This material posted under this heading deserves a response.

>This is really a "dreaded people problem", since heartless, irresponsible
>people are the ones abandoning the cats in the first place.
>
>dean

Dean, the fact that "heartless, irresponsible people" abandon cats (which
is indeed the case) has relatively little to do with the problem of cats
capturing large numbers of birds in urban areas. Many, many of these cats
are well-loved pets that wander from yard to yard on their daily hunts.
Not all pet cats are neutered, so they breed with one another and the
abandoned ones and contribute to an overpopulation of cats even when their
owners are reasonably responsible.

Shirley Weslander, I take it that you wrote the rest of this.

>I hope all the concerned birdwatchers are vegetarians, or they
>are all just hypocrites.

It's downright silly to call birdwatchers hypocrites because they are
concerned with ways to prevent our native fauna being eliminated or reduced
by animals that are not native. Are you saying that if they object to wild
birds being killed by cats, then they shouldn't eat meat? It seems to me
that birders' attitudes toward the killing and eating of cows, chickens,
and other animals that we keep and raise for food (I hope you realize there
wouldn't be cows or chickens otherwise) can be quite independent of how
they feel about the loss of wild animals from native ecosystems.

>I have had pet birds that I have loved and cared for, and I
>have rescued many an injured bird or duck and taken it in for
>care, but wild or stray animals must forge for food. They can
>not go to QFC to buy the dead cow or chicken that someone else
>killed for them.

It sounds as if you would be in favor of these wild and stray cats
persisting in our environment rather than some attempt being made to reduce
their numbers. Believe me, ultimately it's not that good an idea for the
cats themselves to be living in that way. They were bred to be our pets,
and that makes the most sense. It doesn't make very much sense for us to
domesticate them for human enjoyment (or cat enjoyment) and then have them
out there foraging for themselves and living like the wild animals they
most certainly are not.

>The birds have a chance, they can fly away,
>but a cat is no match for the treachery of a man made trap bated with tuna.

You're quite wrong there. Cats are just as effective predators on birds as
humans are on cats, with the diffrence being that cats are trapped alive,
and some of them are rescued, while birds caught by cats have no such
recourse. From all I can observe, cats are smarter than birds. The ones
in my yard are much better at escaping my wrath (which consists entirely of
yelling at them) than are the birds at escaping the cats' claws.

>Not only would homeless cats be caught and killed, but also much
>loved stay pets may be caught and killed. The King County Animal
>Control is not a humane society, their objective is to control. The
>more I hear about them and the EPA and other such government
>organizations I am sure of this. They really do want to decide what
>lives and what dies and in what numbers. These organizations are
>striving for control, their objectives are not humane. These animals
>have no voice but us. This is their planet too. They have the right
>to life here too.

You also sound like a person against government organizations. By bringing
the Environmental Protection Agency into question along with the county,
you are showing a form of prejudice that I think rather exceeds the
prejudice that most birders have against cats. And by saying this, I would
guess you are among the people who consider an individual animal life more
important than the sum of nature around us, like the people who want goats
to persist on islands even when they essentially wipe out the entire native
ecosystem. I guess that's a matter of opinion, but I suspect you realize
it isn't a very popular opinion on a bulletin board used by nature lovers.

> "The question is not, can they reason, nor can they talk
> but can they suffer." Jeremy Bentham

Is it your opinion that it's all right for birds to suffer but not for cats
to do so? How about the people who like having birds around their yards?
I can reason and I can talk, but I also can suffer, when I see a cat snag a
chickadee out of a shrub in my yard and realize that the cat is the
neighbor's well-fed pet who by no stretch of the imagination needs that
chickadee for food.

> "The future of mankind lies waiting for those who will
> come to understand their lives and take up their
> responsibilities to all living things." V.V. Deloria

I believe it is a responsibility to living things that motivates most
birdwatchers to object to free-roaming cats in urban areas. I think this
is a responsibility that is taken seriously, and I think you should
consider one more aspect of it. It does you no harm whatsoever if I
"control" a cat in my neighborhood, but it does me a great deal of personal
harm when that cat continues to kill the very animals that I encourage to
live in my yard. It seems to me I have more at stake here, and perhaps
more responsibility.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416