Your cat is destroying the environment

Domestic cats are killing billions of birds.

(Image credit: PATRICK PLEUL/AFP/Getty Images)

Anyone who has watched her cat hunker down on its haunches, lock eyes on a moving target — a twitching toe or finger, a laser-pointer dot, a songbird — and pounce, knows that she is cohabitating with a predator. But while we might have felt the consequences of our pets' teeth and claws, cats owners are often in denial about the damage their beloved feline friends are wrecking on the environment:

[Cats] are "cuddly killers" that butcher tens of billions of songbirds, small mammals, reptiles, and lizards each year and push vulnerable species toward extinction. Cats hunt when they are hungry and hunt when they are full. "In the United States," [Peter P. Marra and Chris Santella write in Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer], "more birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats than from wind turbines, automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windows, and other so-called direct anthropogenic causes combined." [The New York Review of Books]

In 2013, Marra and a team of researchers found that in a single year, free-ranging cats killed "up to 4 billion birds, 22 billion small mammals, 822 million reptiles, and 299 million amphibians" in the U.S. alone. A 2011 review of 120 islands found that cats caused "the decline or extinction of 123 species of songbirds, parrots, seabirds, and penguins; 25 species of iguanas, lizards, turtles, and snakes; and 27 species of small mammals, including a lemur and a bat."

Particularly problematic are stray cats, which, while an invasive species, are defended ardently by animal rescue and welfare groups. On the other hand, environmentalists must act to protect fragile species — and that can require the extermination of stray colonies.

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This much is for sure, though: "Pet cats should no more be allowed to roam around at will than should pet dogs, horses, pythons, or pot-bellied pigs. The notion that cats have a particularly deep-seated 'need' for freedom is also a cop-out, an abdication of an owner's responsibility to, hey, play with your cat once in a while, rather than expect the sparrows to do it for you." Read the full report at The New York Review of Books.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.