Killer cats | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In "Cats and birds" (Forum, Feb. 2), Leo Whiting argued for killing all wild, roaming cats because they're decimating our bird population. Yes they are. Scientific American recently documented the destruction cats visit on the animal kingdom.

Yes, cats keep the mice population down, but they also kill every other useful and benign animal they can. If you value biodiversity, and you should, you must be for eliminating the feral cat population (not just neutering them).

Domestic cats are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's list of 100 World's Worst Invasive Alien Species for how they decimate prey populations, even to the extinction of many species.

We need a law that requires every domestic cat to be licensed with a collar tag or embedded chip. Any wild-ranging cat without such an ID should be put down.

The birds and reptiles require it.

Richard O'Callaghan

Sandy