Thompson, the link is a year old - resurrected thread here.

Giok, your link: it's a UK study, and I note it contains several very good suggestions for reducing cat predation. I note it makes no comparison to the percentage of small mammals and birds that are killed by human building, farming, motor vehicles, and other behaviours (like highrise windows, habitat destruction (particularly but not restricted to the places they migrate to for the winters), insecticide use in agriculture, etc.) Studies like this (or the way it is presented) bother me, because they seem like an attempt to suggest that all would be well with wildlife if people got rid of their evil cats, so we can decide it's the cats/cat owners who are at fault and all the other destructive behaviour of humand can go on apace and have no effect.

It's a UK study. My cats are in rural Canada, in at night to avoid their becoming a prey item of coyotes or bobcats (pretty sure that's who got my last kitty), don't travel off the property further than next door, are invaluable in keeping rodents and other critters out of my house, and don't poop in my garden because they have an established outdoor location in the woods they like to use.

Do they kill the occasional bird? Yes, they do, but not often and it's usually a junco, one of the most common and numerous birds around here. Much more dangerous to birds are the goddamned sport fishermen who think herons, loons and mergansers and other fishing birds are competition, and try to get away with shooting them even though it is illegal. I'm presently engaged in yet another springtime battle with a few local examples of this clutch of knuckle-walkers to keep them from killing these birds.