Cats: Invasive Species?

So she is one of the great overlooked comic strips of all time, and she's still going on. She's got a new breath of life in her. She's using computers in the Internet and everything by saying great like almost kind of subversive humor and outlook that that any um that that Nancy always had, check it out. I haven't looked at the funny papers in a long time. Do they still have the old favorite? Yeah? But I don't think they call them funny papers anymore because they're not funny,

and then they never worked. Plus, no one wants to point out that it's made of paper that the comics. Yeah, I used to love Beatle Bail. Of course, Garfield in bloom County. And when I got a little bit older, the one that has got a little political. That was so good, Sally Forth, No, I got political, dude, Yeah, not bloom County. But the other one that was Jon'sburry, Yeah, Doon'sburry. Oh yeah, that one was always political. Uh. And then

Beatle Bailey. I love Beatle Bailey. What about Haggard the Horrible? He was fine, a family circus I liked at the time, but looking back, it was the least funny comic in history. It was. It was just it was cute. Brenda Starr Trail, Mary worth Mark trail. What was going on with that guy? It was just a nature propaganda disguised to say a comic strip really was, you know, nature propaganda, save the

Earth and all that big nature. So that's funny that you say that, because there's there's a group of people who are involved in today's topic that possibly refer to their opponents as big nature. Weirdly chuck like, I don't think they do, but the same sense and sensibility is still there. Jane Austin reference second one in the in two podcasts that's right. Uh so, yeah, can we just cavy out this episode? You said it was a hornet's nest.

This is about cats, domestic cats being an invasive species. I'm sorry, but they are. I love cats. I've got two cats, I've always had cats, always love cats, I will always have cats. This has nothing to do with being anti or pro cat. It is just dissecting sort of the scientific problem of cats in the same way that cats dissect birds and small mammals for sport, right, which we talked about a lot, but we'll talk about

it a lot more. Yeah. So I'm with you, Chuck, and like we're you know, it is an issue, and

it's a problem. And one of the things that's contributing to making it a problem is that the two sides are so diametrically opposed and so over one another that there's a there's just no conversation going on, and then the general public, like you and me, Um are just kind of blissfully unaware of this and then just get goose every once in a while when the media kind of picks up this issue or runs a headline or an article about it, Um, and the idea is, like

you said that that it's pretty pretty much widely held among wildlife and conservation biologists that cats, house cats, and specifically feral cats are an invasive species around the world and have they reak enormous havoc, including species extinction in the habitats in our backyards and the habitats that they

inhabit um. But before we really kind of get into that and lay out the case one way or another, um, we should probably talk about the cat and where the cat came from and why they hang out on our backyards to begin with. That's right, we should. They came we think from the mid mid East with not Mid East as in Virginia. That's not the mid East. That's the Middle East. That's the mid Atlantic. Yeah, the Middle East of planet Earth, which was you know, these wildcats

from the forest called Felis sylvestris, which is interesting. I never thought about Sylvester the cat taking Felix the cat, yeah, or Felix taking their names from the original cats. But that is the thought is that they came from there. We're most likely domesticated about twelve thousand years ago, and we don't know for sure, but the general thought is once we started becoming an agriculturally based society, and we

had grain and seed to store. Then the mice and the rats started coming around, and the wildcats started coming around to take care of that problem, and humans were like, hey, this is fine with us. And then over time some of those cats got a little friendlier than others and there and the people were like, oh, you like a little scritch under the neck. Huh, well, you want to come inside and have some milk. Shouldn't give cats milk,

