#183 Here kitty kitty
Been a while since we met, eh? I am writing today about pets. Specifically those of the feline variety. Yes, cats. Those soft cuddle bunnies who are always underfoot but still surprisingly easy to get along with.
A little over 10 years ago, we got our first cat. Since then, we’ve got four more. Two of these five are still with us. The other three, unfortunately, passed on to kitten heaven, two to illness and one because he decided he was Superman.
But don’t worry, today’s post is not about our pets. I know other people’s pets are never as interesting and endearing as your own.
Today’s post instead is about cats in general. Beginning with the question about whether ‘cats’ is really the appropriate name for them. Because they are vicious little murder machines.
No, really. Cats have been responsible for the extinction of 33 species worldwide so far, the Stephens Island wren, the crescent nail tail wallaby, and the desert bandicoot among them. Next on the feline list for total annihilation is the fossa, a carnivorous mammal unique to Madagascar. The fossa has a whole host of threats, including climate change and snakes but none more so than fucking cats. These cats even hunt the snakes slithering around the island.
In Australia, where else, a cat – one cat – got into an aviary holding the endangered orange-bellied parrot. Surprisingly only two birds died, not even because the cat got them but because they got so scared that they flew into the walls of the aviary. Nevertheless, these two deaths brought down the global population of these birds by 2.5%.
Also, in Australia, cats are responsible for killing 450 million native mammalseach year, threatening the survival of 124 species.
A study from 2013 estimates that cats kill up to 4 billion birds and 22 billion mammals every year.
And when cats can’t directly kill another species, they mate it into extinction or as five panthers discovered in Florida, cats killed them by giving them feline leukaemia.
If you do have cats, I suggest you be extra nice to them and give them a treat or two. Or twenty. And always sleep with one eye open.
Baaa.
PS: Know someone looking for pets to adopt? Forward this to them. Did I mention we have two cats?