The Cuddly Killer (classic)

A question that has launched a battle between bird-loving ecologists and ardent, cat-defending activists. What should we do about an invasive species beloved by many Americans -- cats? We hear from people on both sides of the war, and from one person who sits exactly in the middle. Comment on the episode https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whatre-we-gonna-do-about-all-these Support the show! https://searchengine.supercast.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00PJ Vogt?

  Hey everybody. It is July. We're gonna have new episodes of Search Engine for you in August, but this month, we're rebroadcasting some of our absolute favorite classic episodes. This episode was from pretty early in our show's run, and the story in particular was less listened to than at least we think it deserved. It's just a very weird, complicated, unintended consequences, no easy moral choices story. Also, it's about animals, a topic which, if you've listened to Search Engine, you know we care deeply about animals. It also includes my favorite expert voice we've ever had on the show, a very surprising voice, who I do not want to spoil for you in case this is your first time listening. My theory about

• 0:44PJ Vogt?

  this one is that it did not get listened to enough because we may have given it a slightly too anodyne title. It originally aired as "What are we gonna do about all these cats?" So we're giving it a slightly spicier title to see if that more deeply pleases the gods of the internet. But other than the title, you are hearing this story as it originally aired. After these ads, our story.

• 1:07PJ Vogt?

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• 2:10PJ Vogt?

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• 3:39PJ Vogt?

  I recently learned that the Polish Academy of Sciences has declared that cats are an invasive, alien species. Invasive species are foreign species who are introduced to an ecosystem and, rather than benignly adapting to it, cause damage and disruption. The Burmese pythons who terrorize the Florida Everglades. The feral hawks who wreak havoc through Texas. But there was something strange about hearing that cats had been added to the ranks. It wasn't just Polish scientists making that determination, though. Globally, there appears to be some sort of cat backlash brewing.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It's 10 PM. Do you know where your cat is?

• 4:16PJ Vogt?

  In Iceland, cats have been put under curfew. One city has imposed an outright ban on outdoor cats.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Well, controversy has erupted in Canterbury over a children's hunting competition.

• 4:25PJ Vogt?

  In New Zealand, a contest was announced where children would compete for a cash prize for killing feral cats.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Hunters under 14 are being offered $250 for whoever can kill the most feral cats.

• 4:37PJ Vogt?

  Although the contest was shut down in the face of not terribly surprising criticism. Once you start paying attention, though, this conversation about cats, it seems to be happening everywhere.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  There is a cat problem in southeast Memphis. Feral cats are overrunning one neighborhood in Dania Beach.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  A big problem for people living in one Phoenix neighborhood.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  A cat fight in Cherokee County where neighbors are seeing not one, not two.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  People living in a central Bakersfield neighborhood are calling it a stray cat crisis in 23 ABC's John Kennedy.

• 5:06PJ Vogt?

  Across the country, there's a growing recognition that cats are a problem for the ecosystems in which they find themselves. But nobody seems sure what to do about it. So this week on Search Engine, we're asking a question that has begun to bother us. What are we going to do about all these cats? And we're going to start with a person who's been wrestling with this question for years. Dr. Peter Mara, Dean of the Earth Commons, Georgetown University's Institute for Environment and Sustainability, and the co-author of the book Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer, which is a very good subtitle.

• 5:42PJ Vogt?

  Should I call you Pete, Peter, Dr. Mara? What's your preferred?

• 5:46Speaker 05

  Dr. Dean, I'm a new dean, so you gotta call me Dean. I'm just kidding. I am a new dean, but I like Pete. I hate, when the students call me professor here, I say, my name's Pete. My name's not professor, and I don't want to be called doctor or dean. It's like, call me Pete.

• 5:59PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  I much prefer that.

• 6:01PJ Vogt?

  And what is, just like, what is your relationship as a human being? What is your relationship to cats?