But they didn't know that at a time. And that's the best idea we have going of how cats and initially became domesticated. Yeah, and there's evidence of, you know, of cats being domesticated um that come from Cyprus, where there are no native cats. So cat bones and cat fossils are sensibly domesticated because they would have had to

have been taken there by humans by ship. It's possible the cats stowed away, but it's also just as possible that eight thousand years ago, when this cat bone on Cypress is from Um, the the cat was domesticated enough to ride along aboard a ship um with sailors. And then there's another cat fossil from about years earlier than that so just under ten thousand years ago, um, where the cat was deliberately buried with the human, which strongly

also suggests domestication. So it's not a really big stretch that by about twelve thou years ago and we started storing surplus grain, that's about the time when cats and humans really started to kind of coincide. Yeah, And I think you had probably best described this as a mutualistic relationship at this point, because both species are benefiting. We have talked in the past about commence al um boom, and maybe that's how one might have described it, which

is like cats are eating the mice. Humans were like, fine, big wook, but we don't really care. But I would say it's probably more mutualistic, don't you don't you think? Yes? Absolutely, Again, I posit that there's no such thing as commence all is um. I think both parties, somehow, some way always

are either benefited or harmed by this situation. And this is a great example of that because if we're growing surplus or for growing grain, we have surplus to feed more and more people, um, and the last us through the wind or whatever, we have these grain stores. If you know, mice and rats come along and eat our grain. That's a problem for us. And if the cats come along and eat the mice or the rats, that solves

our problem. So the cat is getting to eat all of this food that's showing up that these grain stores where otherwise they would have to go and hunt all over the place. The cats benefiting, we're benefiting mutualism. That's right. I agree. Okay, Uh, you don't have to talk me into it, buddy, Okay, lay off, then lay off. We need T shirts. Man, do we still have T shirts? Oh? I don't know either. I haven't seen him in a while. We've never done a good job at promoting that stuff. No,

that's right. Uh. So here's the deal with cats as an invasive species, though, is they are very uh hardy as a species. They survive even though they don't have a real natural range. They can live in many, many different environments successfully. Uh. And there are obviously your your pet cats, which are I don't think we said what was the name of the domesticated cat. Finally, Felis catus, which sounds like a bugs bunny cartoon, you know, like

when road runner would yeah, would they freeze frame? You know, it's basically what they would write. But that's it was totally unimaginative as it gets. So you've got your your feral cats, and you've got your cats that live inside houses but also freely rome outside like uh, like, oh, I have a pet cat, but it never comes inside because I don't like changing litter boxes. So we have outdoor cats. And then there's the feral cat. And those

are the two cats that are causing problems. Uh. And they are very much different and this is from the grabster. He points out they're very different than other quote unquote domestic invasive species that you might have as a pet, because we talked about the Burmese python problem in Florida. Those aren't truly domesticated. Uh. And then there are feral dog populations in the world, and they do cause problems, but not like cats do. No, definitely not so Um.

Apparently there's also like a really good case that's made that cats aren't truly domesticated either, which rings a bell to me from our animal Domestication episode. Yeah, I think I remember that. I think they're considered semi domestic actually person intense and perfect basically or no, they just come and go as they please. There they hang around us

as much as they want to, you know. All right, Well, speaking of hanging out, let's take a little break and we'll get to the grizzly details of what these cats do, because even though you've said it before, you might not have heard that episode. You might think, what would my sweet little cat do if let outside besides just creep around. Well,

we'll tell you what they'll do right after this, all right, Chuck. So, I think anybody who owns a cat that's not indoor cat UM has had some experience or other where their cat has shown up on their doorstep with a present of a bird, mouse, a small road, and baby squirrel um the baby seal, depending on where you are, but some some little animal where the cat is saying either hey, UM, I want you to have this, I really appreciate all

of the fancy feast. Or they theorize that possibly the cat is UM keeping a toy that it was playing with earlier. It's brought home to like hang onto, or it's it's um following and it's UM, I guess kind of evolutionary impulse to teach other cats how to hunt. It's teaching you how to hunt. That's what it's bringing. Those are the big main theories that I saw, Like, see how it's done, buddy, Yeah, you see this bird? Can you do that? And you may be horrified when

the cat does that. You may also be like, you know, Felix, come on, you can't do that. Where's this bird's head anyway? Um, and then just kind of forget about it, put it out of your mind. Maybe you go to the trouble of bearing the bird, which is nice if you do that, but you just move along with your day. Your cat

might do that a few times a year. And if you multiply that by the number of cats who are roaming around, and you number multiply that by the number of feral cats, you suddenly get into really really really big numbers, and the idea of just how destructive invasive cats are, um really kind of comes into focus. Yeah. So here are numbers from uh about nine years ago. And this is kind of hard to track, but they do the best job that they can with these numbers. Uh.

