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Podcast Episode Summary: What Are We Gonna Do About All These Cats?
Episode Overview In this episode of *Search Engine*, host PJ Vogt explores the contentious debate surrounding domestic cats as an invasive species and their impact on wildlife, particularly birds. The discussion features perspectives from ecologists, cat advocates, and a unique voice from a young bird enthusiast, offering a multifaceted look at the ongoing dilemma of how society should manage feral and outdoor cats.
Key Themes and Discussions
- The Cat Conundrum
- Invasive Species Debate: Cats have been classified as an invasive species by various scientific authorities, including the Polish Academy of Sciences. The episode highlights the environmental consequences of free-roaming cats, including their threat to bird populations.
- Political and Societal Backlash: Various regions, including Iceland and New Zealand, have implemented extreme measures against outdoor cats, such as curfews, outright bans, and hunting competitions, leading to controversy and public debate.
- Perspectives from Ecologists
- Dr. Peter Mara's Insights:
- History of Domestication: Cats were domesticated approximately 10,000 years ago alongside human agricultural practices, which inadvertently provided a food source through rodent populations.
- Comparative Assessment: Dr. Mara compares the domestication of cats and dogs, emphasizing that cats have not undergone the same level of selective breeding and therefore retain more wild characteristics.
- Impact on Bird Populations: Citing historical research and modern studies, Dr. Mara estimates that cats kill between 1.3 billion and 4 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone.
- Cat Advocates' Response
- Alley Cat Allies: A prominent organization advocating for cat rights, founded in 1990, argues that outdoor cats have a right to exist and promotes practices like Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) to manage feral populations humanely.
- Conflict with Ecologists: Advocates challenge the validity of studies presented by ecologists, asserting that many claims about the negative impact of cats on wildlife are exaggerated and misleading.
- The Polarization of the Debate
- Death Threats and Hostility: Dr. Mara and other ecologists have faced backlash, including threats, for presenting evidence about the ecological damages caused by cats. This highlights the emotional tensions surrounding the issue.
- Different Perceptions of Wildlife Impact: The conversation reflects broader societal attitudes towards animals, with cats often perceived as beloved pets while birds remain less relatable to the general public.
- A Middle Ground Perspective
- Calden, the Young Bird Enthusiast: The episode introduces Calden, a passionate 11-year-old who has both pet cats and a love for birds. He suggests practical solutions like providing bells on cat collars to help protect birds while maintaining a balance between the rights of both species.
- Future Approaches: Dr. Mara and Calden discuss innovative solutions like “catios” (cat patios) that allow cats to enjoy the outdoors without posing a threat to wildlife.
Conclusion The episode concludes with a call for societal change regarding the management of outdoor cats. It emphasizes the need for compassion and practical solutions that respect both the rights of animals and the integrity of ecosystems. The ongoing debate continues to challenge individuals and communities to reconsider their relationship with cats and wildlife.
Key Takeaways
- Ecological Responsibility: There is a pressing need to address the ecological impact of cats while also considering humane treatment options.
- Community Engagement: Solutions will require thoughtful dialogue and collaboration between cat advocates and wildlife conservationists.
- Education and Awareness: Raising awareness about the implications of allowing cats to roam free can foster better practices among pet owners.
Listen To hear the full discussion and insights, listen to the episode on your preferred podcast platform.
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This structured overview provides a detailed summary of the episode while highlighting the main arguments and perspectives discussed throughout the podcast.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28Welcome to Search Engine, I'm PJ Vogt. The feel is completely different. They're supple, lightweight, and with four-way stretch, they move the way you do. It's the kind of denim you forget you're wearing, but other people notice in the best way. Whether it's a casual day working from home, running around the city, or grabbing dinner at night, these jeans just fit the rhythm of everyday life. And because they're crafted with premium materials and thoughtful details, they don't just work for today, they're made to last. You've got options too. The Asher in Doheny and the Brixton in Nod, two styles you'll keep reaching for when you want to strike that balance of comfort and style.
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1:40I recently learned that the Polish Academy of Sciences has declared that cats are an invasive alien species. Invasive species are foreign species who are introduced to an ecosystem, and rather than benignly adapting to it, cause damage and disruption. The Burmese pythons who terrorize the Florida Everglades. The feral hogs who wreak havoc through Texas. But there was something strange about hearing that cats had been added to the ranks. It wasn't just Polish scientists making that determination, though. Globally, there appears to be some sort of cat backlash brewing. It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your cat is?
2:17In Iceland, cats have been put under curfew. One city has imposed an outright ban on outdoor cats. Controversy has erupted in Canterbury over a children's hunting competition. In New Zealand, a contest was announced where children would compete for a cash prize for killing feral cats. Hunters under 14 are being offered$250 for whoever can kill the most feral cats. Although the contest was shut down in the face of not terribly surprising criticism. Once you start paying attention, though, this conversation about cats, it seems to be happening everywhere. There is a cat problem in southeast Memphis.