• 6:06Speaker 05

  I've owned a cat. I've owned an indoor cat. Its name was Tukus. I had Tukus when I was in college. We adopted it from a shelter. I've never owned a cat since then, and I've got nothing against cats. I'm an ecologist, and I love animals. I'm an animal advocate.

• 6:22PJ Vogt?

  You say this like a person who perhaps has been accused of not being an animal.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, 100%. 100%.

• 6:32PJ Vogt?

  Perhaps you can detect a frisson of tension here. Pete has, in fact, been accused of not being an animal advocate. Accusations like this are surfacing because there's an underlying war going on here. One of those small but hot wars that exist on the fringes of American life. A highly polarized debate that has its origins in a relationship that began 100 centuries ago.

• 7:05PJ Vogt?

  So just to even go before the origin of the problem, like, can you just tell me, like, how did the wild cats become house cats? Like, how did that happen?

• 7:16Speaker 05

  So, as the story goes, and it really is just a hypothesis. Cats were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. And they were domesticated, it's thought, somewhere in a place called the Fertile Crescent, which is sort of like around Egypt and that area. And 10,000 years ago was about the same time when we were building houses, starting to live in structures, starting to store grains and water. And when you start to create new ecosystems, in this case, human ecosystems, you start to attract other organisms, like mice and birds, that are attracted to that stored food and to that stored water. There are wild cats in those same areas that started to come into those areas because

• 8:01Speaker 05

  of food. It's not clear if they were captured and then bred, or if they were just sort of slowly domesticated over time. But over, you know, many, many generations, cats eventually became domesticated into pets.

• 8:18PJ Vogt?

  What is the difference, do you know, between sort of, cats and dogs, to me, feel like they're at different levels of domestication? Like, is that true, or is that even an answerable question?

• 8:28Speaker 05

  Oh, it is. So dogs have been domesticated, it's estimated, 40,000 years ago. And cats were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. And in fact, when you look at the number of breeds of dogs versus the number of breeds of cats, there are a lot more dog breeds than there are cat breeds, just because of the amount of time that people have had to domesticate and breed different types of dogs.

• 8:53PJ Vogt?

  I should probably tell you something about myself, which is just, I've always had dogs. I've never had a cat. I have a severe cat allergy. I did once try to get my hands on an experimental cat allergy vaccine, story for another time, but it didn't work out. And I've never had a cat as a pet. I appreciate cats. I like how they seem not completely tameable, sometimes even a little majestic. I actually asked Pete about this. The vibe I get even around domesticated house cats is just like, they seem to have a, they just seem half wild. They seem to have like a less subservient relationship to the humans that they live with than the miniature golden doodle that I spend my life with. Like, he just seems to have, the connection between him and a wolf just feels much further to me.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And that independence that that cat brings to people's lives is, in some ways, what attracts people to them, because they are actually seeing a certain type of behavior in that animal that they almost would see in the wild. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, there were dogs running around all over the place. And it was because of rabies that I think people started to realize that we needed to get dogs on leashes and get collared and get licenses for dogs. And we realized that we needed to take dog ownership much more seriously. People were being bit by dogs, dogs were carrying rabies, dogs were the number one domesticated species to transmit rabies.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Now, guess who is the number one domesticated species to transmit rabies?

• 10:21PJ Vogt?

  I'm gonna guess that it's cats.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right, because we've gotten dog ownership under control.

• 10:27PJ Vogt?

  We said prior to the 50s and 60s, it would have been normal in like, an American suburb, that you would just see like, a wandering dog or a pack of wandering dogs?

• 10:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I grew up in the coast of Connecticut, in Narwhal, Connecticut. And we adopted several dogs that we just found on the streets, no owners. And then, you know, I think what's happened over time is, after we got the dog thing under control, where you had to have your dog licensed, and you need to demonstrate that it had a rabies vaccine, it's all registered now. You know, one of my things is, is like, we did it with dogs, why aren't we doing it with cats? Why are cats allowed to roam free?

