Birds are disappearing because of cats?

The “research” showing that cats are responsible for the collapse of bird populations is of the obviously lame-brained sort. Cats have been in North America since the time of the Pilgrims. Birds have begun to disappear in the last few decades — in step with climate change.

Since deer mice are a link in the transmission of Lyme Disease, why is that a growing problem? Why are the mobs of cats out there exterminating song birds not wiping out the deer mice?

The loss of birds is probably due to insects also becoming few — the food for many birds and the nestlings of many of those that eat seeds as adults. (With the rule proving exception of the Lanternfly.) 50 – 60 years ago, at night in the summer there’d be galaxies of gnats and moths around any outdoor light. Look now. It’s a surprise to see any.

And on the topic of the research being nonsense, the problem isn’t that migratory birds from the wilds of Canada and the jungles of Central America are being exterminated by cats in the US suburbs. The birds are gone. They aren’t coming here. Feral cats swarming in the wild places of Canada and Central America are killing of the birds there?

There very likely are less cats in the US now because of coyotes. Migratory birds are disappearing in the northern and southern wilderness. And that’s because of cats in the US? And this is at a time of climate catastrophe. And that has nothing to do with the disappearing birds? And the insects that birds eat are gone, too. Are cats to blame? The urban areas were teaming with Starlings in the same neighborhoods with feral cats. That was so for a century or so, but now there are less Starlings.

Contrasted with community cats in urban settings — the first line of defense against rodents and disease — cats should not be allowed to roam in rural areas or sensitive environments. Pet cats should be kept inside. Cats should be relocated from places where endangered species live. That cared for colonies of city cats are a problem for native birds is nonsense. Especially considering the slaughter of the innocents caused by widows on office buildings.

There are the supposed authorities claiming a cat population explosion. How was this determined? An army of feline census takers checked every nook and cranny in the wilds of the US? The pet cat population has increased many times over. Very likely the same for urban community cats. The cats eaten by coyotes in rural areas certainly aren’t adding to any increase in the numbers of cats. I have not often gone out to the country, but in FLA i did hear about lots of feral pigs. Nobody said anything about swarms of cats. Driving on the roads between FLA, TX and NJ, I saw lots of dead armadillos, raccoons and
oppossums, and a coyote, but no cats.

Science sadly is shot through with hucksters hustling for the next grant. Before I trust any census of cats in the deep woods, I’d like an explanation of where Omicron came from. The most studied thing on the planet— and well funded— and everyone is clueless.

Cat Earrings – $25

Three BEAUTIFUL styles currently available!

Let the whole world know that you love cats.

(It’s perhaps not obvious from the picture, but the cats in earring set 2 are smaller than those in set 3.)

MetroCatRescue@gmail.com is the email address for PayPal.

Checks can be mailed to

Anthony Olszewski

Metro Cat Rescue

297 Griffith Street

Jersey City, NJ 07307

Fine jewelry created by Peggy Rothbaum (Paws4animalsllc)http://drpeggyrothbaum.com/

All proceeds go to helping kittens and cats in need!

Audio Communication 04/21/18 — Concerning the New York Times article New York Mice Are Crawling With Dangerous Bacteria and Viruses

mouse in glue trap
Glue traps are a cruel and horrible way to kill mice. The removal of the dead mouse is an additional health risk. Here, some irresponsible person simply tossed the trap to the curb, creating a hazard for children, wildlife and outdoor cats.


http://catrescue.tv/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/metrocatrescue042118-nyt041717mousevirusbacteria.m4a
Metro Cat Rescue reply to New York Times article New York Mice Are Crawling With Dangerous Bacteria and Viruses statement that “Cats have their own viruses.”

New York Mice Are Crawling With Dangerous Bacteria and Viruses
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/science/urban-mice-viruses-bacteria.html

New York City House Mice (Mus musculus) as Potential Reservoirs for Pathogenic Bacteria and Antimicrobial Resistance Determinants
http://mbio.asm.org/content/9/2/e00624-18

# # #

Should everybody get a cat? “Cats have their own viruses,” Dr. Calisher noted.

# # #

Email to Dr. Calisher:

This seems to imply that cats pose a significant risk of zoonotic viruses. Was that what you meant? What viruses in cats pose a danger? What research supports this?

