The Cat is Unfairly Blamed for Many Things

The domestic cat gets the blame for a lot of things that are totally undeserved. In fact you can’t blame the cat for anything because everything the cat does he does out of natural behavior in the environment in which he is placed by people. If people don’t like something the cat does they should take a look at themselves and ask some tough questions.

One of the worst things people blame the cat for is spreading disease. The cat haters constantly refer to toxoplasmosis. Cats get toxoplasmosis and so do people. It can be transmitted from cat to human. However, we don’t tell another person who has a disease that it was his fault that he caught it and that he is to blame for spreading it. We sympathize with the person. No so with the cat. He or she is lambasted by the media endlessly.

Introduced Species

I’ll give you another good example of how the domestic cat is unfairly blamed for something. Woody and his ilk always refer to the cat as an invasive species. This means a species of animal that was introduced to a place and which is not native to a certain place. Of course, it is people who did the introducing. The cat was just the messenger.

Anyway, cats as introduced species are often blamed for killing native species. They are said to prey on important wild species. One such occurrence took place on Socorro Island, Mexico – so numerous scientists claimed but it is not true.

It was alleged that sailors at a naval base (probably a US base) on Socorro Island brought cats with them from 1957. Some became feral due to irresponsible caretaking (people again). The Socorro Mocking bird, a ground dwelling bird, rapidly declining in numbers and, of course, the feral cats were blamed. Pick on the cat, they are the easiest target for the errant human.

What is sad is that several scientists blamed the cats for preying on this rare bird. However, on a careful reappraisal it was concluded that researchers “did not report the presence of cats”  in 1958 and 1972 – no cats! Also naval personnel suggested that cats were not brought to the island until after 1972.

At 2001, there are some cats in the southern part of the island but this coincides with the “degradation” (loss and destruction) of the Mocking bird’s habitat in other areas.

It was concluded (finally) that the Socorro Mocking bird’s habitat on Socorro Island was made uninhabitable by sheep that were imported to the island in 1870 by people, of course.

You can’t even blame the sheep for heaven’s sake. They were just eating their way through vegetation, surviving. The cause of the endangerment to the survival of the Socorro Mocking bird is the most invasive of all animals; the human.

See study.

Another example similar to the above is the disappearance of three petrel species on Little Barrier Island, New Zealand being blamed on the cat but no evidence actually existed.

Let give the domestic cat a break and start looking at ourselves, please. The human’s insatiable desire to destroy wildlife habitat is considered to be the biggest cause of species extinctions.


The Cat is Unfairly Blamed for Many Things — 6 Comments

  1. Exactly Michael! The human species is to blame for all the troubles in this world and for the problems the environment is facing and for all the species of animals and birds becoming extinct.
    But many can’t see that, they are too arrogant and selfish.
    Sadly, soon it will be too late to stop this tragedy, if it isn’t already!

    • Thanks Ruth. I know we think alike on these things. It annoys me when cat haters and bird conservationists and scientists show bias and blame the cat first for something while totally ignoring the root source – people, and other far more obvious causes to problems. The cat is a scapegoat. An easy target for blame.

  2. Mankind is so blind, we (but no POC member included) are so arrogant as to assume superiority over every other species, we manipulate and modify animals, decide their fates, hunt them, eat them, kill them off entirely and then we blame the animals! We are in fact like a bad government, it’s time the animals rose up and revolted against us and who could blame them if they did!

    • One day, in 1000 or 10,000 years humankind will look back at 2013 and think, WTF to use modern internet language. What is interesting is that some people do see the light and understand animals and their role in the world. Yet billions of people and the majority of people on the planet still don’t get it because if they did understand we would not have so much animal cruelty and abuse and neither would the wild species populations be decimated. Humankind is not yet able to call itself civilised and educated.

  3. Some of us are born understanding animals,some of us evolve in our lifetime to do so,but sadly some never do understand them and they are the ones destroying our world and killing our wild life.
    Not God to blame,not those of us who have evolved to blame,not animals to blame,the blame lies with the ignorance of too many humans.

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