• 11:03PJ Vogt?

  Just to say, in most of America, owned cats are required to have rabies vaccines. And while cats may carry more rabies than any other domesticated animal, in absolute terms, the number of rabies exposure cases by cats is actually quite low. Pete will also point to the fact that cats are a vector for toxoplasmosis, a fascinating parasite, can be dangerous to a fetus if you're pregnant, but it exists and society functions. I think Pete's driving concern here isn't so much the risks that too many free-ranging cats pose to humans, it's the risk these cats pose to a different animal: birds.

• 11:44PJ Vogt?

  So what is the point where some people in America started to think, like, hey, there's a problem with our relationship with cats? I became aware of this very recently. I'm assuming this idea has more of an intellectual history than me noticing it. When does it start?

• 11:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's interesting, because it was actually in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when a guy by the name of Forbush started to write about and estimate the mortality the cats cause on wild birds.

• 12:11PJ Vogt?

  Forbush?

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Forbush, F-O-R-B-U-S-H, from Massachusetts.

• 12:16PJ Vogt?

  So the first person to sound the alarm was a bird expert?

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:19PJ Vogt?

  Presumably a bird lover?

• 12:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. He was an ecologist, and ornithologist was probably what he did mostly. And he's tried to sound the alarm multiple times.

• 12:31PJ Vogt?

  Edward Forbush wrote about cats with the same vivid, blood-spattered language that true crime podcasters use when they rewrite the Wikipedia pages of serial killers. In his book, The Domestic Cat: Bird Killer, Mouser, and Destroyer of Wildlife: Means of Utilizing and Controlling It, published in 1916, Forbush describes the cat's threat to wildlife thusly, quote, "No animal that it can reach and master is safe from its ravenous clutches," end of quote.

• 13:01PJ Vogt?

  Back in 1916, Forbush estimated that cats were killing 700,000 birds per year in a single state, Massachusetts. And he considered that to be a conservative estimate. Since then, many ecologists have tried to estimate the number of birds killed by cats, both by outdoor house cats and by free-ranging, unowned cats. Over the decades, they've come up with different numbers, measured in different places. But more than that, they've gotten an increasingly different response, as the question itself has become more polarizing.

• 13:36PJ Vogt?

  Pete told me a story about what happened to an academic he knew, who published one of these surveys in the 1990s.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  His name is Dr. Stanley Temple. He's now retired from University of Wisconsin. He did a first estimate, and the number of animals, birds, and small mammals that he estimated were being killed by cats a year in Wisconsin shook everybody at their core.

• 14:05PJ Vogt?

  When Dr. Temple conducted his study, he estimated that there were, conservatively, around 1.4 million free-ranging cats in Wisconsin, and that each of those cats was killing, on average, an estimated 5.6 birds per year. This would mean that something on the order of 7.8 million birds are killed by free-ranging cats in Wisconsin per year, a number which elicited a very strong reaction from cat advocates.

• 14:34Speaker 05

  He received death threats. He was challenged. And it was really, it was really simple math. It really wasn't anything complicated.

• 14:41PJ Vogt?

  Wait, so he received death threats?

• 14:43Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, as have I, many.

• 14:46PJ Vogt?

  From cat owners?

• 14:48Speaker 05

  Cat advocates.

• 14:49PJ Vogt?

  And what did they, why did they want to kill you?

• 14:52Speaker 05

  Because they see people that are making a claim that cats are having a negative impact on the environment as something that's threatening cats. They see this as something that will actually get people to kill cats, where they see it as an argument for removing cats from the landscape, and they recognize that there's not many solutions out there that are good for cats.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  When my book came out, there was definitely a campaign on Amazon to get as many people to attack my book as possible. I got written letters, lots of written letters from all over the world. I had phone messages.

• 15:35PJ Vogt?

  Wow.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  People threatening me. One cat advocacy organization showed up at my previous employer's main building with a box of signed petitions, trying to convince them to get me fired. This is, in many ways, it's all-out war. And it has been for a long, long time.