2:52Feral cats are overrunning one neighborhood in Danie Beach, the irate home of tonight. A cat spot in Cherokee County, where neighbors are seeing not one, not two. People living in a central Bakersfield neighborhood are calling it a stray cat crisis. And 23 ABC's John Venomis. Across the country, there's a growing recognition that cats are a problem for the ecosystems in which they find themselves. But nobody seems sure what to do about it. So this week on Search Engine, we're asking a question that has begun to bother us. What are we going to do about all these cats? And we're going to start with a person who's been wrestling with this question for years.
3:27Dr. Peter Mara, Dean of the Earth Commons, Georgetown University's Institute for Environment and Sustainability. And the co-author of the book, Cat Wars, The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer, which is a very good subtitle. Should I call you Peter, Dr. Mara? What's your preferred? Dr. Dean. I'm a new dean, so you got to call me Dean. I'm just kidding. I am a new dean, but I like Pete. I hate when the students call me professor here, I said, my name's Pete. My name's not professor, and I don't want to be called doctor or dean. It's like, call me Pete. Okay. I much prefer that. And what is your relationship as a human being?
4:05What is your relationship to cats? I've owned a cat. I've owned an indoor cat. Its name was Tookus. I had Tookus when I was in college. We adopted it from a shelter. I've never owned a cat since then, and I've got nothing against cats. I'm an ecologist, and I love animals. I'm an animal advocate. You say this like a person who perhaps has been accused of not being an animal advocate. Oh, yeah, 100%. 100%.
4:33Perhaps you can detect a facade of tension here. Pete has, in fact, been accused of not being an animal advocate. Accusations like this are surfacing because there's an underlying war going on here. One of those small but hot wars that exist on the fringes of American life. A highly polarized debate that has its origins in a relationship that began a hundred centuries ago.
5:06so just to even go before the origin of the problem like can you just tell me like how did the wild cats become house cats like how did that happen so uh as the story goes and it really is just a hypothesis. Cats were domesticated around 10 ,000 years ago, and they were domesticated, it's thought, somewhere in a place called the Fertile Crescent, which is sort of like around Egypt and that area. And 10 ,000 years ago was about the same time when we were building houses, starting to live in structures, starting to store grains and water. And when you start to create new ecosystems, in this case, human ecosystems, you start to attract other organisms like mice and birds that are attracted to that stored food and to that stored water.
5:57There are wild cats in those same areas that started to come into those areas because of food. It's not clear if they were captured and then bred or if they were just sort of slowly domesticated over time, but over, you know, many, many generations, cats eventually became domesticated into pets. What is the difference, do you know, between sort of, cats and dogs to me feel like they are at different levels of domestication. Like, is that true or is that even an answerable question? Oh, it is. So dogs have been domesticated, it's estimated, 40 ,000 years ago, and cats were domesticated around 10 ,000 years ago.
6:38And in fact, when you look at the number of breeds of dogs versus the number of breeds of cats, there are a lot more dog breeds than there are cat breeds, just because of the amount of time that people have had to domesticate and breed different types of dogs. I should probably tell you something about myself, which is just, I've always had dogs. I've never had a cat. I have a severe cat allergy. I did once try to get my hands on an experimental cat allergy vaccine. Story for another time. But it didn't work out, and I've never had a cat as a pet. I appreciate cats. I like how they seem not completely tameable.
7:13sometimes even a little majestic. I actually asked Pete about this. The vibe I get, even around domesticated house cats, is just like, they seem to have a, they just seem half wild. They seem to have a less subservient relationship to the humans that they live with than the miniature golden noodle that I spend my life with. Like, he just seems to have, the connection between him and a wolf just feels much further to me. Absolutely. And that independence that that cat brings to people's lives is in some ways what attracts people to them because they are actually seeing a certain type of behavior in that animal that they almost would see in the wild.
7:50When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, there were dogs running around all over the place. And it was because of rabies that I think people started to realize that we needed to get dogs on leashes and get collared and get licenses for dogs. And we realized that we needed to take dog ownership much more seriously. People were being bit by dogs. Dogs were carrying rabies. Dogs were the number one domesticated species to transmit rabies. Now, guess who is the number one domesticated species to transmit rabies? I'm going to guess that's cats. Yeah, that's right. Because we've gotten dog ownership under control.
8:29We'd say prior to the 50s and 60s, it would have been normal in an American suburb that you would just see a wandering dog or a pack of wandering dogs. Yeah, I grew up in the coast of Connecticut, in Narwhal, Connecticut. And we adopted several dogs that we just found on the streets, no owners. And then, you know, I think what's happened over time is after we got the dog thing under control where you had to have your dog licensed and you needed to demonstrate that it had a rabies vaccine, it's all registered now. You know, one of my things is, is like, we did it with dogs. Why aren't we doing it with cats?
9:02Why are cats allowed to roam free? Just to say, in most of America, owned cats are required to have rabies vaccines. And while cats may carry more rabies than any other domesticated animal, in absolute terms, the number of rabies exposure cases by cats is actually quite low. Pete will also point to the fact that cats are a vector for toxoplasmosis, a fascinating parasite, can be dangerous to a fetus if you're pregnant, but it exists and society functions. I think Pete's driving concern here isn't so much the risks that too many free-ranging cats pose to humans, it's the risk these cats pose to a different animal, birds.
