Feral Cat, Phillip Creek Station, NT
I don’t see too many feral cats while I’m driving around – I saw this one this past Sunday while driving south from Wycliffe Well to Alice Springs close to the Phillip Creek bridge on the Stuart Highway and I would have only seen perhaps a dozen dead roadside cats in many years driving the highways and backroads of the NT.
Most feral cats are just too clever to get caught out on the roadway. I’ve seen a few close to and crossing the road, and, like the birds that are drawn to roadkill carcasses on the roadway and roadside, feral cats most likely find that roadways provide good foraging grounds to prey on the many small birds and lizards that form the less visible side to the carnage that we cause in our obsessions with getting from A to B in the quickest way possible.
Two of my least favourite things...
Sometime ago when I was a law student I was the foreman on a murder trial in the Supreme Court of the NT, but that’s a whole different story that I can’t say too much about.
One interesting item that has stuck in my memory from the three weeks spent in and out of the Jury Room was that much of the reading material provided there consisted of back copies of Australian Shooter – The magazine for sporting shooters. In one copy of the magazine there was an article written by a team of keen shooters who had been engaged by the NT government to conduct a survey of the long stretches of the Barkly Highway that runs from just north of Tennant Creek in the NT across to Mt Isa in Queensland.
What they found was fascinating – from memory they ended up with a feral cat head count of some several hundred cats – mostly found in the many tunnels and culverts running under the road. And they developed some interesting hunting techniques – they would stop some way away from the tunnel or culvert and walk up on either side of the tunnel, which appear to be a favourite day-time rest spots for feral cats. A couple of shotgun loads would be shot into the tunnel from one side followed by a similar load from the other. Then the carnage would be inspected…
Nobody knows to any degree of certainty just how many feral cats there are in Australia – let alone in the NT – and perhaps the number of these most effective and efficient killers out there is irrelevant – what might be more important is the effect of their predation, particularly of vulnerable populations of small mammals and birds.
The NT Department of Natural Resources advises that:
Feral cats have been in Australia since European settlement. They live independently of humans and are found in all habitats ranging from rainforest to desert throughout the Northern Territory.
…
Feral cats are secretive, cryptic, largely nocturnal and hard to catch which makes it difficult to monitor populations, especially over large areas. Available data indicate that feral cat populations fluctuate markedly in time and space. Densities can be high in some areas when conditions are favourable. During 1994, for example, the density of feral cats on the Barkly Tableland during an eruption of the Long-haired Rat, Rattus villosissimus, was estimated at 6.3/km2. In arid areas population densities of about 0.2/km2 are more typical. Male feral cats in the mulga woodlands of central Australia live in large territories approximately 2210 ha in size. However, in the tropics and in areas with rabbits, home ranges are likely to be much smaller.
…
Whether through predation, disease or competition, feral cats have undoubtedly played a role in the demise and extinction of native fauna, particularly in central Australia. A reintroduction programme for the Rufous Hare-wallaby or Mala (Lagorchestes hirsutus) in the Tanami Desert during the 1980s was unsuccessful due to predation by feral cats.
And I haven’t yet found a definition of just when a cat can be classed as feral or domestic companion animal – my own definition is a very narrow one – any cat outside of its own yard is a feral cat!
11 Comments
I have heard you have as big a problem with feral cats Down Under as we do in the United States. The major roadblock here to eradication methods are the thousands of cat enablers, all wanting to spay and neuter sixty million cats and return them to our ecology, without harming one. I like the shotgun method much better.
Over several years I shot all the ferals on my property – about 40 in all. 20 years later, I have only seen one or two visiting moggies and the birds have returned.
By way of balance, I note that bird populations are depleted much more when low vegetation and other shelter is absent than simply due to the local presence of cats. This is probably due to the predation from above as kookaburras, butcher-birds, crows and currawongs more easily take birds and young which cannot hide or shelter.
