Reduce cat hunting: what the research says

For many of us cat owners, hunting is the least attractive part of life with our furry friends.

There is interesting research that has discovered some simple things you can do to dramatically reduce their desire to hunt or their success at hunting. The research was carried out by the University of Exeter in partnership with the charity SongBird Survival (songbird-survival.org.uk). This is an organisation dedicated to halting the decline in songbirds such as the willow tit, corn bunting, tree sparrow, and house sparrow. It says songbird numbers have declined by 50 per cent in the last 50 years and so it funds independent scientific studies to find out why this has happened, with the aim of reversing the trend.

 

The stats
The Exeter research was done with the help of 219 households owning 355 cats between them, over a period of 12 weeks. Different groups tested out high meat content food, playing with toys, a bell on the collar, a BirdsBeSafe fabric collar cover, and a puzzle feeder. There was also a control group that continued as normal.

 

The main findings were that feeding your cat high-meat protein, grain-free food reduced overall hunting activity by 36 per cent and providing five to 10 minutes of play with an object cut it by 25 per cent.

 

Those are the figures for all forms of prey including both birds and mammals. But if we look specifically at how bird hunting was affected, object play had a varied response from the different cats, so was considered in the study to have no overall discernible effect. It appears that approach is more effective for reducing the hunting of mammals.

 

However, the high meat protein food did have an effect, cutting the hunting of birds by 44 per cent. It could be that while a cat may have access to the quantity of food it wants, there may be something lacking in their provided food that drives them to try and seek it elsewhere.

 

One of the academics involved in the study, Dr Martina Cecchetti explained: “Maybe it’s related to something really small, for example the augmentation of a specific micronutrient or amino acid.”

 

Another solution specifically to prevent bird hunting was a BirdsBeSafe collar cover; these are brightly coloured fabric tubes that go over your cat’s breakaway cat collar. This reduced the number of birds captured and brought home by 42 per cent. It works by framing the cat’s face and making them more visibly obvious to birds, giving our feathered friends more warning and a better chance of escape.

 

Where mammal hunting was concerned, there were a variety of responses from using the BirdsBeSafe soft fabric collar cover, but no overall discernible effect. The same can be said of the cat bells, which again resulted in a variety of outcomes and the researchers concluded there was no overall observable effect.

 

And according to the research, providing the cat’s daily food in a puzzle feeder was far from helpful. It increased overall hunting by 33 per cent! While the study did not discover for sure why this occurred, it is possible that the cats could not work out the puzzle very easily and therefore were not getting as much food as they wanted at home and so made their own arrangements for dinner.

 

Did you know?

Many of the cat owners involved in the study in the group that played with their cat using toys, reported that they felt their relationship with their cat improved. A bonus!

 

Protect the birds

SongBird Survival suggest some other tips to help the birds stay safe.

• Keep your cat indoors at night, especially at dawn and dusk. This is especially important during nesting season, which is at its peak in the spring.
• If you have bird feeders in your garden, don’t position them near a spot where your cat could hide and pounce.
• If you put up a nest box, use ones without a perch that have an overhanging roof. Put them at least two metres off the ground.

 

FAQs

Are they trying to bring you a present?

Many people say that when a cat brings their prey into your home, they are trying to give you a precious gift. However, according to Dr Martina Cecchetti, one of the academics involved in the Exeter study, this is not the case. They are simply following their own innate instincts.

 

She said: “Cats have retained many behavioural traits of their wild progenitor, one is the separation between hunting behaviour and consumption, not necessarily eating what they kill, and surplus killing when opportunities arise. So, possible explanations of these ‘gifts’ might be that once home, cats might be distracted by tasty food provided by their owners and eat it in preference to the wild prey; or that cats may have the intention of consuming their prey later and consider the house a safe place where they can store it.”

 

What kind of cat owner are you?

SongBird Survival has categorised the different types of cat owner in relation to their opinions on cats’ right to roam and their potential hunting impact. Which one are you? 

Concerned Protector

You worry about your cat roaming and being lost, stolen, or killed and believe keeping them indoors keeps them safe, but you wouldn’t keep your cat indoors solely to stop them hunting.

Freedom Defender

You think cats should be able to roam as they please and hunting is a good sign of normal behaviour. You oppose restrictions on their access to the outdoors.

Tolerant Guardian

The benefits of letting your cat roam outweigh the risk of injury. Hunting is the least attractive part of cat ownership, but it is just what cats do.

Conscientious Caretaker

Cats should have access to outdoors, but you don’t oppose some containment. Hunting by cats really bothers you and you particularly worry about birds.

Laissez-Faire Landlord

You’ve never seriously thought about the effects of cats on wildlife populations. You would be more inclined to manage your cat’s hunting behaviour if they were killing things all the time.