9:46So what is the point where some people in America started to think like, hey, there's a problem with our relationship with cats? Like I became aware of this very recently. I'm assuming this idea has more of an intellectual history than me noticing it. Like when does it start? Yeah, it's interesting because it was actually in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when a guy by the name of Forbush started to write about and estimate the mortality the cats cause on wild birds. Forbush? Forbush, F-O-R-B-U-S-H from Massachusetts. So the first person to sound the alarm was a bird expert. Yeah. Presumably a bird lover.
10:22Yeah, he was an ecologist, and an ornithologist was probably what he did mostly, and he's tried to sound the alarm multiple times. Edward Forbush wrote about cats with the same vivid, blood-spattered language that true crime podcasters use when they rewrite the Wikipedia pages of serial killers. In his book, The Domestic Cat, Bird Killer, Mouser, and Destroyer of Wildlife, Means of Utilizing and Controlling It, published in 1916, Forbush describes the cat's threat to wildlife thusly. Quote, no animal that it can reach and master is safe from its ravenous clutches. End of quote.
11:02Back in 1916, Forbush estimated that cats were killing 700 ,000 birds per year in a single state, Massachusetts. And he considered that to be a conservative estimate. Since then, many ecologists have tried to estimate the number of birds killed by cats, both by outdoor house cats and by free-ranging, unowned cats. Over the decades, they've come up with different numbers measured in different places. But more than that, they've gotten an increasingly different response, as the question itself has become more polarizing.
11:37Pete told me a story about what happened to an academic he knew who published one of these surveys in the 1990s. His name is Dr. Stanley Temple. He's now retired from the University of Wisconsin. He did a first estimate, and the number of animals, birds and small mammals that he estimated were being killed by cats a year in Wisconsin, and, you know, shook everybody at their core.
12:06When Dr. Temple conducted his study, he estimated that there were, conservatively, around 1.4 million free-ranging cats in Wisconsin, and that each of those cats was killing on average an estimated 5.6 birds per year. This would mean that something on the order of 7.8 million birds are killed by free-ranging cats in Wisconsin per year. A number which elicited a very strong reaction from cat advocates. He received death threats. He was challenged. And it was really simple math. It really wasn't anything complicated. Wait, sorry, he received death threats? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. As have I. Many. From cat owners?
12:49Cat advocates. And why do they want to kill you? Because they see people that are making a claim that cats are having a negative impact on the environment as something that's threatening cats. They see this as something that will actually get people to kill cats. They see it as an argument for removing cats from the landscape, and they recognize that there's not many solutions out there that are good for cats.
13:21When my book came out, there was definitely a campaign on Amazon to get as many people to attack my book as possible. I got written letters, lots of written letters from all over the world. I had phone messages. Wow. People threatening me. One cat advocacy organization showed up at my previous employer's main building with a box of signed petitions. try to convince them to get me fired. This is, you know, in many ways, it's all out war. And it has been for a long, long time.
14:00We're going to return to the story of the Wisconsin cats and the death threats. But first, I want to tell you about the other side, the cat advocates. That's after the break.
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16:23Welcome back to the show.
16:29The national cat advocacy movement is actually pretty recent. It really took off in the 90s. One of the movement's early battles was against animal shelters that euthanize cats they can't find homes for. Those shelters are much rarer today. Cat advocates are part of the reason for that. If the phrase no-kill shelter exists in your head, that's partly because of that movement. The biggest, most organized of the cat advocacy groups is Alley Cat Allies, founded in 1990 in Bethesda, Maryland, by a woman named Becky Robinson, the longtime face of the organization. Good morning. My name is Becky Robinson.
17:05I'm the president and co-founder of Alley Cat Allies. We reached out to Alley Cat Allies for an interview with Becky Robinson, but after a brief exchange, the PR person stopped replying. However, Alley Cat Allies is very active on social media and YouTube. There's tons of posted talks, so you can get a sense of where they're coming from. Everybody knows that cats have been living around us for 10 ,000 years. They are the only domesticated species, domestic animal, that is self-domesticated. Becky Robinson is speaking here at the 2015 No Kill Conference in Austin, Texas. She's a middle-aged woman with short auburn hair.
17:44In photos, she's almost always smiling, usually petting a cat. You can see that this is just a timeline that I'm showing on the screen here, that they've lived around us even long before we knew that they were domestic cats in Egypt. There were actually thousands of years prior to we now have research to show that they lived around people and their domains. It's fascinating. In this talk, she's essentially telling a similar multi-century history of the human-cat relationship that Pete Mara told me. Although her version of the story ends with a different moral. Cats have always lived around us and they're always going to live around us outside.
18:18That's a fact of life. It doesn't have to be a sad fact. It's just a fact. She says that cats living around us outside, whether they're pet cats or not, outdoor cats are just an inalienable law of the universe. Something that has never changed, something that can never change. So here they are, there's millions of unowned cats. And so this is what we have to keep in mind, that what we're doing every day at Alley Cat Allies and what all of you doing are out in the field is that we're correcting a horrible myth. And this myth is that the only way a cat can live is indoors. And that's just not correct.
