Frightening numbers

Shewhomustbe...

Now I won't feel so crazy when I'm bringing my cats for walks on leads.

http://www.mammal.org.uk/catkills.htm

tallus

Mine is a prolific hunter one saturday in particular he killed three birds and two mice. He has also killed at least 40 wild rabbits in the surrounding area as there is building going on and they were displaced.

Shewhomustbe...

tallus wrote:

Mine is a prolific hunter one saturday in particular he killed three birds and two mice. He has also killed at least 40 wild rabbits in the surrounding area as there is building going on and they were displaced.

As also the owner of two rabbits I find that number quite unsettling and not something to be really that proud of. I have no intention of ever letting our two kittens out to run free.

tallus

Who says I was proud of anything, i was merely making a statement???????? You read way too much in to that.

vibe666

i used to have a cat that was the best hunter I've ever known.

He was a very big cat (over 2st) and we ended up putting him on a diet, but it just made him go out and get his own food. the day after the diet started, we found the remnants of a fully grown male pheasant in our garage, and he'd previously left everything from that size right down to little shrews outside the back door.

I was listening to something on a random radio station about people turning vegetarian, and they reckoned a study had been done about it, and that in the event that the whole world turned veggie, that more animals would die as a result of getting in the way of combines etc. when harvesting crops than the number of cattle etc. that die from being slaughtered for food.

not to mention that to support a vegetarian population, any current food animals would need to be culled anyway to make space for the crops.

depending on how you might feel about one animal life being as important as another, the whole thing is a bit of a catch 22 situation. which is more important, the life of a cow, or a fieldmouse?

slightly OT I know, but kinda on a similar subject.
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Gordon Gekko

In my book, blatantly the life of the field mouse, given that we breed cattle in captivity, and therefore can control absolutely the destiny of cattle in the future. If we kill a cow, we make sure to have another one standing by.

Fieldmice, and other small native mammals, as wild animals, have to take their chances against nature, predators, humans, and our artificially introduced (and grossly overpopulated) highly efficient hunting machines the domestic cat. If Felix the cat kills 4 or 5 mice in a night, its in the lap of the gods as to whether the remaining mouse population will be able to regenerate itself in the face of all of the above dangers.

Lauragoesmad

My issue is not with eating animals, it is the fact that most live stock have no quality of life and are not killed painlessly as they should be. If we believe that it is natural to eat animals, fair enough, but fish farms and battery hens and veal are not natural. Maybe if we werent such selfish life forms we would be able to find a ballance that would work but as humans we wont because we are too lazy and think ourselves too important.

Shewhomustbe...

Apologies tallus

tallus

Shewhomustbe... wrote:

Apologies tallus

not a bother shewhomustbe