Domestic cats, these are to say, pet cats and feral cats. Uh. And we should say that feral cats kill about three times is more animals and birds as domestic cats, but between one point four in three point seven billion with a B birds and sit point nine and this is a big range to twenty point seven billion mammals a year. This is every single year. And you found some more

stats that really kind of put a cherry on top here. Uh. Rodents are linked to the extinction of seventy five different species. Cats are linked to the extinction of sixty three different species where they have completely been extinct, forty bird species, twenty one mammal species, and two reptile species. Right, So, UM, we should say that the UM the species extinction that's global. They think the that those numbers that you said between up to around four billion birds and as many as

UM twenties plus billion mammals every year. Chuck, that's in the United States alone, and not only in the United States one that's to the contiguous forty eight states alone every year. That's what this two thousand and thirteen study between Smithsonian Institute and UM the US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded. Right, So there are people and you know, we'll get to you know, some of the possible solutions

later on. But if you talk to the head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center UM and named Pete Mara. He will say very clearly that there should be a zero tolerance for free ranging cats. Uh, they should be trapped, they should be removed and not returned um and then goes on to say more things that are a little more grizzly should be done if you have no other choices, which is euthanasia, um, professional hunters, poisons, stuff like that.

But you know that sounds and it is super harsh, and if you're a cat person, you're just like horrified right now. But what about the bird people? You know? Right So that's why there's the opposition on one side or wildlife biologists and conservationists and on the other side, you know, cat advocates and activists, and they're they're butting heads over this, and it's like a really big it's a it's a huge issue one way or another. Uh. And one one side is saying just leave them alone.

On the other side's like, no, we can't leave them alone or else they're going to continue to create um species extinctions and kill billions and billions of birds and small mammals every year. And there's a lot of ways that they might do this. There's a story of a cat named Tibbles. It was a single female cat who arrived on a little island off of New Zealand called Steven's Island in the eighteen nineties. There were no cats there.

In fact, there were no predatory mammals, so much so that the little Steven's Island wrend lost its ability to fly. It had no reason to fly. It had all the food it needed on the island, it didn't need to escape predation. So um, they lost their ability to fly and became one of just three flightless songbirds in the world. And now we have two species of flightless songbirds in the world thanks to Tibbles and the litter that she had.

That's right, Tibbles arrived pregnant, and I mean this is a very clear cut case of one pregnant cat showed up and literally Tibbles in the offspring made the Stevens Island rand no more. It is completely extinct. Yeah, and so that is that's one single instance where they can say this cat did this. And I've even seen it, like said, in places like this, the legend goes or the story goes or something like that. So I'm not

certain exactly how well documented it is. Um and more to the point, even if that is a accurate it's really difficult to extrapolate that onto you know, the rest of the world, onto wildlife in general. There's a lot of factors and a lot of pressures the go into a species going extinct. But from what I'm seeing, the conservation biologists and wildlife biologists who are UM doing meta analyzes of you know, smaller studies and kind of putting the numbers together, they typically tend to UM to make

suppositions on the lower end. So these numbers may actually be under reported, they may be much higher UM than what we think. But the upshot of it is that there seems to be a UM. Cats seem to be, if not directly or solely responsible, in some cases, they are largely responsible for some species extinction. That's right. Um Cats also spread disease. If you look at rabies in twoteens, not that long ago, cats accounted for six of all

rabid domestic animals in the United States. UM. So, like, I don't know, people talk about like possums and raccoons and they're just and rats and they're like, oh god, there you know, rabbit animals. Yet they will feed a stray you know feral cat, which is something that even you know, animal people say you shouldn't do because that just means there will reproduce and there will be more