18:53So that's the idea. Cats have a right to live freely outside. And if you're sold on this vision, Alley Cat Allies has videos explaining how to make your neighborhood a nice place for unowned outdoor cats to live. This is from my personal favorite video, which explains how to have the talk with your neighbors. Neighbors who might come to you because they're upset about the new cat colony that's been pooping and peeing in their yards. It's pretty typical for people to have a concern that cats are going in their garden or using their yard as a litter box. If you are the person who's caring for the cats, there is going to be a time when someone might approach you in your neighborhood.
19:33And you should look upon that as a very good thing if they're expressing some concerns. The video is fairly elaborate. There's an actor demonstrating how to properly nod and listen as your neighbor expresses their concerns. Becky Robinson offers her playbook for best practices for caring for the cats. It starts normally enough. She suggests you get them on a regular feeding schedule. — So if you feed them in the morning or at the night, you want to do that at the same time every day. — She says you should practice trap-neuter-return, meaning trap the cats and pay to have them neutered. — You are getting those cats to a community cat veterinarian where they're going to be sterilized and vaccinated and ear-tipped.
20:12— You then return them to the neighborhood where they now permanently live. Once they're there, the video suggests you might go into your neighbor's garden and place deterrence there to keep the community cats from digging things up. You might have coffee grounds to put in the soil that distracts cats. As the train of friendly suggestions continues, it does gradually dawn on you, the viewer, that this all assumes you are willing to substantially reorient your life in your new role as self-appointed ambassador for a cat colony. You know, you may have to purchase a few things. I've been known to actually buy bags of river rocks and putting them in gardens, and that keeps cats out of the gardens from digging.
20:48or this scat mask. Perhaps your neighbor owns a fancy sports car and you suspect the cats might be tempted to go on it. Well, Becky Robinson has a solution for that too. What's going on cars? And if it's a brand new car and someone's very proud of it, you might need to buy a car cover. So you might want to bring the products over and help your neighbor set them up or offer to set them up. It's easy to make fun of all this, and I guess I am. There's just something about imagining someone opening the door to their neighbor, handing them a car cover for their yellow Mercedes and explaining, cats lived outdoors for 10 ,000 years.
21:22It's never going to stop. But I went to the store and I bought you some river rocks and this car cover. You can use it every time you park. It's just a lot. I also recognize that this is compassionate, arguably communitarian behavior from the Alley Cat allies. And that's being neighborly. Maybe asking, calling Alley Cat allies to find that inner peace and those ways to communicate because you really are the voice for the cats. They don't have anybody else. What you will not find on the Alley Cat Allies website is a video with suggestions about how to protect your neighborhood birds from your new neighborhood cats.
21:57And that's because the organization doesn't believe that cats are a serious threat to birds. Presented with numbers from ecologists like Pete Mara, Alley Cat Allies says those numbers are, quote, false data. This entire story of cats versus birds, it's really a fight about humans and data. about people refusing to believe each other's charts. And that fight took center stage in the story of Stanley Temple, the former colleague Pete Mara told us about, the one who got death threats. Remember, Stanley Temple had published estimates about the amount of bird deaths in Wisconsin in the late 1990s. Here's Temple.
22:32We began our work, which was aimed not at justifying persecuting cats, but simply to understand what the ecological impacts of the large number of free-ranging cats in rural Wisconsin might be. This is from a 2008 documentary called Here, Kitty, Kitty, about a fight in Wisconsin over a proposed measure that would allow for uncollared, unowned cats to be killed in the wild. Stanley Temple himself didn't personally endorse that measure, but he does appear in the documentary. Temple is a mild-mannered, bespectacled academic with a vest and a beard. You're going to hear some of the death threats against him in a moment, But for now, what I marvel at is how unlikely to inspire death threats this person seems.
23:15Grassland birds in Wisconsin were declining very significantly. They were becoming probably one of the most significant groups of declining birds for conservationists to worry about in the state. And all of the dimensions, all of the reasons for those declines in grassland birds were not fully understood. So the role of cats was perhaps a logical question. Alley Cat Allies is not in this documentary, though they have released a statement attacking Temple's research. In the film, the activist side is represented by a local pet store owner running a website called Don't Shoot the Cat dot com. He also has a lot to say about Stanley Temple's research.
24:00Wow. I would certainly like to work on making sure that we correct some of the misimpressions that have been left out there, especially when it comes to those numbers. First of all, a feral cat is not a wild cat. It's just an unsocialized domestic cat. And our animal cruelty laws currently in Wisconsin protect those cats. And so what we want to do is really make sure that we had good science before we went into this. The advocate makes it clear that he does not trust Dr. Temple's research. He raises insinuations about the source of Temple's funding, about the pedigree of the journals who would publish this kind of work.
Read the full transcript
24:30And those numbers you referred to are the Dr. Stanley Temple study, are highly questionable. And as you said, those are estimates, and they're not at all scientific data. This is not published scientific data we're talking about. This is a study, not a study at all, in fact, a report that was published over 10 years ago. This is not new information. It's completely based on estimates that are wildly exaggerated. It's really based on the relationship between Dr. Stanley Temple and the American Bird Conservancy, which is probably the most rabidly anti-cat special interest lobby group in the United States.
