Seventy nine cats.
That’s how many felines stood in for the entirely of the UK in a 2022 study, which is the genesis for the claim that cats kill 270 million birds and small animals in that country.
Using GPS collars, owner questionnaires and samples of prey brought home by those 79 outdoor cats, a research team from the University of Reading applied data from a mix of studies dating as far back as 23 years ago, extrapolated and massaged numbers using things like “kernel density estimates” and “generalized mixed models,” and came up with that 270 million figure, which is cited routinely and credulously by UK media.
Actually, their estimate was between 140 and 270 million. An earlier study put the number at 92 million, and a 2016 study estimated UK cats kill 55 million birds and small animals. That’s a range of 215 million!
The Reading team even quotes the infamous US meta-analysis that claims domestic cats kill as many as 4 billion birds and 22.3 billion mammals a year here. That paper, as skeptics in the science community have noted, has virtually no relationship with reality, involves no original research, and relies on data from unrelated studies and surveys in which cat owners were asked to rate their pets’ hunting prowess on a point scale while imagining what the little ones get up to when they’re outside.
All of this is to say that aside from the thorough, labor-intensive and expensive D.C. Cat Count, which brought together cat lovers, birders and scientists to work cooperatively, the 2022 UK study and its counterparts in the US and Australia are exercises in pushing an agenda masquerading as honest academic research.
That’s how we get editorials like The Spectator’s “We need a cat lockdown now” by Zoe Strimpel. Though the tone isn’t tongue in cheek, I can’t imagine Strimpel dislikes cats nearly as much as she claims, and the post was probably written with wry anticipation for the click-generating fury of cat lovers indignantly sharing it on Facebook and X.
Still, it quotes the Reading study without skepticism and portrays cats as furry little wretches who abuse their human caretakers with their claws and their disdain while gleefully eating their way through endangered birds.
Cats are predators, that much we can agree on, and outdoor cats are much more likely to negatively impact local wildlife, for obvious reasons.
Likewise, I can understand the concern with cat culture in the UK, where allowing pet cats to roam outside is the norm.
But every time the media cites the above-mentioned studies, more people are given an inaccurate impression of feline ecological impact, and more lawmakers at the local and national level consider “solutions” ranging from prohibiting people from keeping pet cats, as a government commission in Scotland recently proposed, or exterminating them outright, as some Australian states and municipalities in New Zealand have tried to do.
It’s worth pointing out that there is no data, not even a single study, showing that air-dropping poisoned sausages or arbitrarily shooting cats actually has any positive impact on birds and small mammals. All it does is terrorize sentient, intelligent domestic animals who have real emotions and experience real fear and pain.
The primary drivers of declining bird and small mammal populations — including habitat loss, environmental destruction, wind turbines and glass buildings — have nothing to do with cats. We have killed off 73 percent of the planet’s wildlife since 1970 and every species of iconic megafauna — from orangutans and gorillas to tigers and pangolins — is headed toward extinction. Are domestic cats responsible for that too, or can we be adults and fess up to our role as the main antagonist here?
Strimpel actually goes even further, claiming cats don’t have real affection for their caretakers and are more like psychopaths, faking love because it gets them what they want, primarily food and shelter.
Dogs have true affection for their humans but cats do not, she additionally claims, while adding that cat people are undateable because they share qualities with the “loutish and numerous creatures” they care for.
There was a time when I would have been ambivalent about Strimpel’s attitude toward cats, if not her cavalier treatment of basic facts. But then a drool-happy, friendly tuxedo cat showed me I could interact with his species without my allergies going haywire, and a tiny gray tabby kitten became my animal cognition teacher while blindsiding me with love.
Now every time I hear about some psychopath abusing cats, or terribly misguided politicians advocating a plan to kill millions of domestic felines, I think about my Bud. I think about how he cries for his Big Buddy when he’s hurt or stuck, how he meows and trills with excitement when he experiences something new, and how he began shaking, then threw up from overwhelming relief and happiness the first time I returned from a vacation after adopting him.
He’s got a vibrant mind in his little head, with strong opinions and emotions. So does every cat on the street, in a shelter cage, and in the cross hairs of a birder or biologist playing God by “culling” or “harvesting” cats to protect another species.
Real science, not activism packaged as science, has proven that many times over in recent years. If people want to do harm to cats because they think birds and other animals will benefit, the burden of proof is on them to show not only that their methods work, but that the results could somehow justify the fear and misery they would inflict on innocent animals to achieve their goals.
Cats are obligate carnivores who don’t have a choice. We do.
Pain In The Bud 
I am of course horrified that “scientists” in my country are resposible for this junk science report as it clearly is, Bella has killed mice only and considerably less that human pest exterminators and only 2 birds ( one of which was already dead) and previous cats has much less that her so my “study” has about the same value. Any study of humans, as you point out has horrific levels of extermination without equal or anything approaching equal. The sinister and disturbing part is that these people dress this up as believable because they claim expertise, and, as it is “in-print”: it comes across as serious and credible when history has shown conclusively that destruction of cats causes mass death in humans ( the black plague for instance)
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It’s like a self-credentialing loop: biologists who study birds publish the bunk studies, which are cited as fact in media reports, which the biologists and people sympathetic to their cause then cite as proof that they’re right.
As a SPCA spokesman said in response to one of those studies, he doesn’t quarrel with the fact that cats are predators, but the numbers these studies throw out there are essentially made up.
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Read this quickly as i need to go to work. Or else. 😾Anyway, if by lockdown she means keep them inside she is correct. Want them outside? Get a catio.They sell tubes that do not cost much where you put them in gardens. Get a harness and walk them like few of my neighbors do. Ferals? The only answer i have for them is tnr. But they are still outside. My feral kills rats in garden. And so far just 2 or 3 birds in 5 years and i certainly am not happy about that.
