Vox Felina

Influential cat-care blogger Peter Wolf has softened his criticism of Keep Cats Safe & Save Bird Lives after an open dialog with Sarah Cooper, the campaign’s project manager. The blog highlights the importance of ongoing conversations and co-operation between the many organizations concerned about cats and/or birds.

The debate about cats and birds can be very polarized, but as Wolf notes, “There’s actually a lot of common ground here—far more than is generally acknowledged. We all share a common goal, for example: reducing—and one day, even eliminating—the population of unowned free-roaming cats.”

He expresses his hope that we collectively have more conversations about that common ground. We couldn’t agree more, and look forward to continuing our dialog with Wolf as well as the many other dedicated people who work to care for feral cats and wild birds.

Wolf is critical of the Blancher paper and it’s estimates of the numbers of birds killed by cats. We agree that the data on which Blancher based his estimates is lacking — Blancher himself acknowledges that in his paper — particularly in terms of the estimate of the number of feral cats in Canada. But we maintain that the paper is a scientifically valid attempt to estimate the numbers, and is based on the best data available.

We are committed working to improve the data, and hope that will allow us to refine the estimates of bird mortality eventually. In order to accomplish that, we need to work with the feral cat-care community as well as the bird conservation community.

The important thing is that we agree that we all need to take action to keep cats safe and save bird lives.