feral cats. And feral cats don't do so well. They uh, they struggle to live and they get they get hurt, and they get hit by cars and they get run over, and I think, uh, a large percentage of the litter doesn't even make it past six months. So if you love cats, you shouldn't be feeding feral cats. Yeah, it's a little you know, it's hard to wrap your head around it, but that's if you want a healthy population of cats, you shouldn't feed feral cats. Right. It is

does seem very paradoxical and even mean. But we'll get into a little more. Y Um. But one of the things you said about effects cats can have on the ecosystem, especially feral cats, um is that they in particular spread um toxoplasma guy in the um, which we had an entire episode on years and years and years ago. But um, it's a it's a type of parasite that can affect um, that can create neurological symptoms and humans. It can. It's

pretty rare that it actually does that. But it can cause birth effects in children, uh, in fetuses, which is why you're pregnant. You're advised stay away from litter boxes or handling cat feces, you know, in general, which is just good advice generally, um, because of toxoplasma UM. And it actually can kill other animals too, right, oh sure, uh, And you know it spreads through those feces. So any warm blooded I mean we we can get infected. You know,

humans can and do get toxic. I'm sure I have toxoplasmosis by this point, Um, any warm blooded animal can get it. And yeah, it can. It can kill uh, animals as large as a seal. Yes. And the reason why cat are so important into this chain is the UM T gandhi UM eggs can only reproduce or the the parasite can only reproduce in the gut of a cat. So if you take cats out of the equation, if you take cats that are roaming around the landscape pooping everywhere,

you take um toxoplasmosis out of the equation largely too. UM. And then lastly, chuck one of the other things in addition to actually you know, wreaking havoc on bird and small mammal and also vertebrate or um reptile and amphibian

populations too. Um by directly eating them or killing them for sport, they're they're having an indirect effect on some other native populations of like hawks, owls, um, larger mammals that eat these things for food, like this is their food, um that the cats are are killing and eating in some cases or sometimes just killing. That's right. And we talked a lot about the trickle down effect of removing anything from an ecosystem. And certainly birds are a vital

part of any ecosystem. How they uh you know, spread the seed and uh pollination, like everything ends up being affected when you start extincting extincting m sure, extincting birds. Sure. And so I know it sounds very much like we're teeing off on cats or not. That's not the point. The point is to kind of get across that what you think of as like a lovable cuddle bug of an animal actually does have negative impacts on the ecosystem.

In particular the ones that are feral, the ones that are unowned, the ones that don't have a home to go to, the ones that um that it turns out we have zero idea of exactly how many there are the feral cat populations. That's right. Uh, should we take a break? Sure, all right, we'll take our second break here and we'll talk a little bit more about the

problem in some solutions right after this. So there are about eighty six million pet cats in the United States, and uh, and I know I've talked about this before. About of those cats are either full time outdoor cats as your pet or uh, do you let your cat outside, you know, for large parts of the day or whatever. Indoor outdoor cats, Um that you know, it's it's a problem. I don't think people should let their cats out side.

I think if you have a pet cat, it should be an indoor only cat because of the lizards and the birds and the mammals that they kill, because of the disease that they can spread. I've always been an indoor cat person since I've been an adult. I grew up having outdoor cats and there was a constant flood of dead animals on our front porch, you know, all the time, and it was pretty horrifying as a kid

to grow up with that kind of thing. But um, this is one of the situations where you know, we don't like to get on our high horse very often, but you should keep your cats inside. And if and not wanting to deal with the litter box is your issue, then you might want to rethink your while you have cats Martha Stewart hawks one where like they send you a new fresh litter box every however long and then you just pack up the one throw it away. Yeah, I mean it stinks. I hate cleaning up the litter

box more than anything. But I love birds and uh and chipmunks more than I hate cleaning out the litter box. That's a really good way to put it, chuck. So that's just free roaming cats is what they what they're called, what what you described. It's like they have a house to go to, they have people that feed them at that house. They're considered a pet, but they're allowed to run around the neighborhood as much as they like. Um. So, if we have about eighties six million cats um that