• 15:58PJ Vogt?

  We're going to return to the story of the Wisconsin cats and the death threats. But first, I want to tell you about the other side, the cat advocates. That's after the break.

• 16:16PJ Vogt?

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• 17:01PJ Vogt?

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• 17:14PJ Vogt?

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• 17:59PJ Vogt?

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• 18:28PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show.

• 18:34PJ Vogt?

  The national cat advocacy movement is actually pretty recent. It really took off in the 90s. One of the movement's early battles was against animal shelters that euthanize cats they can't find homes for. Their shelters are much rarer today. Cat advocates are part of the reason for that. If the phrase "no-kill shelter" exists in your head, that's partly because of that movement. The biggest, most organized of the cat advocacy groups is Alley Cat Allies, founded in 1990 in Bethesda, Maryland by a woman named Becky Robinson, the longtime face of the organization.

• 19:08Speaker 06

  Good morning. My name is Becky Robinson. I'm the president and co-founder of Alley Cat Allies.

• 19:15PJ Vogt?

  We reached out to Alley Cat Allies for an interview with Becky Robinson, but after a brief exchange, the PR person stopped replying. However, Alley Cat Allies is very active on social media and YouTube. There's tons of posted talks, so you can get a sense of where they're coming from.

• 19:30Speaker 06

  Everybody knows that cats have been living around us for 10,000 years. They are the only domesticated species, domestic animal, that is self-domesticated.

• 19:41PJ Vogt?

  Becky Robinson is speaking here at the 2015 No Kill Conference in Austin, Texas. She's a middle-aged woman with short, auburn hair. In photos, she's almost always smiling, usually petting a cat.

• 19:52Speaker 06

  You can see that this is just a timeline that I'm showing on the screen here, that they've lived around us even long before we knew that they were domestic cat. In Egypt, there were actually thousands of years prior to we now have research to show that they lived around people and their domains.

• 20:09PJ Vogt?

  It's fascinating. In this talk, she's essentially telling a similar multi-century history of the human-cat relationship that Pete Mara told me, although her version of the story ends with a different moral.

• 20:20Speaker 06

  Cats have always lived around us, and they are always going to live around us outside. That's a fact of life. It doesn't have to be a sad fact, it's just a fact.

• 20:27PJ Vogt?

  She says that cats living around us outside, whether they're pet cats or not, outdoor cats are just an inalienable law of the universe, something that has never changed, something that can never change.

• 20:37Speaker 06

  So here they are, there's millions of unowned cats, and so this is what we have to keep in mind, that what we're doing every day at Alley Cat Allies and what all of you doing are out in the field, is that we're correcting a horrible myth, and this myth is that the only way a cat can live is indoors. And that's just not correct.

• 20:58PJ Vogt?

  So that's the idea. Cats have a right to live freely outside. And if you're sold on this vision, Alley Cat Allies has videos explaining how to make your neighborhood a nice place for unowned, outdoor cats to live.

• 21:14PJ Vogt?

  This is from my personal favorite video, which explains how to have the talk with your neighbors, neighbors who might come to you because they're upset about the new cat colony that's been pooping and peeing in their yards.

• 21:24Speaker 06

  It's pretty typical for people to have a concern that cats are going in their garden or using their yard as a litter box. If you are the person who's caring for the cats, there is going to be a time when someone might approach you in your neighborhood. And you should look upon that as a very good thing if they're expressing some concerns.

• 21:44PJ Vogt?

  The video is fairly elaborate. There's an actor demonstrating how to properly nod and listen as your neighbor expresses their concerns. Becky Robinson offers her playbook for best practices for caring for the cats. It starts normally enough. She suggests you get them on a regular feeding schedule.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  So if you feed them in the morning or at the night, you want to do that at the same time every day.

• 22:05PJ Vogt?

