Community Topic:
Pets: Pets
My New Cat Is Eating Birds!
Greetings, cat lovers...looking for some advice. I just "adopted" a little stray cat that kept coming to my yard. He's a male, neutered, probably a few months old. He is obsessed with my bird feeder. This was cute at first, until he started to get good at attacking and ambushing the birds that landed on it. He leaps up, grabs onto the bottom of the feeder, and snatches birds right off of it. Most of the time they get away, but yesterday he caught one and I had to "rescue" it by grabbing him, and the bird flew off. Unfortunately, later in the evening he came prancing onto the porch with a very dead sparrow in his mouth.
I know stalking and killing little animals is cats' instinct and they can't help it -- and actually, I'd be happy if he killed some mice or moles, because we have problems with both living out in the country. I just don't want our cat to be making a dent in the local bird population, you know? Plus I feel kind of guilty that I'm attracting the birds with the feeder and then he is killing them. We love sitting on our porch and watching the birds, and we also love the little cat. Not sure what to do. Maybe squirt him with water while he's in the act of stalking?
Any advice from cat (and bird) lovers would be much appreciated. Thanks! :)
Well, he runs away when we squirt him and hides out till he dries off, but then he's back to his old "battle station" as soon as our backs are turned. So far he has only killed the one bird (since I've only seen the one body, which he keeps hiding when I try to find it and throw it in the garbage!). In the grander scheme of things, one bird doesn't seem like such a big deal. We were concerned that the birds would quit coming to the feeder if the cat was always around, but there are still plenty of bird visitors, and the cat takes frequent breaks to nap for a few hours. :)
The water squirt sounds like a good idea. After all, you put up the feeder to feed the birds, not your cat.
That being said, just remember, stalking prey in the form of birds is in the nature of a cat and while we might find it horrifying, that's just what cats do.
Good luck and let us know how it goes with the squirt gun!
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Just an update -- both the feline and the humans have had to work on this issue. The kitty has several more "kills" to his credit, but we are trying to accept this as natural cat behavior -- though we are still squirting him with the water gun when we see him stalking, and he knows the sound of the squirt gun and runs when he hears us pumping air into it, so he usually escapes undrenched. The good news is that he is not quite as obsessed with the feeder as he was when he first discovered it. I am hoping and praying that he will become obsessed with the moles in our yard instead, because they are doing a lot of damage to the garden!