24:57So I don't know that we can take Dr. Stanley Temple's science seriously. I want to pause to appreciate the American poetry of the phrase, probably the most rabidly anti-cat special interest lobby group. Also, one wonders if calling someone rabidly anything in this context is more loaded than in others. Anyway, the primary reason cat advocates had a problem with Temple's research was that it was serving as supporting evidence for this measure. The one that would have designated feral cats as unprotected, therefore allowing people to hunt, trap, or kill them in the badger state. An unpleasant idea, which to some cat advocates sounded deeply repugnant.
25:35So much so that some of these advocates started calling Dr. Temple and leaving threatening voicemails. Monday, 11.06 p.m., line one. You cat-murdering bastard. What goes around comes around. I declare Stanley Temple season open.
25:59Just to be clear, there's no reason to believe these voicemails came from any official activist group. Every cause has its extremists. Ultimately, in the face of public backlash, the measure failed. After initial public hearings, the state declined to pursue the issue further. The governor expressed the idea that the whole Wisconsin shoots cats thing was bad for the state's brand. The documentary was filmed in 2005. Nearly two decades later, the state estimates that a third of Wisconsin's native bird species are now in decline. The fight, though, over why that number keeps dropping continues. Here's something I struggle with.
26:38I'm honestly not really a cat or a bird partisan. I'm the undecided voter both sides would like to reach. I am absolutely ready to trust the data, saying a lot of birds have died since the early 2000s. But I'm also aware that human beings must be a giant part of this. Global warming, wind turbines, the addition my mom put on her kitchen where the birds are always flying in the windows. Cars, power lines, my cousin Kip in Texas who likes to hunt quail. Are we just treating cats as a scapegoat here? Pete Mara says absolutely not. In 2013, he published a data analysis with an academic named Scott Loss comparing a lot of different ways that birds die.
27:15This analysis represented a pretty huge salvo in the cat advocates versus bird ecologists data war. we looked at relative to other causes of anthropogenic mortality. That is, mortality caused directly by humans. So think wind turbines or birds that fly into buildings or windows or, say, birds that are killed by cats. We collected all of the relevant data out there where people estimated, because there have been a bunch of studies globally, where they looked at the number of birds or mammals or reptiles that cats kill on a daily or weekly basis throughout the year. And when you look at the total number, then you look at the estimates for the total number of cats.
27:56And you can separate cats by cats that are owned, that are led outside, or unowned cats that are outside, or what we call truly feral cats that have no connection to humans whatsoever, which we have a very poor understanding of in terms of the numbers. You can estimate the population size, multiply that times the number of individual animals that that cat might kill. And you can come up with an estimate for how many birds or mammals or reptiles are likely killed by cats in a given year. And you can do the same thing for wind turbines. You can do the same thing for cars. We did this. And? And this was the shot heard around the world when our paper was published in Nature Communications.
28:37We estimated that cats kill somewhere between 1.3 billion and 4 billion birds a year in the United States. That's birds alone. billion, billion with a big old B, 1.3 to 4 billion. And the range is so high because the studies are all over the map. You know, they just are. I think the median was 2.7 billion per year. But even if it's the low number at 1.3 billion birds per year, that was higher than most other estimates out there. But it's still, the low estimate is still very, very high. Do we need more research? Well, I don't know if we really need, from a scientific perspective, to try to refine the estimate.
29:20Maybe we need more research just to try to get a finer point on that number. But in terms of the conservation solution, no. We don't need more research to know that cats outdoors are just a problem for all kinds of reasons. There are some problems that are genuinely quite confusing. There are other problems we convince ourselves are confusing, I suspect, because even though we could understand them, we don't want to. These are inconvenient truths that, rather than addressing head-on, we procrastinate about. We ask the scientists to go draw us another chart, to run the numbers one more time. It buys us time before we have to do something that might be very tedious, or, in the case of some of these cats, very unpleasant.
30:03The federal government has declared war on feral cats, hoping to save thousands of native species from the brink of extinction. Countries like New Zealand and Australia are dealing with this. They're on the front lines of it really because they've got such a feral cat problem, outdoor cat problem. And Australia introduced a cat call. This is the Felixer, a feral cat trap which lures in feral cats using recorded mating calls or the sounds of distressed prey before... because there are so many cats roaming free in wild areas. And so they've put out bounties for folks to go out and shoot cats. Pete Mara is saying if we don't control cat populations now, we could end up like Australia, where people are just shooting lots of cats.
30:56Ironically, Alley Cat Allies, the people who fight for the rights of cats to live outside, they also point to Australia. In fact, this video they made of a specific, very brutal catcall there is, at least for me, some of their most effective political messaging.
31:16She said she'd walked out onto the wall and there was these piles of food and blood. Something had happened. She thought perhaps they'd been poisoned. Injured cats. Cats missing. Trails of blood. More blood. At one point in the video, text appears on the screen saying that in 2020, a contractor for the port of Newcastle came to the cat colony at night, quote, shooting at any cat he saw. Billy had been shot a few times in the head. She had bullets through her skull. We were all in tears, you know. We love these cats, and just seeing that someone had deliberately hurt them. Becky Robinson of Alley Cat Allies appears in the video and explains there was never a reason to kill those poor cats.