Regarding trapping cats… possum traps do a pretty good job. The NT rangers should try a few in their culverts. This allows release without harm of unlucky native animals.
About 20 years ago, some friends and i were on a property out west and shot a large cat. The body would have been about 1 metre long(not counting the tail) and had a head the size of a big dog and had very large fangs.It had just caught a rabbit and was under a tree, when he looked into the spot-light and caught a lead bullet in the head.It would have been third or fourth generation feral cat (male).Was going to skin it but it pissed all over its self (male urine). They are a pest to our native animals and birds and yes the fence line is the feral line.
John & BA – see the pdf here about trapping cats in “padded-jaw” traps – though I have my real doubts (glad to be convinced otherwise) about the efficacy of such (or any) traps – from my limited experience most/many feral cats are just too clever to be enticed into a trap – padded or otherwise.
One trick I was shown was to get a lump of meat and to tie it on a stout wire or heavy string and suspend it from a tree branch – cats will spend some considerable time trying to get to the meat – perhaps long enough to get a clear shot at it!
And I’m curious as to why the ferals have continued to stay away from John’s property – good to hear that the birds have come back though – and I note the comment about the small birds suffering under the predation of the species that gain from suburbia and our domestic plant management. Planting lots of small dense undergrowth might assist.
And further to BA’s comments about numbers – I’ve heard figures from 10 million to 18 million and upwards in Australia but am doubtful about whether any of those figures have any real basis other than statistical guesswork…don’t forget that though we have a land area similar to the continental USA we have a far smaller population…
Oh, and further to BA’s comments – I prefer a .410 single shot with a light load – birdshot seems to be best – for walking around. For a fixed shot – like the meat bait on string – a .22 worked just fine – if you can set it up so you’ve got a clear shot from a rest on your porch you can sit, have a quiet drink and with a pre-set torch or spot light and zeroed-in .22 you can get some good results.
I’m not sure how it occurred, but I just spent five minutes reading an article from Bob Gosford on roadkill… well, feral cats actually… and I actually enjoyed it. V confusing.
Go with the flow Chris…and glad I put a smile on your dial!
We are regenerating our degraded property and after some years achieved success sufficient to enable several bird species to become residents for the first time owing to the improvement in native vegetation. Up to that time we had shot some several thousand rabbits, and then calice and myxo got rid of most of the rest, dozens of foxes and a similar number of cats.
White-winged Fairy-wrens came to live with us and on our walks we would regularly stop at one vicinity and watch for the flutter of that brilliant blue with the goal umpire flags waving. Visitors would go “Oooh!! Ahhh!!’
After a few years they disappeared and have never returned.
My unproven hypothesis is that we had made the habitat suitable for them but also simultaneously made them vulnerable to cats and foxes by eliminating the rabbits as a food source [who, incidentally have recently come back] and improving the ground cover so that the ferals have surprise on their side. Such is the ground cover now that shooting is too difficult to do successfully and we can’t trap effectively either.
Well we had them for a while.
I heard this one from an ex-wife of mine, and yes, it is cruel. She hunted stock killing dogs/coyotes in Central Texas. She said for some of the smartest you have to be meaner than they are. She claimed a stout treble hook in a meat ball on a steel leader suspended from a tree branch would do the trick.
She was a lovely woman, and a good back-up with her .44 Magnum, until she decided to move on.
Hey Fredex – I love those White-wings! That flash of colour in the bushes, a tweet and then gone – to reappear there, and there…literally brilliant – yes indeed the Ooooh, Ahhh responses!
I’m sure there are some strategies for getting the small brown (and blue) jobs back onto your land – but if there is a heavy avian and mammal predation force then it can be hard to get over – as you’ve showed – and to maintain it over time may be even harder…faith, trust and a good eye with the .22?
Cheers.
Bob, an ally of ours here in the United States is beginning to draw national attention. It seems the coyote, a wild canine, has been expanding into wider ranges, due to the abundance of… you guessed it, feral cats for food!