The one virus listed here
https://www2.vet.cornell.edu/departments-centers-and-institutes/cornell-feline-health-center/health-information/feline-health-topics/zoonotic-disease-what-can-i-catch-my-cat
is rabies. For a cat kept indoors, the risk of rabies should be nearly nil. And for those immunized, the probability of even outdoor cats catching rabies is very low. Around 250 cats in the US are reported to be infected each year. At a quick look, it does not seem that any transmitted the virus to people.
https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/human_rabies.html

Cats can catch influenza. I’m not aware that felines are a significant factor in the spread of the disease or as a vehicle for recombination — a “mixing vessel” like pigs. Compared to migrating birds and the worldwide poultry industry, flu in cats seems to be more of a curiosity than a concern. If there is research that shows otherwise, I’d very much like to know about it.

Because of Toxoplasma gondii, there continues to be a witch hunt against cats. No matter that with anything resembling sanitation there basically is no risk. No matter that most human infection with the parasite is due to the consumption of under-cooked meat and/or contaminated and unwashed raw vegetables. It would be a tragedy if that instead of seeing cats as the first line of defense against rodent disease — a war that’s raged since the Pharaohs — people began to imagine a feline enemy within.

# # #

Dr. Calisher’s reply:

. . .

Anyway, the “Cats have their own viruses” statement looks like something I probably said but it seems out of place, maybe misleading, in the article.

In case you are interested, I had a cat once. It was our neighbors’. They weren’t crazy about it but they treated it very well. The cat, however, loved our dog and would spend the days I our house with the dog while we were gone; it entered using a doggie door, not meant to be a cattie door. I’m not particularly enamored of cats, although I liked this one and he liked me. He’d bring me dead birds and live mice in the middle of the night, drop them on my belly and then sit on my pillow, look down at me, and purr loud enough to wake up my wife and I.

Nonetheless, cats have been known known to be infected with viruses, parasites, bacteria, fungi and other infectious agents: feline immunodeficiency virus, feline leukemia virus, heartworm, the plague bacillus in their fleas, rabies virus, the fungus that causes “ringworm”, toxoplasmosis, influenzaviruses, and various worms. Cats are probably no more dangerous as disease carriers than any other mammal – but they can be dangerous. Not very dangerous (except for rabies and plague) but they can be carriers of Bartonella henselae bacteria, the cause of cat scratch disease.

Your defensiveness is honorable.

Regards,

Charles H. Calisher, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Arthropod-borne and Infectious Diseases Laboratory
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology

www.amazon.com/dp/061582773X

College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Colorado State University

Rescue cat remembers past lives!

Metro Cat Rescue found Meander the lost soul.

Meander was found weak and hungry, wandering the streets. The thought was that perhaps he was lost and so might be returned home. To determine where that was, we applied Age Regression Therapy. Unfortunately, Meander was too young then now to recall anything like clearly his original location.

When it seemed that the path back in time was blocked, an amazing breakthrough occurred: a veritable tsunami of memories of past lives. The feline consciousness flew to Warhol’s studio, from there to Hemingway’s house in Cuba, next Churchill’s study and then the Lincoln White House. As research continues, through Meander’s recollection, light — albeit a narrow beam — is shining on more and more distant events. We’ve just begun the documentation of his presence in Laketown at the time of the death of Smaug.

YouTube Video: Kittens reunited with their mom sweetie

Donate at the Metro Cat Rescue GoFundMe Page.

The kittens were rescued first and their mom Sweetie a day later. The video shows the mother cat and her babies reunited. She was a little tired from the experience.

I don’t know why Sweetie wanted to sleep in the litter box. There was a large towel in a tray and a cushion on the top shelf. Mom’s out of the cat playpen now and has the run of the room.
– – –
It’s quick and convenient to use the GoFundMe DONATE Link. If you’d like to support Metro Cat Rescue by contributing through PayPal, the address to use is MetroCatRescue@gmail.com. It would be particularly wonderful if you chose to sustain the mission of Metro Cat Rescue by establishing a monthly donation through our PayPal account. Any amount will be a huge help. Unfortunately, right now we have no idea what our funding will be next month — or even next week. Helping to make it possible for Metro Cat Rescue to plan for the future will mean so many more kittens and cats will be saved.

If everyone reading this gave SOMETHING, we’d be well on the way to providing for suffering cats left to fend for themselves. THANK YOU!

Please do support Metro Cat Rescue! All too often I’ve had to spend my own grocery money to make sure that the cats were well fed. If Metro Cat Rescue had better facilities and a used SUV or van for transportation, there’s so much more that we could do.

Instead of posting questions as comments, email inquiries to MetroCatRescue@gmail.com

Metro Cat Rescue Facebook Page

Metro Cat Rescue saved Francesco!

Donate at the Metro Cat Rescue GoFundMe Page.

Metro Cat Rescue saved this black cat!

