National Geographic: The Secret Life of Cats Page #3

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than these,

but statistically about

of the cat attack victims that

we see here don't survive.

Cats are incredibly efficient

hunters and predators.

This poor bunny was

effectively disemboweled

by the cat that caught it.

Creatures lucky enough to

survive an attack

face yet another peril.

Cat saliva is

almost toxic by itself.

Getting bit by a cat

is like injecting

poison into a wild animal.

A wild animal with a cat

bite that doesn't die

from the trauma will die of

an infection within

As a wildlife veterinarian,

it's my job

to take care of sick

and injured wildlife

and I like to do that,

but this is a waste.

These animals

didn't have to die.

If people would keep their

pet cats indoors,

these animals wouldn't end up

in my wildlife hospital.

What's a cat owner to do?

Just three hours from the

Wildlife Center of Virginia,

on 25 acres of

rolling woodland,

lives a cat

named Ting Tang II.

Ironically,

he lives with a biologist

who's specialty is birds.

As a devoted cat owner,

Ruth Beck has been grappling

with a personal dilemma.

I specialize in ornithology

and I'm very interested in

birds.

But I also love cats.

Ting Tang II is a hunter.

It is not the cat's fault,

it's what he does and what

he does successfully.

He has some basic equipment,

just as every

hunter would have:

first of all,

you can look at these

nice teeth.

And then we have

an excellent set

of switchblades

and they indeed

can inflict quite a wound.

C'mon, breakfast.

Ting Tang II is a well-fed cat.

But breakfast

never puts a damper

on his favorite pastime.

He's an avid bird watcher-

and hunter.

Each morning,

after a full can of food,

Ting Tang is ready

for his favorite sport.

But he has to comply with

the rules of the house.

Most bird species feed

early in the morning.

So just by not letting him out

until 10 or 11 o'clock

and for just a few hours

mid-afternoon,

when the birds are less

active... will certainly help

to prevent the cat

from capturing the birds.

Ruth has found a compromise

that gives the cat some freedom,

but gives the birds

some protection, as well.

Ting Tang II must make

the most of his hours

in feline paradise.

He is a cat with a curfew.

When day is done,

he'll be called indoors.

I think that true cat lovers

don't see their pet as killers

I'd like to see us

make everyone aware of the fact

that our pets are

also predators.

If we come to terms

with the fact

that our cats do hunt,

the question then becomes:

How much are they hunting?

That's just what

the British Mammal Society

set out to discover

when they launched

their survey called,

"Look What the Cat Brought In"

...a bit ghoulish, really.

This is brilliant.

Yes, it's good, isn't it?

Excellent...

The Society has found itself

buried beneath a mountain

of responses.

For Michael Woods,

processing the results

has been daunting.

C'mon, I can't have you

sitting on

top of all my work.

Well, I have a very ambivalent

relationship with cats.

I love the way

that they move and I think

they're beautiful animals,

but I just hate what they

do to the wildlife.

The Society invited the public

to register their cats

for a five-month period,

detailing every creature

their kitty dragged home.

The amazing thing is we've had

the results from 750 cats,

which is a huge amount-

and much better

than we'd expected.

We've got a lot of

them analyzed

and it's giving us some

really good answers.

And some of them

are real big killers,

they're some big killer

cats out there.

And they're causing quite

a lot of mayhem.

Remarkably,

almost as you'd expect,

the traditional

prey of the cat,

the mouse,

has come out much the highest.

If you extrapolate up

to the number

of cats we have in Britain,

which is around about

seven million-

and that's just the tame ones

the wild ones are

on top of that-

then we are looking at

something around 200,000 mice

are killed every year by cats.

And then we have voles,

and then after that, shrews.

The mice are interesting,

because a lot of people think

we don't need mice,

you know, because they can be

a pest and a problem,

particularly if they

get into the house,

but mice are very important,

along with the other

small mammals,

as prey species for

natural predators.

Then,

if we turn to the information

we've got about cats,

we find that a third of them,

approximately, wear bells.

Wearing bells seems to

make almost no difference

at all to the amount of

prey that they catch.

They still go out and catch

just as much.

And color of cats seems

to make a difference.

White cats appear to catch

a lot less than some of the

other more camouflaged cats,

and I guess it's color

that does that,

particularly at night,

if they're hunting at night.

The survey's certainly shown

that however

much you feed a cat,

it makes no difference at all

and the cat feeds

and is just as likely to

start hunting immediately.

Out of 750 cats, one of the

biggest killers is Missy,

a female cat

who lives down in Dorset,

and who has killed

over seven pages

worth of

small mammals and birds

for us to

include in the survey.

So she's a real, you know,

wicked thing to

have out there.

Knowing her record,

I thought it would be

interesting to enter her-

and I was really surprised

myself

when I started to fill in

the form and found out

how many

things she did bring in.

Hilary and Jim Pike

have become accustomed

to Missy's daily offerings.

For Jim, the rabbits

are the worst.

They all start from the skull

and eat the head first

and all we get left

are two ears

and four little paws...

...which is not a

very nice thing

when you come home

and it's on the middle of the

mat or stuck on the tiles.

There must be some sort

of driving force that

makes her do it all the time...

...nothing to do with hunger.

They obviously just do it

because they love it.

The spot you see along here,

she lays in there

in the summer time,

and the swallows zip along,

come down to along

the top of the pond to drink,

and she just leaps up and

grabs them clean out of the air

And, you know,

just a big snatch,

and they're just stunned

the moment she's got them.

The two sucker fish

that we bought

specifically to take out

all the algae,

within two weeks

of us buying them-

and they were

quite expensive...

We paid 40 pound for the pair.

And in two weeks they're

on the kitchen mat.

We found them on the grass.

So that was a waste of

time and money.

Well, I've been collecting

what Missy's brought in

for the last two weeks,

approximately.

So, would you like me

To show you just

a few of the items-

or bodies, I should say?

It was a little bird,

I'm afraid.

Just looks to be asleep, but

unfortunately,

there's one gone.

And then this is one of the

many mice we have around here.

This is what Missy's brought

in in less than two weeks.

She's quite a hunter.

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