Bird protection and cat prison: A heart for the killer hangover

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Cat with captured bird: simply too little awareness

Photo: Pavol Klimek / iStockphoto / Getty Images

An acquaintance of mine recently posted a very shocked report that free-roaming cats in Germany kill up to 200 million birds every year.

In the USA it is said to be up to 3.7 billion.

Huge numbers at first glance.

I was a little surprised that the streets of our villages and suburbs are not paved with corpses and I can still walk barefoot and without contact with the corpses from the house to the compost heap.

Usually.

The birds on our property are not getting any fewer, on the contrary.

They swing fat and happy on bulging feeding nets and poop on my car roof.

From time to time they look pityingly at my cat, who is sitting behind the kitchen window and dreams of biting the throat of a sparrow.

The topic of cat quarantine has been on everyone's lips since the city of Walldorf in the Rhein-Neckar district imposed a ban on free-roaming cats during the breeding season of the crested lark, which is threatened with extinction.

So for five months a year.

My colleague already electrified this topic in her garden column.

She was more pro-bird.

In our village there are about ten cats that sometimes fight each other so hard that one or the other even voluntarily gives up their evening walk to avoid meeting the killer tomcat from house number 12.

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I like that because our cat got a piece of his ear bitten off in one of those fights, which means he now looks like Buck, the underworld weasel from Ice Age.

Of course, I could have gone to my neighbor and forced her to do anti-aggression training with the cat coach with her snotty cattle.

Including temporary quarantine until the ear has healed.

But Juli's voluntary abstinence from Stromer makes that obsolete.

And our second cat hasn't learned how to kill yet, or just not interested in it, who knows.

That's good for the poor birdies on our property, you might think.

But somehow the authentic awareness is missing, the cats just act out of instinct, it's not the same.

Juli doesn't lie in the grass in the sun and think: "Okay, I'll let this delicious robin pass by and I'd rather wait for a mouse, otherwise there will be warning forefingers and worried faces again.

And I don't even look at all the crested larks brooding in fear of death in our garden.

Just read that it's punishable by five months in prison.«

He might also consider going vegan, or warning his victims with a friendly growl before jumping.

Because of equal opportunities.

He should also consult Article 104 of the Basic Law more often and refrain from torturing his prey by nibbling on it and whirling it through the air for hours.

But no.

My hangover is totally lacking in wokeness.

That's why he should be locked away.

Or at least wear a bell.

Or a colorful ruff or bib.

I could also stuff him with canned food or play for an hour before he goes out - a full stomach doesn't like chasing and after the ballgame it's better to rest in the apple tree.

Or I can buy him one of those high-tech collars that sense when he goes into hunt mode and send out a nasty signal.

I could just get rid of my hangover.

But I'm an old, frail woman and don't want to be without the company of my cats.

They regulate my circulation by purring, pimp my immune response and supposedly even prevent depression.

But just as I find caged birds perverse, I find it hard to get used to the idea of ​​cats that are supposed to be roaming free being caged up for months.

You scent Darwinism?

Ignorance?

rule refusal?

yes possible

Maybe it's old age.

I'm a bird killer denier now, all radiation, QAnon-esque.

Imagine vampiric bloodsucking everywhere, people secretly stalking the crested lark and biting its throat to stay young forever and to discredit the common house cat.

In Hamburg, the crested lark has not been seen at all since 2007.

And that's bad.

But is there no more sensible measure than cat jail?

Breeding programs or something like that?

That seems to work quite well with this species, I read.

And start counting.

Figures on bird murders in Germany are naturally difficult to collect and not easy to interpret.

Domestic cats are not registered like dogs, not every massacred bird is found, and there are also strays that hunt.

There are currently around 16.7 million cats living in Germany, 70 percent of which are said to be outside regularly, i.e. almost 11.7 million.

With 200 million dead birds a year, that would mean more than 17 bird kills per free roamer per year.

In total, an estimated 400 million individuals live in Germany after the breeding season.

So is every second dead bird attributed to cats?

Not even NABU experts believe that.

According to ornithologists, the most common victims of the »killer cats« are blackbirds, house sparrows and great tits.

All three non-endangered species that are represented in Germany with around 32.5 million breeding pairs.

Young birds as well as sick and weak specimens are hunted in particular.

My hangover makes no difference.

The other day I was startled by a strange noise in my home office.

A bit like flapping a bat's wings.

When I got up, I saw an impressive trail of blood leading from the kitchen into the living room.

And then my cat with a blackbird under its paw.

A chill ran down my spine and I thought: »Oh July, you should have stayed at home.

I survived the Corona lockdown too.«