As a kitten, Francesco was given a bottle like a human infant, He still loves — all the many pounds of him now — to be held in the crook of an arm and rocked back and forth with his eyes closed in bliss.

Unfortunately, though his original owners liked to play with a kitten, that did not grow into a commitment to care for a grown cat. When he matured and began to mark his territory, instead of having him neutered, the same ones who’d bottle fed him and taught him to trust people put him and a sibling out on the street.

Metro Cat Rescue was too late for the other cat; that one was killed by a car. Thankfully, we have been able to provide Francesco with a home. Francesco is only one of the many cats that are happy and healthy today because of Metro Cat Rescue’s quick action.

Metro Cat Rescue needs your help! We are DROWNING in bills for food, medical costs and supplies. Donate at the Metro Cat Rescue GoFundMe Page. If everyone reading this went to the GoFundMe Page and gave SOMETHING, we’d be well on the way to providing for suffering cats left to fend for themselves. THANK YOU!

The dream of Metro Cat Rescue is to establish a facility to provide care for homeless kittens and cats with easily treated but contagious conditions — those innocents that now elsewhere regularly are made to die. Sadly, a lack of funds has kept Metro Cat Rescue’s goal on a distant horizon. Without the necessary resources, each day there are cats that we can’t help. Indeed, last summer, there was a dip in donations and adoptions. I would not let the cats go hungry, so I scraped by eating little more than bread, rice and beans myself.

If you’d like to support Metro Cat Rescue by contributing through PayPal, the address to use is MetroCatRescue@gmail.com. It would be particularly wonderful if you chose to sustain the mission of Metro Cat Rescue by establishing a monthly donation through our PayPal account. Any amount will be a huge help. Unfortunately, right now we have no idea what our funding will be next month — or even next week. Helping to make it possible for Metro Cat Rescue to plan for the future will mean so many more kittens and cats will be saved.

Please do support Metro Cat Rescue! All too often I’ve had to spend my own grocery money to make sure that the cats were well fed. If Metro Cat Rescue had better facilities and a used SUV or van for transportation, there’s so much more that we could do.

Instead of posting questions as comments, email inquiries to MetroCatRescue@gmail.com

Metro Cat Rescue Facebook Page

#CatRescue #Kittens #Cats #Charity

Ginny’s kittens are here!

Donate at the Metro Cat Rescue GoFundMe Page.

Because of Metro Cat Rescue, these kittens were born in a warm and clean place.

Loving Ginny was an abandoned cat living in an alley in Queens. A foster took Ginny in and so the kittens were born in a clean and safe place.

Ginny was living in an alley in Queens.

Ginny has her own ideas about child raising. “Mama Ginny does not like it when we put anything underneath the kittens! we try to keep a thin blanket or a towel under them to keep them warm but she moves them every time.”

Because of Metro Cat Rescue, these kittens were born in a warm and safe place

Does anyone in the Jersey City area go to Long Island? Metro Cat Rescue wants to send a quantity of cat food to the foster in Bellmore. Please! Anybody close to Jersey City who travels to Long Island, we need your help to assist the foster. If it wasn’t for them, Ginny would still be outside amongst the garbage cans. The kittens now are in a warm place and can look forward to caring homes. In the alley — if they managed to survive — they’d grow up ferals probably with the hard, short life of many outdoor cats.

Because of Metro Cat Rescue, these kittens were born in a warm and safe place

Email MetroCatRescue@gmail.com if you can help.
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Metro Cat Rescue coordinates the volunteer care of many outdoor cats in a number of colonies. We’re working hard to bring some inside to socialize and to place in good homes. This takes lots of time, space and money.

Our day with the rescue cats starts at 6am and ends at 8pm. Volunteer feeding of community cats is at dawn.

Metro Cat Rescue needs your help so that we can continue to help cats living in the streets. It’s quick and convenient to DONATE. Just click on the Line above to our GoFundMe Page. If everyone reading this gave SOMETHING, we’d be well on the way to providing for suffering cats who have to fend for themselves. THANK YOU!

MetroCatRescue@gmail.com is the address to use to donate through PayPal.

Instead of posting questions as comments, email inquiries to MetroCatRescue@gmail.com

#CatRescue #cats #kittens #outdoorcats #Communitycats #NeighborhoodCats

Metro Cat Rescue Facebook Page

Raccoons eating food meant for community cats

Donate at the Metro Cat Rescue GoFundMe Page.

Raccoon at community cat feeding station.

It’s bad news if cat food and pebbles wind up in the water bowl put out for outdoor cats. This means that raccoons have learned that you’re providing easy eats. Raccoons enjoy “washing” their food. What they are really doing is feeling the food and other items under water. This is important behaviour for finding clams and crayfish in rivers or lakes, but just a curiosity when it comes to a container of water.

