• Overview
• Reasons we allow our cats to roam free
• Pet owners
• Feral Cat Rescuers
• The Killing Doesn’t Stop when the Cat is Dead
• AWARE Can Help
• Emergency Care
• Cat Enclosures

Overview

Our planet’s wildlife belongs to you and me.  It is our responsibility to both protect and provide for them.

• Humans are the #1 predator of wildlife.  We kill them with our cars, traps, poisons, weapons, habitat destruction, water pollution, etc. 
• The #2 predator is literally unleashed by humans on wildlife populations: the domestic cat.

If your neighbor’s pet came into your yard and killed one of your animals, you would justifiably be upset.  This happens every day and probably in your yard.

Each free-roaming cat kills between 200 and 400 wild animals every year.  These wild animals are yours to protect and enjoy.  

Many of these cats belong to you or your neighbor.  Others are feral cats being trapped/neutered and released by well-meaning but uninformed cat lovers.  All of these unleashed free-roaming cats are killers, and we are allowing them to devastate our wildlife.  This is not acceptable.

Cats are the only domestic pet that we allow to roam free in North America. We don’t even allow horses or cattle to roam free without providing an enclosure to protect them.

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Reasons we allow cats to roam free

1. We have been brought up to believe that cats must be free to catch bugs and small animals in order to be happy.

• This argument could be made for any domestic animal.  Nevertheless, we do not allow any other domestic animal to have this same freedom because we are concerned for their safety.

2. We know that cats are pretty self-sufficient.  If left to their own devices, they will feed, walk and entertain themselves and then come home.  How convenient for us.

• Although this is true, we also choose to accept this because we are uninformed, lazy, or irresponsible pet owners. 
  

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Pet Owners

As pet owners, it is our responsibility to provide safe haven for our pets and that includes protecting them from being:

• run over,
• poisoned,
• getting into fights with others,
• being stolen,
• contracting a disease,
• being killed by others, or
• being a threat to others.

We allow our free-roaming cats to be exposed to all of these, and when something happens to them, we blame it on the car, the dog or the coyote.  Not ourselves.

It is our fault, and we need to take responsibility for the fate of our cats.  We need to stop blaming other factors for our laziness and irresponsibility.

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Feral Cat Rescuers

Well-meaning cat rescuers who trap, spay/neuter and release feral cats are stopping short of completing the process.

• It is wonderful that they care so much for these unwanted animals that they go to the trouble to provide them with care and birth control. 

BUT if these rescuers think the process through and truly care about saving lives, they would see that they are promoting the needless killing of hundreds of thousands of wild animals by re-releasing these cats into the wild.

These cats are not a part of the natural order of things and should not be allowed to kill our wildlife.  Feral cats need to be caught, taken to shelters and adopted. 

• If they are unable to be adopted, they need to go to a sanctuary.
• If no one can find the money to create sanctuaries, the remaining alternative is euthanasia.

Unleashing them to kill our wildlife is not acceptable.

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Killing Doesn’t Stop when the Cat is Dead

Cat lovers who allow their animals to roam free and kill wildlife don’t care about their cat or our wildlife.

• First, the owner's cat kills hundreds of wild animals each year. 
• When the cat is killed by a coyote or a fox, the irresponsible pet owner blames the coyote or fox.
• This causes a vigilante mentality within the neighborhood to rid the area of coyote and fox.
• As a result, even more wild animals die.
  

The coyote and fox are only doing what nature intended and should not be blamed.

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AWARE Can Help

Virtually every scientific study done on coyote and fox trapping has concluded that trapping only serves to increase the population of animals because the remaining members of the species competitively over breed to fill the gap that is created by trapping.

Protect your cat and our wildlife, while at the same time, extending your cat's life expectancy by 30%.  To do this, simply provide the same safeguards that you would for any other domestic pet.

• Construct an enclosure for your cat that will allow it to spend its entire life outside without facing the dangers that await. 
  
• Then, attach the enclosure to your house with an overhead wire tunnel through a cat door into the house window. This same enclosure will allow your cat to enjoy the wildlife around us without being able to kill for fun.

Aware recommends that homeowners trap feral and free-roaming cats and take them to the local human society or animal control agency in your area.  If your neighbor has free-roaming cats, please provide them with this article and let them know that you are taking the proactive measure of trapping.

For more information:

• American Bird Conservancy's Cat Indoor Campaign
• Recommended Cat Enclosures

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Emergency Care

Any small animal attacked by a cat likely has a puncture or scratch wound.  That wound  no matter how minor, represents sure death to the animal if it is not put on strong antibiotics in the first 6 to 8 hours.  The bacteria in a cat's mouth is deadly poison to small animals.

• If you rescue an animal from a cat, please assume that it has a wound under the fur or feathers and find a rehabilitator who can treat the animal with the proper medications.
• DO NOT release the animal back to the wild to suffer and die a slow painful death.

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We hope this article has been informative and gives you food for thought.

We must first AGREE TO PRESERVE the earth if we hope to LIVE TO DISAGREE on its use.