just a bunch of pussies

I was shopping yesterday and noted a woman studying the ingredients on a loaf of WonderBread; there’s no need for that kind of behavior. You will read exactly zero on the WonderBread bag that will entice you buy the product.

Okay, let’s talk cats. There was a study a few weeks ago that outlined (via mounted cat-cams) how many small animals and birds cats generally kill. There’s some follow-on talk about it at Andrew Sullivan today.  (The video is pretty creepy so watch at your own risk, you don’t need it to understand the questions I have.) Is there some environmental issue with the number of birds and bunnies that cats kill every year? I’m not being cheeky, I honestly want to know – even as a somewhat environmental liberal you’d have to show me some serious facts. I’m sure Lemon kills two or three living creatures every single day – she’s like that. Do I care? No. I do wonder about a few comments in the post: first, what is an “outdoor cat apologist” exactly? My generally pet- having rule is that I don’t want any pet that is locked in a house or cage-like venue, ever. I’m much more likely to hassle people who keep their cats locked up as if they are living on the Serengeti and they fear the dingoes (I have no idea if there are dingoes on the Serengeti…). Second, what does “Still, the bird death toll could be even more seriously reduced if people stopped letting their cats roam about unsupervised,” mean? Does this person think there are cat parks out there? Or that anyone can actually supervise their roaming cat? “Hey, Henry, get your cat supervision kit on. I need you to follow Pumpkin around this afternoon for four hour and make sure he isn’t doing any, well, cat stuff.” Lastly, anyone whose advice – or solution to this massive dead bird ‘problem’ – is to keep cats locked up in a house is a moron.

“…We found that house cats will kill a wide variety of animals, including: lizards, voles, chipmunks, birds, frogs, and small snakes.” Yep. Yep. Yep. And Yep. What is a vole?

Okay, I read some of the study outline/presser and the implication is that “one in three American bird species are in decline,” because of cats. I’d like to see some more data on that fact. The University of Nebraska punditry added that feral cats were responsible for the “extinction of 33 bird species worldwide.”  Once again, there are no other factors involved in declining/extinct bird population aside from my cats? I’m not buying it.