Your Views for November 13

Cat containment?

This is in response to the Nov. 4 “Your Views” letter, “Solving cat problem.”

My understanding from this letter is that all cat owners should be required to sterilize and contain their cats indoors. All other cats should be adopted out for such or eradicated. This claims to be for the “benefit of residents and endangered birds.”

I adopted a homeless cat that was rescued from a park. Because he was wild, he has never wanted to be indoors. That is why I got him. I wanted an outdoor cat for rodent control to avoid rodenticide use. I have been aware of predatory birds, such as our owls, sickened from poisoned mice and rats.

My cat, Sam, has worked out great. I no longer have a rat problem. Birds are harder to catch, so Sam sticks to rats. I have chickens, but Sam never bothers them.

On occasion, before I got a cat, a large rat attacked and injured my chickens on the perch at night. I have heard rats killing birds on my roof. Rats, unlike cats, can go out on a limb to reach a bird.

Can anyone do the math here? How many native birds are saved from rats because of cats?

Then there is the claim in the letter that cats carry horrible diseases and therefore should be eliminated. Rats carry rat lungworm and leptospirosis. Is toxoplasmosis really worse than those?

I’m sure these people in the invasive species programs think rodents should be controlled with mass rodenticide poisoning spread across the land by aerial drop. It’s time for the unjust and imbalanced campaigns against “non-native” species to be stopped.

Nani Pogline

Keaau