  She says you should practice trap, neuter, return, meaning trap the cats and pay to have them neutered.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  You are getting those cats to a community cat veterinarian where they're going to be sterilized and vaccinated and ear tipped.

• 22:17PJ Vogt?

  You then return them to the neighborhood where they now permanently live. Once they're there, the video suggests you might go into your neighbor's garden and place deterrence there to keep the community cats from digging things up.

• 22:28Speaker 06

  You might have coffee grounds to put in the soil that distracts cats.

• 22:32PJ Vogt?

  As the train of friendly suggestions continues, it does gradually dawn on you, the viewer, that this all assumes you're willing to substantially reorient your life in your new role as self-appointed ambassador for a cat colony.

• 22:45Speaker 06

  You know, you may have to purchase a few things. I've been known to actually buy bags of river rocks and putting them in gardens. And that keeps cats out of the gardens from digging. Or the scat mat.

• 22:55PJ Vogt?

  Perhaps your neighbor owns a fancy sports car, and you suspect the cats might be tempted to go on it. Well, Becky Robinson has a solution for that, too.

• 23:02Speaker 06

  Going on cars. And if it's a brand new car and someone's very proud of it, you might need to buy a car cover. So you might want to bring the products over and help your neighbor set them up or offer to set them up.

• 23:14PJ Vogt?

  It's easy to make fun of all this, and I guess I am. There's just something about imagining someone opening the door to their neighbor, handing them a car cover for their yellow Mercedes, and explaining, "Cats have lived outdoors for 10,000 years, it's never going to stop. But I went to the store, and I bought you some river rocks and this car cover. You can use it every time you park." It's just a lot. I also recognize that this is compassionate, arguably communitarian behavior from the Alley Cat Allies.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  And that's being neighborly. Maybe asking, calling Alley Cat Allies to find that inner peace and those ways to communicate because you really are the voice for the cats. They don't have anybody else.

• 23:54PJ Vogt?

  What you will not find on the Alley Cat Allies website is a video with suggestions about how to protect your neighborhood birds from your new neighborhood cats. And that's because the organization doesn't believe that cats are a serious threat to birds. Presented with numbers from ecologists like Pete Mara, Alley Cat Allies says those numbers are, quote, "false data." This entire story of cats versus birds, it's really a fight about humans and data, about people refusing to believe each other's charts. And that fight took center stage in the story of Stanley Temple, the former colleague Pete Mara told us about, the one who got death threats. Remember, Stanley Temple had published estimates about the amount of bird deaths in Wisconsin in the late 1990s. Here's Temple.

• 24:37Speaker 07

  We began our work, which was aimed not at justifying persecuting cats, but simply to understand what the ecological impacts of the large number of free-ranging cats in rural Wisconsin might be.

• 24:52PJ Vogt?

  This is from a 2008 documentary called Here Kitty Kitty, about a fight in Wisconsin over a proposed measure that would allow for uncollared, unowned cats to be killed in the wild. Stanley Temple himself didn't personally endorse that measure, but he does appear in the documentary. Temple is a mild-mannered, bespectacled academic with a vest and a beard. You're going to hear some of the death threats against him in a moment, but for now, what I marvel at is how unlikely to inspire death threats this person seems.

• 25:20Speaker 07

  Grassland birds in Wisconsin were declining very significantly. They were becoming probably one of the most significant groups of declining birds for conservationists to worry about in the state. And all of the dimensions, all of the reasons for those declines in grassland birds were not fully understood. So, the role of cats was perhaps a logical question. What role did?

• 25:49PJ Vogt?

  Alley Cat Allies is not in this documentary, though they have released a statement attacking Temple's research. In the film, the activist side is represented by a local pet store owner running a website called don'tshootthecat.com. He also has a lot to say about Stanley Temple's research.