32:04She says the situation was already humanely under control. There was non-lethal control in place. It had been carried out by people who had sterilized the cats. In Australia, it's referred to as desexed. The cats had been microchipped, they'd been vaccinated, and they were not breeding. The local advocates say that before the call, they were using the same practice Becky Robinson was promoting in her community cat video, TNR. We focus on TNR, which is trap, neuter, release. When we started here at the break wall just under two years ago, there were over 100 cats. In that time we've been here, we've reduced the numbers to 40.
32:45And that's when the cull happened. Cat advocates like Ellie Cat Allies believe TNR, neutering outdoor cats, is the right way to control these populations. If they can't reproduce, they'll gradually die out. It sounds like the kind of elegant, humane solution that everyone could get on board with. The problem is ecologists in general say TNR doesn't really work. Part of the problem is just cats reproduce very quickly. According to PETA, under the right set of conditions, in seven years, one female cat and her offspring can produce up to 370 ,000 cats. Which means for TNR to work, you need to catch, neuter, and release something like 75 % of a feral cat colony every single year.
33:28How do you know you have 75 %? I don't know. How do you stop new cats from migrating into the colony from outside? Who could say? I emailed Pete Mara about the TNR program in Newcastle. He hadn't heard about it, but found the numbers suspicious. This wasn't a scientific study. He wanted to know, why would neutering a colony have caused 60 of these 100 cats to just suddenly disappear in two years? He wrote, quote, I absolutely do not trust the data. Pete Mara believes the end result of these ineffective TNR programs is our status quo. Many cats living wild lives in human cities. And he says these cats, they're not okay.
34:09These cats that are outdoors are not doing well. These cats have injuries. These cats have diseases. These cats have leukemia. These cats have feline AIDS. These cats are hit by cars. Feline AIDS? Yeah. There's all sorts of diseases that these cats contract. Pathogens, worms. The way they're most commonly killed is by getting hit by a car. And that's not a good way for an animal to die. I mean, it's just any way you slice it. It's just not a good way for an animal to die.
34:45Pete Mara is not the only person who believes that unowned cats are living lives so bad that euthanizing them would be a superior option. His worldview is shared by PETA. From PETA, quote, allowing feral cats to continue their daily struggle for survival in a hostile environment is rarely a humane option, end quote. PETA says kill the cats. I mean, PETA would say euthanize, but still. It's tricky, though, because the word euthanize is very bland, and a bloody video like that one from Australia is very powerful. In the proxy war between cats and birds and the people who defend them, you could imagine a counter video shot from the perspective of an innocent, fluffy, adorable, piping plover chick looking up from its nest at the ferocious jaws and teeth of a bored, stray, killer cat.
35:39but I'm not sure the video would work. We just don't relate as much to birds. We certainly don't relate to the declining aggregate numbers of bird populations. We relate to cats. To Garfield, to Felix, to Vertute, to all the ones we've seen on the internet, all the ones we've pet in our homes and in the homes of our friends. We love cats. But we also need to protect the birds. Wars persist because neither side can see the other as reasonable. Wars end when people make space for competing truths.
36:16After a short break, we find someone who actually sits in the middle of this intractable war, who seems to think about it differently than anyone else. That's after some ads.
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37:44Welcome back to the show. I wanted to talk to someone who could hold this entire argument in their mind, someone who could see this from both perspectives. One voice came to mind, this person who owned multiple pet cats, but I also knew to be the greatest bird lover I've ever met. But when we spoke, and we spoke often, it was usually about the lives of birds. So I invited him to the studio. So normally, when we interview experts on the podcast, there are people who are public intellectuals, like writers or professors. There are people who have a lot of expertise in their field. So I just want to establish your bona fides.
38:27Can you tell me the highest level of education you've completed? I graduated fifth grade now. I'm in sixth grade. Pretty good grades, though, right? Yeah. Okay. And what do you think is the subject that you know more about than anything else? Birds. How do you know so much about birds, Calden? When I was young, I just clicked on random videos on YouTube, and then I just saw these bird videos, and then I just started watching that. But also, what also influenced me a lot is because when I had chickens for like five years, that also influenced me a lot about birds. Calden, easily one of the most charming people I've ever met.
39:08Half Swiss, half Tibetan, raised in the ways of two peace-loving, neutrality-seeking cultures. We spent a lot of time on long drives where he would just talk about birds and offer bird facts. Some kids get into trains for a while or fire trucks or dinosaurs. But for Calden, it was birds. It had been birds for as long as I'd known him. And I really had begun to appreciate birds more through our conversations, a species that, unlike cats and dogs, have mostly resisted the cheap bribery of human domestication, who keep to the skies, who feel alien and strange and have never pretended to belong to us.
