Fiedishly Felonious Felines

I make no bones about people controlling their pets—both inside and outside the home. This has hit home even harder for me after adopting a rescued border collie who developed a good case of fear aggression in response to whatever had happened to her before being rescued in southern Idaho.

Getting quickly to my point, she's a wonderful, polite, and usually sweet-natured pooch until she's in a strange, tense situation (usually involving another dog whom she doesn't know). It's been a huge adjustment for me and Tulip, having to always be on the alert for her warning signs and trying to maintain control of various circumstances where all 37 enraged pounds of the Weewolfe could live up to the blog name I've given her. It's tough but we do it. We take responsibility for our dog and what she may do.

Wish that so many others would do the same...

And I emphatically, almost zealously, include our feline companions in those thoughts.

Yeah, cats'll probably not bite children as a dog might; however, it's not just biting people that I worry about. Most wildlife agencies are authorized to put-down dogs that harass and kill wildlife. Why aren't we doing this for cats?

It's slightly gross when Socks brings home the headless mouse or sparrow but that's just Socks being Socks, right? That headless sparrow might have just left behind a clutch of hatchlings that'll now starve and die.

Although I'm hair skeptical on the overall magnitude of their estimates, this article that I caught over at Drudge doesn't surprise me one bit:

Cats are one of the top threats to US wildlife, killing billions of animals each year, a study suggests.

The authors concluded that more animals are dying at the claws of cats in the United States than in road accidents, collisions with buildings or poisonings.

...

Their analysis revealed that the cat killings were much higher than previous studies had suggested: they found that they had killed more than four times as many birds as has been previously estimated.

Birds native to the US, such as the American Robin, were most at risk, and mice, shrews, voles, squirrels and rabbits were the mammals most likely to be killed.

Dr Pete Marra from the SCBI said: "Our study suggests that they are the top threat to US wildlife."

The team said that "un-owned" cats, which they classified as strays, feral cats and farm cats, were killing about three times as many animals as pet cats, but that their owners could do more to limit the impact.

I'd love to see more on their study methodology as some have questioned earlier studies.

Even if Socks isn't killing as many critters as some studies suggest, if he's an outside cat, she's still probably killing. That may have been fine and dandy back on the farm; however, if Socks is an actual house pet, you have no business letting her out that door unsupervised and uncontrolled.

Hey, if my Rover goes and kills your Socks, he's just doing what any instinctual dog does. Sorry, but that's the way it is...