• 26:05Speaker 08

  Wow, I would certainly like to work on making sure that we correct some of the misimpressions that have been left out there, especially when it comes to those numbers. First of all, a feral cat is not a wild cat. It's just an unsocialized domestic cat, and our animal cruelty laws currently in Wisconsin protect those cats. And so, what we want to do is really make sure that we had good science before we went into this.

• 26:24PJ Vogt?

  The advocate makes it clear that he does not trust Dr. Temple's research. He raises insinuations about the source of Temple's funding, about the pedigree of the journals who would publish this kind of work.

• 26:34Speaker 08

  Those numbers, and those numbers you referred to are the Dr. Stanley Temple study, are highly questionable. And as you said, those are estimates, and they're not at all scientific data. This is not published scientific data we're talking about. This is a study, not a study at all, in fact, a report that was published over 10 years ago. This is not new information. It's completely based on estimates that are wildly exaggerated. It's really based on the relationship between Dr. Stanley Temple and the American Bird Conservancy, which is probably the most rabidly anti-cat special interest lobby group in the United States. So I don't know that we can take Dr. Stanley Temple's science seriously.

• 27:05PJ Vogt?

  I want to pause to appreciate the American poetry of the phrase "probably the most rabidly anti-cat special interest lobby group."

• 27:14PJ Vogt?

  Also, one wonders if calling someone rabidly "anything" in this context is more loaded than in others. Anyway, the primary reason cat advocates had a problem with Temple's research was that it was serving as supporting evidence for this measure, the one that would have designated feral cats as unprotected, therefore allowing people to hunt, trap, or kill them in the badger state. An unpleasant idea, which to some cat advocates sounded deeply repugnant. So much so that some of these advocates started calling Dr. Temple and leaving threatening voicemails.

• 27:46Speaker 09

  Monday, 11:06 PM, line one.

• 27:51Speaker 10

  You cat murdering bastard. What goes around, comes around. I declare Stanley Temple season open.

• 28:04PJ Vogt?

  Just to be clear, there's no reason to believe these voicemails came from any official activist group. Every cause has its extremists.

• 28:13PJ Vogt?

  Ultimately, in the face of public backlash, the measure failed. After initial public hearings, the state declined to pursue the issue further. The governor expressed the idea that the whole "Wisconsin shoots cats" thing was bad for the state's brand. The documentary was filmed in 2005. Nearly two decades later, the state estimates that a third of Wisconsin's native bird species are now in decline. The fight, though, over why that number keeps dropping, continues. Here's something I struggle with. I'm honestly not really a cat or a bird partisan. I'm the undecided voter both sides would like to reach. I am absolutely ready to trust the data, saying a lot of birds have died since the early 2000s. But I'm also aware that human beings must be a giant part of this.

• 28:58PJ Vogt?

  Global warming, wind turbines, the addition my mom put on her kitchen, where the birds are always flying in the windows, cars, power lines, my cousin Kip in Texas, who likes to hunt quail. Are we just treating cats as a scapegoat here? Pete Mara says absolutely not. In 2013, he published a data analysis with an academic named Scott Loss, comparing a lot of different ways that birds die. This analysis represented a pretty huge salvo in the cat advocates versus bird ecologists' data war.

• 29:27Speaker 05

  We looked at, relative to other causes of anthropogenic mortality, that is, mortality caused directly by humans. So think wind turbines, or birds that fly into buildings, or windows, or, say, birds that are killed by cats. We collected all of the relevant data out there, where people estimated, because there've been a bunch of studies, globally, where they looked at the number of birds, or mammals, or reptiles, that cats kill on a daily or weekly basis throughout the year. And when you look at the total number, then you look at the estimates for the total number of cats. And you can separate cats by cats that are owned, that are let outside, or unowned cats that are outside, or what we call truly feral cats,