Raccoons wash food in water put out for outdoor cats.

The furry ones with the masks are native animals and have every right to live their lives in peace. Still, it’s important not to encourage them to come near homes or cat feeding stations. Adult raccoons are good sized animals and can kill a cat or severely injure a dog — or a person. Once one raccoon discovers free food, it’s almost certain that others will follow. The raccoons will wind up chasing the cats away.

Raccoons can be carriers of Rabies. If a raccoon seems to be drunk or disoriented, stay away from it and call Animal Control. If you see young raccoons, keep your distance. Mom almost certainly is nearby and might attack if she thinks that her young are threatened. Raccoons are the definitive host for the Baylisascaris roundworm that will kill domestic and exotic birds. This parasite also is dangerous to people and infection can result in death.

Raccoons are active during the hours of darkness. Only feed outdoor cats between the hours of dawn and dusk. Be sure only to put out as much food as the cats are certain to eat. Garbage that raccoons will find delectable — chicken carcasses as a prime example — are best thrown out just before the trash is going to be picked up. Even then, the “edible” stuff needs to be in a garbage can. This container should have a secure lid on it until it goes to the curb,

Raccoons Roundworms — The Hiddden Horror

Raccoon roundworms – the hidden horror


– – –
Metro Cat Rescue coordinates the volunteer care of many outdoor cats in a number of colonies. We’re working hard to bring some inside to socialize and to place in good homes. This takes lots of time, space and money.

Our day with the rescue cats starts at 6am and ends at 8pm. Volunteer feeding of community cats is at dawn.

Metro Cat Rescue needs your help so that we can continue to help cats living in the streets. It’s quick and convenient to DONATE. Just click on the Link below to our GoFundMe Page If everyone reading this gave SOMETHING, we’d be well on the way to providing for suffering cats who have to fend for themselves. THANK YOU!

MetroCatRescue@gmail.com is the address to use to donate through PayPal.

Instead of posting questions as comments, email inquiries to MetroCatRescue@gmail.com

Metro Cat Rescue Facebook Page

YOU can help STOP the killing of kittens!

Donate at the Metro Cat Rescue GoFundMe Page.

Little Blake was rescued on August 12, 2012

There are those that routinely kill sick kittens for being “too much trouble.” Indeed, at one shelter (so-called) workers dubbed a manager the “kitten Nazi” because she was so “fast with the needle.”

The dream of Metro Cat Rescue is to establish a facility to provide care for homeless kittens and cats with easily treated but contagious conditions — those innocents that now elsewhere regularly are made to die. Sadly, a lack of funds has kept Metro Cat Rescue’s goal on a distant horizon. Without the necessary resources, each day there are cats that we can’t help. Indeed, last summer, there was a dip in donations and adoptions. I would not let the cats go hungry, so I scraped by eating little more than bread, rice and beans myself.

Little Blake the Ouija Cat is just one of our success stories. She was rescued after being left on the sidewalk by a trash can near a post office. Too weak to stand, the very young kitten was covered with fleas. She also had an eye infection, ear mites, ringworm and intestinal parasites.

Luckily, the tyke was small enough and the day was warm enough so that her entire body could be dipped in the bathroom sink. The fleas still on the head were carefully removed with a fine comb. And that was the easy part! The other conditions required considerable care and the application of medication.

Blake now is a regal lady whose only worry is gaining weight and so losing her fine figure

Little Blake is only one of the many cats that are happy and healthy today because of Metro Cat Rescue’s quick action.

It’s quick and convenient to use the GoFundMe DONATE Link. If you’d like to support Metro Cat Rescue by contributing through PayPal, the address to use is MetroCatRescue@gmail.com. It would be particularly wonderful if you chose to sustain the mission of Metro Cat Rescue by establishing a monthly donation through our PayPal account. Any amount will be a huge help. Unfortunately, right now we have no idea what our funding will be next month — or even next week. Helping to make it possible for Metro Cat Rescue to plan for the future will mean so many more kittens and cats will be saved.

If everyone reading this gave SOMETHING, we’d be well on the way to providing for suffering cats left to fend for themselves. THANK YOU!

Please do support Metro Cat Rescue! All too often I’ve had to spend my own grocery money to make sure that the cats were well fed. If Metro Cat Rescue had better facilities and a used SUV or van for transportation, there’s so much more that we could do.

Instead of posting questions as comments, email inquiries to MetroCatRescue@gmail.com

Metro Cat Rescue Facebook Page