via Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke
We love our kitty cats. 🐱
...But we need to talk about something extremely important to them both.
Much ink has been spilled regarding the ethics of letting your domestic cats outdoors or keeping them enclosed, and how healthy/unhealthy it is to let them roam.
However, we're going to focus on the perspective of what we see at our wildlife center, and the hundreds of cat-caught patients we see each year. The pictures in this post are some of our patients from this year.
"My cat never brought anything home before!"
"I always tell my cat not to hunt, but he doesn't listen!"
"My cat is a free spirit, she always meows at the door if I try to bring her inside!"
These are things we hear from outdoor cat owners who are often heartbroken to find a maimed, bleeding baby bunny or baby bird at their doorstep in the spring after they let their domestic cat roam. We gently educate this rescuer about how important it is to keep our pets contained, and then take the poor patient back for medical care.
Less than 1 in 5 patients survive the ordeal, even when we provide medical care and antibiotics to combat cats' deadly saliva. 😥 We have watched far too many wild animals take their final breaths in our hands, knowing that this could have been prevented.
If we consider ourselves "animal lovers," then we can't hold our pet cat's mental stimulation above wildlife's right to survive as nature intended. If we want to be good stewards of our planet, we owe it to our wild neighbors to not introduce invasive predators into their environment. This means trapping and adopting out stray cats (NOT re-abandoning them to the wild), keeping our cats indoors, in catios, or on leashes.
Since our pet cats are not native (like pet dogs, domesticated animals are by definition no longer wild!), the problem of feral and stray cats are a man-made issue. We owe it to our planet, our furry feline friends, and our wild neighbors to work together to protect them both! 🐦❤🐱
Update: The adult Robin in the second-to-last image did not survive their wounds. They passed, as well, a few days before this post went out. 🙁
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