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Foxes come to the rescue in feral cat war
New duck enclousure in the Castle Park Pond. (Photo: Eoin Hennessy/www.ehp.ie)
FIVE years ago, politicians were complaining that feral cats had taken over the centre of Kilkenny city.
The cats were everywhere, making a complete nuisance of themselves and a potential danger to public heath because of the bugs they were carrying.
The councillors need not have worried, because creatures even craftier than themselves stepped in to solve the problem.
Nature has its own way of dealing with over-population of a particular species. There has been a marked increase in the number of foxes around the country and Kilkenny in recent times. This has led directly to a sharp fall in the number of feral cats which once threatened to over-run some estates in the city.
The foxes, as ever, have adapted to an urban lifestyle. The most cunning of hunters, they isolate kittens and sick feral cats and after killing them, eat them.
And before you shed a tear for the felines, the foxes have taken over their pursuit of rodents.
So for the next few months get used to banshee-like howling at night as the fox mating season gets into full swing.
Wildlife enthusiasts have asked us not to pinpoint where the foxes are located around the city. They fear that hunters will try and kill them.
Anyone with a chicken coop will tell you they fear a nocturnal visit from a fox. The foxes are also particularly found of fowl, duck in particular.
They had been killing large numbers of them in the Castle Park and so the Office of Public Works (OPW) in conjunction with Birdwatch Ireland came up with a solution.
A duck villa was constructed and now floats on the pond and ducks can nest there safe from the foxes. The foxes feed mainly at night and many householders in the Bennettsbridge area of the city have seen them in their backyards and around the Granges Road, coming in from the Loughmacask area.
A talk on the barn owl (a bird of prey) will be given by Raptor Conservation Officer with Birdwatch Ireland, John Lusby, on February 2 in Hotel Kilkenny at 8pm.
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Weather for Kilkenny
Thursday 23 February 2012
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Woodsman
Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 03:51 AMWhile some native predators will prey upon cats occasionally, it's not this simple. 15 years ago I started a project to increase the populations of the few remaining native predators to try displace all the feral cats. (Nearly all the native wildlife on my land was annihilated by cats. Native prey became tortured play-toys for cats. Native predators starved to death from cats destroying their only food sources.) Red and Gray-Fox were included in the species I was trying to help repopulate on my land. Hoping that these native predators would put "cat" on their diet. I discovered something interesting that nobody else is mentioning. Any time that a cat would enter the wildlife feeding area, all the wildlife would scatter as if a bear had entered the area. Later, when it became obvious that shooting cats was the only solution (NONE of the native predators here would go near a live cat), I thought I could at least put all that shot-dead cat-meat protein to use to feed the starving native wildlife. Even if wildlife spotted a dead cat in their feeding area, they would still run from the area. They wouldn't even approach a dead cat to sniff it. Alive or dead, they just would have nothing to do with "cat". I finally figured out why. Due to cats' bold coat-patterns that have been bred into them, native wildlife perceives this as a warning sign. That that animal must have a hidden toxic or olfactory defense mechanism. A universal symbol throughout nature that any unknown animal sporting bold and bright patterns must be dangerous. So, while native wildlife might prey on cats occasionally, you'll find that they'll only pick off the bland-patterned cats. Leaving all the bold-patterned cats to continue to reproduce. Leaving you with a bold-pattern-cats-only situation where native wildlife won't even go near them anymore. Back to square one. Another danger: The ONLY cat I got any wildlife here to eat was an all-gray cat. This is when I finally figured out what was happening with their coat-patterns scaring the larger predators. Unfortunately, that resident family of opossum I fed this cat to then promptly died from some disease in that cat-meat. Opossum can't even transmit nor carry rabies due to their cooler body temperatures, nor many other common diseases. So it's a little alarming that some disease in cats could be fatal to them. If you value your native wildlife you really need to shoot all feral and stray cats (stray cats being the source of all feral cats). Then bury or incinerate the carcasses so that the cats can't harm your native wildlife with all their diseases even after the cats are dead. I had to shoot hundreds of them on my land. And contrary to the oft-spewed TNR "vacuum effect" myth, not ONE cat has returned to my land in nearly 2 years now. Native wildlife returned. May you be as successful as I was.
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