Rick Brandt wrote:
On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:52:18 -0600, HeyBub wrote:
Van Chocstraw wrote:
Trouble with cats is the also go after the birds. If you hate birds
then it's ok.


Yes, they do. Leaving aside the fact that most birds are really rats
with feathers and the observation that the only birds cats manage to
get are those walking around on the ground (dumb birds), the state of
Illinois (yes, that Illinois) once tried to prevent bird slaughter by
passing a bill requiring outdoor cats to be leashed!

A few years back the BBC aired a program where cat owners retrieved
and kept (frozen) all of the birds that they could from their
free-roaming cats. Every owner was astonished at the number and
variety. Keeping in mind that the cats likely captured many others
that the owners never found out about.

The majority were song-birds and they showed footage of cats capturing
many of these both from branches and actually plucking them from the
air. You grossly underestimate cat's skills if you think they can
only capture slow birds on the ground.

You're probably right. I've seen my cats interact with Mocking birds. After
a few desultory lunges, the cats try really, really hard to ignore the pest.
It seemed to me that going after a bird was calculated as almost futile.

There was an Animal Planet show a bit back ranking the top ten feline
predators based on what they hunted. As I recall, number ten was some
obscure Indonesian cat that had only two prey: mud turtles and fungus. The
list went up through lions, cheetas, bobcats, and so on to number one. The
most ecumenical hunter of all the cats was ... wait for it ... the domestic
house cat! Yes, your ordinary kitty has over 10,000 enumerated species on
its menu, including small birds, rodents, insects, worms, snakes, small
mammals, amphibians, larger birds (like chickens), moles, spiders, and
toilet tissue.