are our pets, intent of them are roaming outdoors. That's a significant number. But from the censuses, the studies that have been conducted over decades, UM, the feral cat population vastly seems to outnumber the free roaming cat population. Some studies say, no, it's about the same. Maybe are probably a little more feral cats, maybe thirty million. That is the lowest I've been able to come up with. His thirty million. That's the lowest estimate I've seen across the

entire internet. I went everywhere on the Internet, and the lowest I saw was thirty million. Some sources put it more in line with about the total number of pet cats, that there's about eighty million feral cats running around again the United States alone, just the US UM and that if if that is the case, um, then you really do start to get into some really big numbers really fast. About how how much of an effect those that eighty million feral cats uh could have on local bird and

small mammal populations. Yeah. And you know if a cat, if a feral cat makes it to adulthood, which uh, you know, like I said, the pretty high percentage die before six months of age. But if they do make it to adulthood, they are very efficient killers. And there are no natural predators for cats. Uh. And you might think, well, no, there's plenty things that can kill a cat. There are, but their populations like you know, a cougar or something.

There aren't many of those left anymore. Those populations have been decimated because of all the reasons that that might happen, And what you end up with is a lot of feral cats with UM with nothing hunting them, but they're hunting everything else. Well. I found a two thousand thirteen Ohio state study and they found that UM urban coyotes. We did in another episode on coyotes, remember UM. Well, as their numbers are growing and growing, they're actually keeping

feral cat populations in check. And as a result, some bird species, small mammal species are are UM. Their numbers are rebounding because urban coyotes UM tend to keep feral cats at bay, like feral cats avoid them like the plague. The thing is is coyotes tend to avoid humans. So the feral cats have just been hanging around buildings, offices, businesses, like human built areas and avoiding kind of more natural urban areas like woods and parks and tree forested areas,

that kind of thing where the coyotes hang out. So the wildlife is protected in the in the forested woody areas of the city, but there there pray like around human habitation like buildings and offices and stuff, which makes sense. So we've outlined the problem. Uh. It is really sad because I love cats and I don't like the idea of cats being a problem. Um, but they are. So what are the solutions? The solutions you're leaving that to me? Huh,

we'll both talk about it. But so one of the solutions that UM, and this is if you're if you're a cat advocate and activist, you're probably very much in favor of uh type of approach called trapped now to release TNR programs. These were developed the earliest I saw is in the late nineties. UM. Where you if you're a uh like an animal, um uh animal, what's animal control like for a county or a city or something

like that? If you have a trap nooter release program, Uh, if you find a cat, UM, you capture it, you take it to the shelter, the vet there, spas or nooters the cat they clipped the tip of the cat's ear off and then you release it back into the wild feral cat. UM. And as they're doing this, the point of trapped neoter release is that the cat is not euthanized. So it's like an end to euthanasia as

far as animal shelters. Like you know before trap nooter release, if a cat got picked up by animal control and made it to the animal shelter, that was it for the cat. This is a chance to give cats the the opportunity to live their life out, but you've taken away their ability to reproduce. So you're now managing the

reproduction rate of a feral cat colony. And if you get your hands on enough of these feral cats, and you spay and neuter enough of them, and you keep up with it fast enough, studies have shown that you have a really good chance of stabilizing and then eventually diminishing the feral cats in your area. Yeah, and there have been a lot of studies on this. UM. It was one in twenty nineteen that found over a decade UH it's called high intensity TNR was very successful at

reducing feral cat populations. UM there's high density and low density TNR. And the idea it seems to shake out is that unless you are doing high density, unless you're hitting, unless you're getting to like s of the population, then they say you might as well not even be doing it. Uh,

so high intensity TNR really works. And then in this one study, it had a couple of other interesting parts to it, is they weren't just measuring how many feral cats were out there, but they're trying to do studies that like say, hey, we want healthy cat population, so let's look at harm reduction for feral cats. So if you have over a population and too many feral cats, then it's there's a head points out. There's a lot of misery going around. They struggle to find food more. Uh,

