FERAL CATS
How I used to love to drive the rural roads in the spring and summer back in the 40s and 50s, because the number of birds was amazing, at least to think back compared to today. When you'd stop and listen, you'd hear all kinds of bird songs, meadowlarks calling, jays squawking, the song of a robin. It was a natural symphony of sound. Today it is missing.

Don't you ever wonder just how much cats have contributed to the decline in the number of song-birds, toads, frogs, lizards, newts, garter snakes and other reptiles?

My aunt had a cat that was a real hunter. This was back in the late 30s, in Hamden, Connecticut, when it was really just a small rural town. The cat would catch, kill and then bring back an average of three or four snakes a day, lining them up on the back porch. It was proud of what it was doing, it seemed, because it would then sit and toy with the dead snakes or smaller reptiles, then arch its' back amd purr when anyone came along.

It was out hunting first thing in the morning until the sun went down, it seemed.

Over the years I've rescued baby birds, just learning to fly, from cats. There was a study done in England on the matter, and some cats in the films made during the study were shown to be damned good hunters, as good or better than the one my aunt had so many years ago. The raises the question: Do cats belong in the wild, or even outdoors? Certainly they have an effect on the bird population, and perhaps on the numbers of endangered small animals as well.

In a nearby National Park people are trapping feral cats, neutering them, and then returning them to the wild. How many baby ducks are they killing? Rabbits? Possums? Small lizards? Certainly they're not native to the park and one wonders, once they're caught, should they be turned loose in the park again?

If the U.S. government can spend a million or two on a study of the effect of gases on the environment from buffalo farts (true), how about studying the damage done by feral or loose family cats?

---