• 30:10Speaker 05

  that have no connection to humans whatsoever, which we have a very poor understanding of, in terms of the numbers. You can estimate the population size, multiply that times the number of individual animals that that cat might kill, and you can come up with an estimate for how many birds, or mammals, or reptiles are likely killed by cats in a given year. And you can do the same thing for wind turbines, you can do the same thing for cars. We did this. And? And, this was the shot heard around the world when our paper was published in Nature Communications. We estimated that cats kill somewhere between 1.3 billion and 4 billion birds a year in the United States. That's birds alone. Billion? Billion with a big old B.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  1.3 to 4 billion. And the range is so high because the studies are all over the map. You know, they just are. I think the median was 2.7 billion per year. But even if it's the low number, at 1.3 billion birds per year, that was higher than most other estimates out there. But it's still, the low estimate is still very, very high. Do we need more research? Well, I don't know if we really need, from a scientific perspective, to try to refine the estimate. Maybe we need more research just to try to get a finer point on that number. But in terms of the conservation solution, no. We don't need more research to know that cats outdoors are just a problem, for all kinds of reasons.

• 31:40PJ Vogt?

  There are some problems that are genuinely quite confusing. There are other problems we convince ourselves are confusing, I suspect, because even though we could understand them, we don't want to. These are inconvenient truths that, rather than addressing head-on, we procrastinate about. We ask the scientists to go draw us another chart, to run the numbers one more time. It buys us time before we have to do something that might be very tedious, or, in the case of some of these cats, very unpleasant.

• 32:08Speaker 11

  The federal government has declared war on feral cats, hoping to save thousands of native species from the brink of extinction.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  Countries like New Zealand or in Australia are dealing with this. They're on the front lines of it, really, because they've got such a feral cat problem, outdoor cat problem. And Australia introduced a cat cull.

• 32:29Speaker 12

  This is the felixer, a feral cat trap, which lures in feral cats using recorded mating calls or the sounds of distressed prey before.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  Because there are so many cats roaming free in wild areas. And so they've put out bounties for folks to go out and shoot cats.

• 32:52PJ Vogt?

  Pete Mara is saying if we don't control cat populations now, we could end up like Australia, where people are just shooting lots of cats. Ironically, alley cat allies, the people who fight for the rights of cats to live outside, they also point to Australia. In fact, this video they made of a specific, very brutal cat call there is, at least for me, some of their most effective political messaging.

• 33:15Speaker 13

  She said she'd walked out onto the wall and there was these piles of food and blood. Something had happened. She thought perhaps they'd been poisoned. Injured cats, cats missing, trails of blood. More blood.

• 33:35PJ Vogt?

  At one point in the video, text appears on the screen saying that in 2020, a contractor for the port of Newcastle came to the cat colony at night, quote, "shooting at any cat he saw."

• 33:46Speaker 13

  Lily had been shot a few times in the head. She had bullets through her skull.

• 33:56Speaker 13

  We were all in tears, you know. We love these cats and to see that someone had deliberately hurt them.

• 34:03PJ Vogt?

  Becky Robinson of Alley Cat Allies appears in the video and explains there was never a reason to kill those poor cats. She says the situation was already humanely under control.

• 34:13Speaker 06

  There was non-lethal control in place. It had been carried out by people who had sterilized the cats. In Australia, it's referred to as de-sexed. The cats had been microchipped, they'd been vaccinated, and they were not breeding.

• 34:27PJ Vogt?

  The local advocates say that before the call, they were using the same practice Becky Robinson was promoting in her community cat video, TNR.

• 34:35Speaker 13

  We focus on TNR, which is trap, neuter, release. When we started here at the Breakwall just under two years ago, there were over 100 cats. In that time we've been here, we've reduced the numbers to 40, and that's when the cull happened.

• 34:53PJ Vogt?

  Cat advocates like Alley Cat Allies believe TNR, neutering outdoor cats, is the right way to control these populations. If they can't reproduce, they'll gradually die out. It sounds like the kind of elegant, humane solution that everyone could get on board with. The problem is ecologists in general say TNR doesn't really work. Part of the problem is just cats reproduce very quickly. According to PETA, under the right set of conditions, in seven years, one female cat and her offspring can produce up to 370,000 cats. Which means for TNR to work, you'd need to catch, neuter, and release something like 75% of a feral cat colony every single year. How do you know you have 75%? I don't know.