they spread disease more. They are constantly pregnant. Cats reproduce like bunnies do. Uh, they can have up to three litters a year and up to you know twelve the fifteen cats per litter. And you know these cats walking around constantly pregnant, constantly giving birth to kittens that don't live more than six months, constantly looking for food because they're overstressed. Is that's that's not if you're a cat lover. Again,

that's not what you want. And so they tried to measure the harm reduction and they found that high tensity I'm sorry, high intensity TNR reduce preventable cat deaths by or thirty times yeah, thirty times, not thirty times fewer preventable cat deaths. And they define preventable cat deaths by cats that were picked up and euthanized at a shelter or cats that died before reaching adulthood. And cats have

a really high UM mortality rate for young cats. UM. I saw a study from two thousand three or four that found UM a mortality rate of about forty eight percent within three months of birth and seventy percent within six months of birth. And this is you want to talk about harm reduction. UM. The most common cause of death was trauma. So they were getting malled by dogs or eagles or owls. Yeah, getting hit by cars. Um. So it is a really harsh, unhappy life for feral cats.

And the premise of TNR is, Okay, we can actually lead to a reduction in these kittens that are being born in these horrible conditions, living three months and then getting malled by a neighborhood owl or something like that. Like that's that's a bonus, that's a plus. But you hit on something that's really important, Chuck that there is a pretty decent amount of research on Actually that's not true.

There's not that much research on the effectiveness of trapped now to release, but the studies that have been done on them that are high quality studies do emphasize that. No, there's definitely a threshold to where you're just completely wasting time and energy, and even worse than that if you're not hitting I think what you say about the sevent threshold of spaying and new during feral cats in a

given colony. If you're not hitting that mark, you're doing worse than nothing, because the people who are aware of t n R, the TNR program in your city and county, think you're doing something but not. It's worse than doing nothing because if everyone knows you're not doing anything, then people might say we got to do something. But if they think you're doing something but you're not actually really

doing anything, that's harmful. And that's ultimately harmful not just to these kittens that are being were by that like that, but also to the um, the birds and small mammals that those kittens are eating within their three to six months on earth. That's right. Uh. T and R is expensive. It takes a lot of time. You know, trapping and trapping any animal is hard. Like one of our dogs Charlie. We we trapped it was a feral dog in the woods, and it took five days to trap these dogs. It's

it's a commitment to trap an animal. Wait anut, wait a minute, you have a dog that you trapped that

was ferial. Yeah, yeah, Charlie, I didn't know that. Yeah, Charlie, we found in the woods with four other dogs and just you know, these dogs would not come near anybody when they were puppies, and we we spent with our friends, uh A, Dare and Elliott spent uh I think you have like five days trying to trap these dogs and Charlie was the last one that was holding out that we could not get and a Burger King cheeseburger is

what finally did it. And Charlie spent the first as a result, spent the first six years of her life very afraid of people and would just do rounders through our house when people would come over and not come near anybody. But since my daughter came along, were people at the house and just over time, she's just the sweetest, sweetest girl now and goes up to everybody after like twenty seconds. And it used to take days or weeks.

Oh that's cool. It's a great success story there. But mud imagine I have to say chuck while I can. Just while you were describing tracking Charlie and her pals, I just imagined that that music in that scene from Planet of the Apes where they're rounding up the humans with nets, is that basically what was going on. Now we had a big cage, traps on horseback, like dog goes in to get food and then the door swing shut. But Charlie was very smart and Charlie just durned thirteen,

so oh, happy birthday. But a long way of saying that trapping an animal takes a lot of time and cats are super smart, and uh, it' time consuming. If it's expensive, and TNR is just it's hard to get a lot of people rallying around it and funding funding it, especially if you're expecting, like the county to fund it, like most of that stuff is going to come from donations. Plus also, if you're a wildlife or conservation biologists, you might say, no, I don't want to do TNR at all.

