Are Cats Bad for the Environment?

Are Cats Bad for the Environment?

By Donal on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 1:34pm |

A little black cat lives in the crawl space under my house. Some weeks I see him every day, darting back into his burrow as I pull into the driveway. Then he'll disappear for weeks at a time, and just when I'm sure that he's found cushier digs, he comes back, like the cat in the old children's song. He's not much of a charmer—skinny, mangy, limping, and so feral that he bolts at the mere sight of people. But I can't help feeling sorry for him, so a few months ago I began leaving out cat food. I congratulated myself on this great solution: He'd get a square meal and maybe keep the mice away, too. But when I told an ecologist I know, she was horrified. "Basically," she said, "you're subsidizing a killer."

[The opposite of cat-blogging]

URL:

http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/06/cats-tnr-birds-feral