39:42I just want to, for someone, because one of the reasons I enjoy spending time with you so much is I like asking about birds because you know everything about birds. But I just want to establish that for other people. So do you mind if I ask you some bird trivia questions? Yeah. What species of birds lays blue eggs? American robin. What's the word for the study of birds? Ornithology. What's the fastest bird in the world? Pyrrhic and falcon. What's the biggest bird in the world? An ostrich. What about the biggest bird in the world who's extinct? I think it was either the mower or the elephant. Elephant bird is the heaviest.
40:18I know the mower is probably the tallest. I have elephant bird, but I have no doubt that you are more correct than this website that I found. What species of bird can only eat when its head is upside down? Flamingos? Yeah. What species of bird can fly backwards? Hummingbirds? You're 7 for 7 so far. What species of bird can fly underwater? Penguins or puffins, technically, either of those. They don't technically fly underwater, but they look like they fly underwater. Again, you're doing better than my website. What was the website's answer? They just said the puffin, but I think you're right. I was like flying underwater.
40:54Well, I guess puffin because puffins fly above water and underwater, so I guess that's what they mean. But I think you're being a bit more precise than they are. I think you're more correct than they are. How many different bird species are there in the world? Over 10 ,000, I'm pretty sure. There's some debate, but the most widely accepted number seems to be around 10 ,000. Okay, that's perfect. When I first wanted to talk to Calden, I just assumed he'd be a voice speaking for the birds. But then I saw this school project he did, and I realized he actually had feelings in both directions. So, I want to ask you about an experiment you did involving chickens.
41:29Oh, you mean when I hatched those eggs? Tell me about it. We did it for a science fair experiment. Not hatched, I don't know why. We're going to try next year with duck eggs. Well, so I became aware of your science experiment because I had stopped by your school during the science fair and I saw the experiments, and I was very impressed with yours. Not to disparage your classmates, but I found yours impressive.
41:52and in your display for the experiment it included a little biography of you and there was a part of it that surprised me that I wanted to ask you about if that's okay okay can I read it to you hi my name is Calden I'm 11 years old I'm in 5th grade and I have two cats I love fishing, skiing and animals ever since I was 3 I was fascinated by birds I've owned 4 chickens here in New York sadly they all died Exactly. Now I want to hatch... It's so funny that you're agreeing with yourself. Now I want to hatch new ones. Yeah. Chickens are way smarter and social than people think. Yeah. My chickens, for example, were always trying to escape.
42:31Yeah. With cats, they do what they want, and you can't change what they do. But with chickens, you have to stop the issue. And the rush of stopping them is so nice. What did you mean when you said the rush of stopping them was so nice? Having to change the way of them escaping all the time was fun because they always found a new way to escape. So then you have to try and solve the issue. Like when they were young, you have to bring them outside, and that's fun to always move them. With cats, they just do what they want, and you can't only stop them because they can run around, they know the neighborhood.
43:06Chickens, you can interfere because if you don't interfere, they're not used to the city. They're smart, but they're not that smart that they might get run over by a car if they escaped the whole time. It sounds like for you, raising chickens was kind of like having a young child, whereas having cats was like you were raising a teenager. Kind of. Can we talk about cats? Okay. Do you have cats? You have one cat shadow. No, I had. Oh, I'm sorry. He died like a year, two years ago. Now I have three cats. One was dragon fruit. That's the one in June. Those two are living inside, and the one that's outside is his mama cat.
43:37Mama cat. Because she just gave birth to dragon fruit. So have your cats ever killed a bird that you know of? Oh, yeah, many times. Many times. There's many sparrows. Once this weird, like, swallow-looking bird. You love birds. Yeah. Does it bother you? I mean, I'm upset about it, but it's no different when they bring in a mouse. It's not different. And I also found in the corner of this garage at her house, there was, like, a dead blue jake corpse. There was, like, a body, and then the head was detached, and then there was like a wing detached. But I was impressed, but also sad because blue geys are very big birds.
44:15How long did you feel sad for him? I mean, not that. I didn't try. I was just like upset and like, oh, come on, like that feeling. Calden said he couldn't imagine forcing his cat to live entirely inside. It'd be boring. It'd be unfair. But he also believes birds have rights that need balancing. I suggested cats might be killing more birds than he realizes, but, of course, he said he was familiar with the literature. Calden's feeling was that to solve this problem, you'd actually need to think outside of the box. What's your vision for the future of how cats and birds in America can get along? Because people who have house cats everywhere want them to be able to roam free, but there are places where it's a real problem.
44:56Places where it's a real problem, the easiest thing to do is just give the cats a bell on, like, the collar so that when the cats move and try to creep up on the birds, it makes like a sound so the birds can hear it and then they can just fly away, go away. Do you have any other ideas? I think that's a good one. Let me think. Yeah. Maybe having like your cats either less outside, not outside at all,
45:27or that's all my ideas. I think those are good ideas.
45:34I had not expected to find myself taking an 11-year-old's ideas back to an academic like Pete Mara, but I found Calden's perspective refreshing. I know human culture changes slowly, stubbornly, but I also know technology can accelerate those changes. It actually felt easier to imagine popularizing bells on cat collars than it did convincing people with outdoor cats to just start keeping them inside. Pete Mara is a bit skeptical about bells, but he is a believer in this idea that technology can help birds and cats and people coexist on our planet. And he sees some of those technologies taking off.