Like these cats, like let's say you pick one up at six months and you neuter it and release it into a feral colony. Most of those feral colonies are managed by the city or the county, meaning that they're fed right, which ends up attracting more abandoned cats that haven't been neutered or spade yet. And then worse than that, let's say these cats live an extra four or five years, how many animals do they kill? Yeah, they're not reproducing, but you're releasing them back out to kill these birds

and mammals. And those biologists say this is too big of a problem to to take up t nur um programs. We need to do something else. And everybody says, okay, well what else? What can we do? And the biologists clear their throats and like kind of like put their hands in their pockets and look at one another and say, like, who's who wants to say it? And uh, the one who's on his phone not paying attention to suddenly realizes everyone else has taken a step back and he's he's up,

oh boy, oh and that's me. Um. Yeah, it's it's a terrible thing. But the other solution, uh, is that you know, I don't even want to say it, but it's killing cats. Australia does this pretty effectively. Uh. In they begin using a poison. Here's the deal. His cats probably won't eat poison. So they have these traps where a cat will go in and it will spray their fur with poison. The cats groom themselves by looking their fur, they ingest the poison and they die. Uh and this

is you know, Ed points out. He's like, listen, this is uh. No one cries for the dead rats and the dead mice, but uh, you know, dead cats is You're going to get some public outrage, yes, for sure. And there's I mean there's a lot that's mixed up with that one. You know, we've chosen cats. There's like only just a small handful of animals on the planet.

Out of all the animals on the planet, there's such a select group that we've said, come come live in our human world, our human culture, and cats are one of the top ones. I mean, like cats are pets. Come into our house, right, yeah, have my milk. And again the cats like, please, this is really bad for me. I can't I can't turn it away. Please stop tempting me. But it's that's a huge part of it. So like even even knowing that cats are out there having this

huge effect on on birds and mammals. Um and and like possibly creating species extinction. Um, it's still like that that doesn't just trigger something in us humans like, oh, well, then we gotta get rid of cats. That's just not that's just not how it works. Um. But that's what a lot of biologists suggest we do, and not get rid of all cats, but you know, get rid of feral cats, like get do away with t n our programs and instead go back to if you pick a

cat up, you take it in and euthanize it. And that's that because not only is it not reproducing any longer, it's also not killing small animals in the time where between where it's picked up in in spade and neutered and then released back into the wild and then the time that it dies of whatever cause. You know. But again, how are you ever going to get anybody behind something like that? We even want to get behind something like that? And like, is that is that a thing that humans

would want to take on? Like, Okay, we've got this big problem. We need to handle it. Um. If we handle it this way, we can probably handle basically once and for all. Um. But is that something we want to do? Is that? Is that okay to do. Yeah, I mean these are the big questions. I hope you're not looking to me for an answer. No, I mean it's unfortunately, it's definitely rhetorical right now. I mean some

people would answer obviously one way or another. But I think there's a lot of people who are like, man, I really do care about birds, and I really do care about chipmunks and biodiversity, and I really don't like invasive species. Like what am I to do? You know, at the very least, if you have outdoor cats, bring

him inside. Yeah. And that's another thing too. Is one of the things that that you would have to do part and parcel with this is you know, in most cities and counties you have to get a license to have a dog. You don't necessarily have to do that for a cat. You could start creating laws like that, create leash laws for cats, like really step it up and say, we love cats. You can have a cat, but you have to keep your cat in the house. If your cats out of the house, you have to

keep your cat on a leash. If a cat's feeral, it's and get picked up. Um. So there's yeah, there's there's stuff you can do it's just a question of will is what it is. Yeah, and you know, uh, when we said when I said that, before I got met with emails of but my cat loves being outside. They all they do is want to be outside. It's because they want to go kill things almost exclusively. Like cats love to lay in the sunshine. But that's why you'll find them on sunny spots inside your house. And

those sunny spots are just fine. Um. The cats want to go out and kill things. That's why they scratch at the door if you let them out once. And uh, you know, I know I'm finding an uphill battle here, but I love cats and I hate the idea of running over a cat in my car. That's very traumatizing for an individual in a family. UM, and the cat Welsh. Sure. Uh so that's where I stand. Go ahead and email

me if you're mad at me. So there's there's UM a group of vocal critics and opponents to the very UM people who who produced these studies starting in two thousand thirteen, and basically anybody who who criticizes tn R programs, UM who say this, these studies that are getting all of this media exposure, they're based on like bad science.

