General News
21 February, 2025
Barry's Corner
It seems to me misguided to go to the trouble of desexing a cat but then take it home to let it continue its work as a complex wildlife-killing machine.
Even though a cat is desexed it will carry on eating our biodiversity by the truckload.
The animal does not stop eating because it cannot breed.
Stopping the breeding process is a fine thing but it does not get to the nub of the problem: the serious loss and journey towards extinction for many of our species.
People tell me all the time that their cat is innocent of wildlife killing because it has a collar
with a bell, or it is kept inside the house, or is well fed and does not need to hunt, or, it has been desexed and does not wander – all admirable arguments but in reality they don’t wash.
Even cats that are secured are granted some time outside where they are exposed to
small wrens, useful insect-eating lizards and small mammals such as the fat-tailed dunnart,
the squirrel glider, bats and antechinus.
These are all animals at great risk from killer cats.
A cat does not need training to knock down small birds; this is in its DNA so a cat cannot help
itself.
The cat has a lovely time stalking the prey, catching it and disabling it and then playing with the victim until it dies of fright.
Then the carcass is often left to rot away.
Cats are prowling around our towns, bush areas, parks and farm sheds always on the lookout for a meal and keeping out of sight of prying human eyes.
We have no idea of the number of cats roaming around but the estimate is staggering.
Also staggering is the number of eaten wildlife, in the hundreds of thousands.
This is depleting the biodiversity of valuable species and breeding numbers.
With the large fires we've seen in the region taking such great slabs of habitat it's not smart to have cats intertwined with any destructive force.
We can do better.
We need a new focus on cleaning up cat numbers, along with loss of vegetation and habitat.
We cannot carry on like this or we really will have a silent spring.