of the problems with stock. However, let's face it if we all decided to stop eating any form of animal protein then none of these 'farmed' animals would exist. Mankind has been killing and eating animals from the time they discovered fire. Encouraging farmers to have diversity on their land and banning all factory type farming would be a step in the right direction in my view. This is a fascinating thread having wandered far from the original discussion on birds and cats!

I do love nuts John but we'd be hard put to it to support our population with them. Poor people used to get all their protein from pulses but I wouldn't like to go back to that. There are just too many of us nowadays, sadly.