Their numbers are inflated, they're basically making all this stuff up. UM. One of the arguments that they make is that cats UM tend to prey on old or weak um members of like bird or small mammal species that probably wouldn't have made it to reproduction time anyway, so they're not actually having an effect on the population. And there's answers

to all these two that they they've had. There's actually like there's a flame war going on between this group of wildlife biologists and specific group of like cat advocates UM, and they're like answering one another and calling one another out. UM. But one of the answers to that is, well, okay, that's still there's still animals that are suffering harm because cats are killing them. Even if they were going to

die anyway, they're still being mauled by a cat. And then also, what data are you basing that on that cats tend to kill infirm and weak members of species? Like where did that come from? So each side, in classic twenties fashion, is accusing the other of um basically have like like junk like basing all their stuff on junk science, making things up, making kind of character attacks being snyed one another. It's just a beautifully twenties twenties argument,

you know. So it's it's interesting to read about. But then you step back and you think this is really serious stuff. We need to do something. Everybody says, we've got to do something, either a good t in our program or something. We can't just keep going on like this. Yeah, because doing nothing creates a uh again, colonies of feral cats that are not living their best life. Right? Oh,

you got anything else? No, not right now? Okay, Well, if you want to know more about um cats as invasive species and in particular trap nowter release programs, you can read all about that stuff all over the internet. There's a ton of it out there. And since I said there's a ton of it out there, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this Greenbrier Bunker. Addendum, We heard from a few people that have been there, taken the tour, and had other interesting things to say.

And this is from Greg Soster and Columbus. Oh hi, oh okay, uh let me see here. Let me skip the beginning. Uh. My family returned to the Greenbrier they had previously been there in ninete uh for a Christmas stay the time. This time the bunker was known by the general public, and we signed up for the guided tour. So I guess when they went in nine it was still not known as as a thing, so they were those kind of shrouded in mystery at that point. Um,

here we go. Number one. The back entrance also as an enormous blast doors with a very long haul leading to the under the mountain. A truck has to be able to drive in the ear pressure when they close it is amazing. Other interesting rooms included dennis office, surgical operating room, and a crematorium, a TV studio, and a water purification plant. Uh the answer, and we heard from quite a few people here. Families do not go to

the bunker. Each member of Congress is an assign bunk, and each bunk has their prescription medicines fully stocked and spare prescription eyeglasses for everybody as well. Oh that's such a great touch. Yeah, otherwise, you call Vanderbilt right. Congress arrives by plane. There's a giant airstrip about ten miles away, and the Army built a wide super highway from the airport straight to the bunker. Secret Service would one run drills to get the president to the bunker in eleven

minutes or less. Uh. And then finally it is strange to drive there because uh it is. It was windy, and it was a two lane road and then suddenly the last two miles it's like a race track. I remember joking my wife that the Greenbrier had a heck of a driveway. So they're talking about the super highway that leads right to it. And just to finish out, Greg says the entire hotel staff in many towns, people knew about the secret for decades, and they kept the

secret out of a sense of duty and pride. They hated that when the secret was revealed by Mr ted Gup because the pronational Trevor treasure was lost. That's pretty neat. So who is that from? That was from Gregg in Columbus? O. Hi, Oh, that's right, Thanks a lot, Greg, that was a good one. Appreciate that info. Uh. And if you want to be like Greg and send along some info to us, uh, we'll try to sort through it from all the hate

mail we're getting from cat lovers. In the not too distant future, you can wrap it up spanking on the bottom and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H