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That’s why I think it’s wise for us to meet conservationists half way and keep them inside, at least in areas where cats have opportunities to hunt. A private back yard or a small garden is a different story.
Doing it voluntarily is better than waiting until someone successfully whips up outrage and gets a draconian law passed.
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My client have let thier cats out for couple of decades. No birds killed. Even when they had egg laying chickens thier cats were just curious. Blueberry is a lover not a fighter. Of course, they were careful and kept on eye on cats. Chickens were locked up in huge pen at night.
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It’s so much easier to make cat blaming noise than it is to battle real causes, like habitat decline and destruction. I do believe in keeping cats inside and we have a long history of making indoor cats of ferals; but that’s not always possible. I used to read the work of Sarah Hartwell, the British cat expert who wrote the Messybeast Cat Resource Archive. She did an article explaining the cultural differences between Britain and the US re: keeping cats inside. In Britain, cat advocates believe they need some outdoor experiences. Their neighborhoods are built away from main roads, so it’s safer. I can no longer find that article.
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There’s definitely a different design philosophy in UK towns and suburbs, although the cities are often just as dangerous.
I know someone from the UK who now keeps all her cats inside except for supervised time in their yard, after her first beloved cat was hit by a car. Personally I would not be able to relax if I knew Bud was out gallivanting and could be hit by a car or encounter a psychopath at any moment. I would never be able to forgive myself if something happened to him.
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Poor cats are demonized so often that people just assume all the garbage about them is true without questioning it. I am thankful there are people like you bringing common sense to this cat hate hysteria. I found this article on the subject interesting: Debunking the Myth of Feral Cats Devastating Us Songbird Populations Mitch Rezman https://windycityparrot.com/debunking-myth-feral-cats-devastating-us-songbird-populations/
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It’s a dereliction of duty on the part of journalists and others who credulously cite these studies, and go with the most extreme estimates from them, without bothering to read more than the accompanying press releases or the paper abstracts.
I hate to make generalizations because there are legitimate journalists who excel at investigative and data reporting, but so many of them don’t seem to have basic intellectual curiosity or the commitment to accuracy that requires them to actually read the details and carefully confider the claims.
It’s not on journalists to refute the claims in the birder papers, because they are not subject matter experts, but it is on them to reach out to skeptics in the science community and elsewhere and get their take.
That goes especially for situations like this, in which the numbers don’t make sense and the data is fudged to begin with. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. There is no way to start with bad or nonexistent data and end up with something resembling the truth.
And yeah, maybe the most unfortunate result of unquestioningly reporting this stuff is that politicians and “thought leaders” read it and conclude that Something Must Be Done About Cats, which is how we get Australia air-dropping poisoned sausages in an attempt to kill three million cats, and governments in Europe floating plans to ban people from keeping them as pets.
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I have never understood the visceral hatred that some people have for cats. I’m sure they have never received feline love.We do need to do better at spaying/neutering cats with access to the outside. But wholesale slaughter is not the answer.
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It’s a mystery to me why some people display their dislike/hatred of cats as morally superior. They like dogs and consider them “good” animals and dislike cats because they are “vicious brutes”. Could the fact that dogs can be obedience trained have something to do with it? Cats usually don’t respond to orders – mine don’t. Nor do most of my cats hunt. The last time a rodent entered the home only one cat pursued it and quickly ran away in terror when the mouse hopped into the air. We had to catch/release the mouse.
Both animals are hunters by nature. Through domestication dogs have become more omnivorous while cats remain obligate carnivores. Feral cats are vilified while feral dogs are largely ignored. Neither animal deserves to be persecuted. Living in the country I’ve seen quite a few feral dog packs in the area including my own property.
Just today a neighbor mentioned that he suspects a neighbor’s dog killed two calves and injured the cow. That dog’s instinct to hunt and feed will get it killed, whether by the cattle (they do attack and kill dogs, I’ve seen it) or the cattle’s owner.
The point I’m belaboring is simply this: dislike of a certain animal does not justify cruelty. Bad science and falsified numbers do not justify extermination. People who hunt animals with the excuse of restoring the balance of nature are sadly deluded at best and lying at worst.
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“People who hunt animals with the excuse of restoring the balance of nature are sadly deluded at best and lying at worst.”
Perfectly stated, and I always think of that biologist who was shooting cats in a California park and claimed, in his emails to colleagues, that he was already seeing bird populations recover days after he went on a cat killing spree, as if birds are video game NPCs that magically respawn once some condition is met in the underlying code.
People like that don’t live in reality and shouldn’t be making any decisions about life or death for animals. Even if there was evidence that shooting or poisoning one species benefits another — and again, no such studies exist — that still doesn’t grant us license to slaughter animals en masse, especially when we are unwilling to confront our own behaviors that drive species extinction.
As for the issue of moral superiority, I’m glad you brought that up because I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as it pertains to geopolitics, domestic policy and our infantile culture wars.
The same hypocrisy we’re guilty of in those areas rears its ugly head in the way we prioritize the lives of non-human animal species. Our schools do an abysmal job of teaching foundational science in general, but especially in teaching children that we are animals. Upjumped animals with a greater capacity for abstract thought, sure, but still animals.
As Christopher Hitchens often pointed out, we are recognizably primates, whether or not that fact is accepted by the “I ain’t descended from no monkey” set.
But if we were better educated and more people understood we are animals, perhaps more of us would understand that other animals have subjective experiences, consciousness and feelings. It becomes much more difficult to advocate things like cat culling, pig thumping, battery cages and experiments on animals when people understand the suffering we inflict on innocent creatures.
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