Sorry David. My original post was not a reflection on the pampered and
"supervised" elite of the pedigree trade. It was about domestic and
feral cats as a whole. The following study deals only with domestic cats
and the .92 million animals (27 million birds) they brought home over a
five month period in Britain alone.
http://www.mammal.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=256&Itemid=289Abstract
Want something from the US? Here is a study from the American Bird
Conservancy.
http://www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/cats/materials/predation.pdf
Jim
On 7/25/2012 10:58 AM, Avocet wrote:
>
> > In many places, domestic and feral cats are indeed the sources of
> > "uncontrolled predation."
>
> As a former pedigree cat breeder asd show, I must defend the keeping
> of domestic pet cats. Feral and semi-feral cats are another matter and
> they don't have a pleasant life and have a huge mortality rate.
>
> One of the Cat Fancy's slogans s "every kitten a wanted kitten." We
> cat fanciers look after our cats and often keep them indoors with the
> breeding cats. We most certainly don't put them out at night.
>
> I still have five "favourites and failures" who go outside in acres of
> woodland if they want to but "under supervision". When they were
> younger, they brought in occasional captures but in almost all cases
> these were either already dead or "nature's failures". With a long
> gone favourite cat, she would bring me live and dead specimens with an
> appropriate call.
>
> Unneutered cats running wild can be a menace, but with few exceptions,
> even these do little more than clearing up nature's failures. Any
> species having, say, 5 young a year will have an average survival rate
> of 2 out of 7 or only 28%.
>
> It's called the survival of the fittest, and releasing pheasant poults
> into that environment without some losses is not feasable, buzzards or
> no buzzards. Almost all of the other pheasants are going to die by
> gunfire anyway, and there is a lot of that in this valley - and it is
> another noise source in my recordings but that is a different thread,
> :-).
>
> David
>
> David Brinicombe
> North Devon, UK
> Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
>
>
--
Jim Lee --- Bamboo Turtle Studio
Website: http://www.bambooturtle.us
Blog: http://bambooturtle.blogspot.com/
Rock Nest Monster:http://www.bambooturtle.us/Rock_Nest_Monster.html
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