46:13Since I've started to work on this issue, I've seen, no question, an increase in the number of folks that are walking their cats on leashes. I see more people that are aware of this issue at all, and they just say, yeah, we're cat owners, but we're indoor cat owners, which is totally, totally fine. That's great. And we also see a growth in something called catios, which are... Catios. Catios, which are screened in cat enclosures. So your cat can go outside, enjoy outdoors, can watch and get stimulated by nature, just like we get stimulated by nature because it's in their best interest to be stimulated by nature, so they're happy, but not cause any damage to birds.
46:56birds, but they can watch a bird fly by without actually killing the bird. So you see people changing the architecture of their homes because they're trying to find a balance between their love for their pet and their desire to conserve nature? Absolutely. Yep. It's happening in lots of places. I had no idea that was happening. Yeah. Just Google catio and you'll see more and more folks putting up catios in their houses to accommodate their cat. Oh yeah. I'm looking at some gorgeous catios. I think I was just picturing a covered patio, but it's real small for some reason. And this is more like, it's sort of like a cage, but it doesn't look particularly, it's somewhere between a cage and a jungle gym.
47:37Yeah. And there's all kinds of versions out there. But the point is, is that it allows your cat to have controlled access to the outdoors where there aren't native wildlife that will be injured by the cat.
47:53So, what are we going to do about all these cats? If you believe the ecologists, our house cats are looking at a future of bells, cat leashes, and catios. And this is the harder part. Some unowned cats need to be humanely killed, particularly in places like the islands of Hawaii and Australia, where they're wiping out endangered species. Cats, Pete Mara says, have already contributed to the execution of 63 species on this planet. He thinks we should try to prevent the 64th. I look at these natural areas. When I see a bird, that to me is like going into a museum and seeing a Monet or a Picasso.
48:31It's our natural history that we're losing. It's like losing a Monet on the wall when you lose a species. And we know that species loss is a massive problem. them. And we almost lost species like the bald eagle. Could you imagine if we didn't have the bald eagle in the United States, our national bird? And now, thankfully, we got rid of DDT and the bald eagle came back. And future generations can now appreciate species like the bald eagle and the brown pelican and the osprey because we protected them. And we have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the earth. I mean, I don't know if that's convincing to you or not, but it's convincing to me.
49:09I feel like a general sense of like we should conserve species. I just feel like, I feel like who cares about the birds is probably, it's a taboo thing to say, you know, nobody's going to advocate for the extinction of a species. But if you, while nobody would say that, if you look at people's behavior, clearly people believe that, you know? Yeah. I think, I think there are some people that are thinking that, but I, you know, that a lot of folks on the other side of the aisle that are cat advocates are also animal advocates. And they're in a quandary, honestly, because they love wildlife, they love nature, they love cats.
49:49And they want to believe that cats are not having the impact that they're having because the solution here is just not great. It's a difficult situation any way you slice it. And I think that many of them really appreciate birds and like birds, but they don't know what to do within the short time frame that they're present on this planet and don't think that their single cat or their five cats really matter. But they do. But they do. They have a hard time scaling it up. And I see it because I think about things at much larger scales.
50:26Today, more than 100 million American cats live mostly outdoor lives. If Dr. Pete Mara and people like him are able to convince people to see the world how they see it, that'll change. They'll have to do something that seems impossible. Convince people that their individual choices add up to something larger. But that impossible thing has been done before. We don't smoke inside. We don't litter. Our dogs in America rarely roam free. Pete Mara says it's important that we change all this because there's a generation after us that'll inherit the earth we leave behind.
51:00Calder, are you 11 right now or 12? 11. I interview a lot of people who know more than me, but they're usually not 11. Uh-huh. Just saying. What do you want to do when you grow up? Be in an anthology. Well, go to college. And then I want to go to the, what college is it called? The bird college. There's a bird college. Not bird college, but it's like you can study an anthology there.
51:28It's Cornell. Cornell University, I think. I've heard of that. I've heard of Cornell University. and they have a good ornithology program? I think so. I'm pretty sure. And so after Cornell, would you want to be a professional ornithologist? Yes. Do you think you'll ever be less interested in birds than you are right now?
51:49Probably not. Maybe when I'm like in the teenage years. Yeah. Because then I'm not going to care about this that much and I'm just going to care about like Fortnite with friends or like something like that, like Cod or something. So boring. Exactly. Thank you. Welcome.
53:02The End at LibertyMutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.
53:34Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by PJ Vogt and Shruti Pinamineni and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. A special thanks this week to Kim Nadervain-Petersa and to May Abdullaholu. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Leah Reese-Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Pirello, and John Schmidt. And to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Rob Mirandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchison, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.
54:09Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum, UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine with PJVote now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you would like to become a paid subscriber and support this show, head over to PJVote.com. Okay, that's it for us this week. Thank you for listening. We'll see you in two weeks.
54:33Thank you.
From the publisher
A question that has launched a battle between bird-loving ecologists and ardent, cat-defending activists. What should we do about an invasive species beloved by many Americans -- cats? We hear from people on both sides of the war, and from one person who sits exactly in the middle.
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