Essay On Feral Cats

Biben (1979) showed that hunger was not needed for killing, but the chance of a kill increased with hunger. cats are often provided with extra food and have access to reliable human food waste, and can avoid limited availability of prey (Sims et al. 2008). Cats can reach numbers in some habitats, such as urban environments, well in above of what could ever be achieved naturally (Baker et al. 2010). Woods et al. (2003), postulated that the approximate 9 million cats in Great Britain show a twenty fold increase in what could naturally be achieved by populations of native predators.

With the quickly growing human population, which inhabits more and more areas on the planet, cats are found on all continents and on many islands, with few environmental factors restricting their dispersal. Cats are now estimated to kill between 1.1 and 4.2 billion birds

Cats are usually perceived by people as having an independent trait that doesn’t exist in dogs (Clancy et al, 2003). Creating the public perception that it is more humane for stray or feral cats to be left outdoors than it is to destroy them (Chu & Anderson, 2007). The differences in attitudes towards cat control can vary between cat ownership status and profession. Support for lethal control measures are generally more accepted for feral cats than for strays and welfare considerations decline from highest for domesticated cats to lowest for feral (Farnworth et al, 2011). Grayson et al. (2002) studied attitudes in relation to legislative options and found notable age and gender effects, with older people more likely to support restrictive laws such as licensing and sterilization. Finkler & Terkel (2012) found substantial socio-economic differences in attitudes and behaviour towards cats. Influences linked to gender, age, income level and education impacting on how cats were