watervole | Room 101 meme

Room 101-f
As lifted from <[info]>melston and <[info]>nisaba and <[info]>swisstone by

dougs, where I saw it.

For those that haven't seen the UK TV show: Select just three things that the world (or just you)
would be better off without. Dump them into Room 101 and they will be eradicated. Your readers
must then try to persuade you that you're being unreasonable and that there might be unforeseen
consequences if your choices were allowed.

If you do this meme - increment the letter in the title so that 'Room 101-a' becomes 'Room 101-b', and
so on. Copy and paste the above text into your own journal.

People who believe their cats never catch birds

I love cats as individuals. As a species, I've come to really dislike them, or rather their owners. Cats, on average, kill 30 small mammals and birds per year. That's an enormous toll on wildlife, especially given the density of cats in the average housing estate.

Most owners (apart from those who have indoor cats) have a touching, but misplaced faith in their beloved moggies. Few bother with bells (which reduce kills by around 30% and almost none use sonic collars (which reduce kills by a further 10%)

Aviation fuel

There is an international agreement forbidding tax on aviation fuel. The net result is effectively an artificial subsidy for the least environmentally friendly form of transport.

TV Advertising

TV advertising drives much of our consumer culture. It encourages greed, lack of responsibility (ads for endless easy credit) and encourages people to spend money on 'food' with close to zero nutritional value. It substitutes the sound-bite for genuine information.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

What are sonic collars? I've never heard of them, and we had a cat when I was a kid.

We have a huge amount of birdlife in the trees around our house, and our cats never catch any and aren't interested in doing so. Of course this doesn't mean other cats don't.

I believe that number of trees in a city contributes hugely to birdlife (we don't have small native mammals here). We have lots here and even have a morepork we hear at night (not common in a city), and hundreds of other native birds.

Oh, and flying is the only way I can leave this place. I wish it were otherwise, but even if it were readily available to ordinary people, a boat trip would take days to Australia or Fiji and weeks to Europe. It would be fun though if I had the time and money.

I'm totally with you on TV ads though. We record everything to TiVo and zap the bastards; the only thing we watch live is cricket.

Most owners (apart from those who have indoor cats) have a touching, but misplaced faith in their beloved moggies. Few bother with bells (which reduce kills by around 30% and almost none use sonic collars (which reduce kills by a further 10%)

If I had a cat, I wouldn't put a collar on it. Too many cats end up being strangled by collars snagged on branches.

As far as wildlife goes, cats are certainly a problem. Unlike natural predators, their numbers aren't regulated by the availability of prey. (I'm talking about pet cats, of course, not feral ones.) The only mitigation is that their distribution means that they're not normally in a position to prey on threatened species - anything commensal with human beings isn't likely to be rare.

All you can be sure of is that your cats don't bring home anything that they catch. Just becasue you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Isn't their fault - they're hunters by nature. They were kept to kill rats and mice until only a generation ago. HOw are they to know that the rules are changing.

I think they emit some kind of sound, but I don't know the details - I've only seen the figures on how effective they are.

Further, if you live in a country to which cats are native, the other native species have had time to evolve suitable responses for escaping feline predators: it's a different situation for people who live in countries to which cats are not native.

I can't offhand think of a large landmass bar Aus/NZ (and Antarctica, of course) that does not have native cat species. Feral cats are a significant threat to some seabird populations on oceanic islands.

But the evolution of escape responses isn't really the problem. Wild cats hunt to survive, so their population is controlled by the availability of prey. The ecosystem reaches a point of dynamic equilibrium.

Domestic cats, by contrast, have their food offered to them on a plate (literally!) and their numbers are regulated only by the popularity of cats as a domestic pet. (Road casualties, poisonings etc only lead to a lost pet being replaced.) They can therefore predate with impunity. Given enough cats (which there aren't, as it happens)they could wipe out prey species to the verge of extinction. Wild cats wouldn't get anywhere near doing so.

They used to bring home birds and lizards in their first couple of years (mostly live and subsequently rescued), but haven't for years.

I'd like to see cat numbers controlled though, like dogs. Strays and ferals must have to kill or starve.

I've never understood the logic of this - I can believe that it's been shown to be so, though I'd prefer to read the study that shows it - but why should a well-fed cat with a fairly small home territory be more of a threat to the species it predates on than a feral cat, hunting for food?

I always knew my cats were killing birds, mice and, on at least one occasion, a baby rabbit. I remember waking up one night to the sound of crunching bones as Thomas bit a mouse's head off. And it was upsetting, except for the incident when my mother was spending her birthday alone for the first time in her life, because my father had died and I was at university, and when she opened the front door she found a nice little ex-mouse neatly laid out on the mat, and thought "How kind!" It just wasn't upsetting enough for us to want to be parted from our cats. The only reason I don't have one now is that I'm continually going away for a couple of days, and I haven't managed to infiltrate the neighbours' cat-feeding rotas yet. [Hopefully] Would a cat kill the wretched squirrels?

Cats are all individuals, with different preferences of prey. We've got four- Mursya almost exclusively takes mice and rodents; Katya is basically retired and become an indoor cat; B'Elanna most likes to have a go at other cats, dogs, or people; Seven is a devil for birds. (worse, she seems to be on a quest to try one of everything, including goldcrests and mistle-thrush).

We did have a bell on her - it made no difference. She tends to climb up into the tree of a neighbour who's got bird feeders out on it, and drop on our feathered friends from higher branches above, where they least expect it!

Aviation fuel: The lack of tax on it is convenient for conventions paying for guests to fly in...

TV ads: I think I'd be more specific in that I most hate the fact that most ads now seem to be either for loans (I used to like Countdown but now want to strangle Vorderman on sight) or to encourage you to sue people because you were too stupid to look where you were going. Actual intelligent ads for real products I don't mind - i really like the current Grolsch ads, though I may be biased on account of it being my favourite beer anyway...

I don't have reference to any study, but it's a straightforward extrapolation from basic ecological principles. The population of a predator is regulated by the availability of prey, which is why predators tend to be rare.

Domestic cats are predators, but not reliant on catching prey. Nevertheless, they still hunt, and what's more they're in better shape to hunt successfully. At least sometimes - some moggies are so fat they'd have trouble catching an unusually lethargic toad.

I don't know if domestic cats have a smaller hunting range than wild ones. Probably they do, but that would be in part because of the higher density of cats per square mile than there would be in the wild. More cats = more hunting = more prey taken.

Room 101 meme

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