Please Put A Bell On Kitty

Thu 27 Jun, 21:33 (last edited on Thu 27 Jun, 21:34)

Malcolm - found this: https://www.birdsbesafe.com and a scientific paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159115000222

Thu 27 Jun, 17:48 (last edited on Thu 27 Jun, 17:51)

Scrunchy highly coloured neck collars (with bells) seem to work better than does bells though bells do have a confirmable effect. Like the ones that girls and women use to tie back  hair into pony tails and such. 

I saw this buried a few links deep in .. a Guardian? New Scientist website?  and thought I'd sent a sms message to a small group of contacts as we've recently lost birds since next door got two cats. But I can't find it now. 

The big irregular and highly contrasted bright colours in a strange shape projecting from around the neck (and significantly changing the profile of a hiding cat) -  and birds see colour better than us primates - the effectiveness of the scrunchies was reported to be confirmably effective enough for reviewed scientific publication.

Maybe someone could track it down?

Thu 27 Jun, 13:32

That makes me very sad. Bells don’t work…. a cat will hunt very slowly and silently… I’ve seen this happen often enough to know it’s true.

Thu 27 Jun, 11:26

A cat has just caught a blackbird in my garden. Please would you keep your cat in during nesting season, or put a bell on it ? 

'According to the Mammal Society, cats kill up to an estimated 275 million prey a year in the UK, of which 55 million are birds. This is the just the number that were known to have been caught and does not include prey that cats didn’t bring home, or that escaped and subsequently died.'

Thank you :-)