• 35:37PJ Vogt?

  How do you stop new cats from migrating into the colony from outside? Who could say? I emailed Pete Mara about the TNR program in Newcastle. He hadn't heard about it, but found the numbers suspicious. This wasn't a scientific study. He wanted to know, why would neutering a colony have caused 60 of these 100 cats to just suddenly disappear in two years? He wrote, quote, "I absolutely do not trust the data." Pete Mara believes the end result of these ineffective TNR programs is our status quo: many cats living wild lives in human cities. And he says these cats, they're not okay.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  These cats that are outdoors are not doing well. These cats have injuries, these cats have diseases, these cats have leukemia, these cats have feline AIDS, these cats are hit by cars.

• 36:28PJ Vogt?

  Feline AIDS?

• 36:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. There's all sorts of diseases that these cats contract: pathogens, worms. The way they're most commonly killed is by getting hit by a car. And that's not a good way for an animal to die. I mean, it's just, any way you slice it, it's just not a good way for an animal to die.

• 36:50PJ Vogt?

  Pete Mara is not the only person who believes that unknown cats are living lives so bad that euthanizing them would be a superior option. His worldview is shared by PETA. From PETA, quote, "Allowing feral cats to continue their daily struggle for survival in a hostile environment is rarely a humane option," end quote. PETA says kill the cats. I mean, PETA would say euthanize, but still. It's tricky, though, because the word euthanize is very bland, and a bloody video like that one from Australia is very powerful. In the proxy war between cats and birds and the people who defend them, you could imagine a counter video, shot from the perspective of an innocent, fluffy,

• 37:35PJ Vogt?

  adorable, piping plover chick, looking up from its nest at the ferocious jaws and teeth of a bored, stray, killer cat. But I'm not sure the video would work. We just don't relate as much to birds. We certainly don't relate to the declining aggregate numbers of bird populations. We relate to cats: to Garfield, to Felix, to Vertute, to all the ones we've seen on the internet, all the ones we've pet in our homes and in the homes of our friends. We love cats, but we also need to protect the birds. Wars persist because neither side can see the other as reasonable. Wars end when people make space for competing truths.

• 38:21PJ Vogt?

  After a short break, we find someone who actually sits in the middle of this intractable war, who seems to think about it differently than anyone else. It's after some ads.

• 38:44PJ Vogt?

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• 39:30PJ Vogt?

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• 39:47PJ Vogt?

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• 40:30PJ Vogt?

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• 40:54PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky, and let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard. Vanguard bonds are institutional quality, meaning top-grade products built as a true commitment to your clients. Their impressive lineup features over 80 bond funds actively driven by a global team of 200 sector specialists, analysts and traders. While other firms push star portfolio managers, Vanguard relies on collective brainpower, so every client benefits from shared expertise. Instead of chasing high-stakes gambles that lead to volatile rides, Vanguard delivers steady, reliable and consistent performance designed for the long haul.

• 41:39PJ Vogt?

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• 42:05PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show. I wanted to talk to someone who could hold this entire argument in their mind, someone who could see this from both perspectives. One voice came to mind. This person who owned multiple pet cats, but I also knew to be the greatest bird lover I've ever met. When we spoke, and we spoke often, it was usually about the lives of birds. So I invited him to the studio. So normally, when we interview experts on the podcast, there are people who are like public intellectuals, like writers or professors, you know, there are people who have a lot of expertise in their field. So I just want to establish your bona fides.

• 42:48PJ Vogt?

  Can you tell me the highest level of education you've completed?

• 42:53Speaker 14

  I graduated fifth grade, now I'm in sixth grade.

• 42:56PJ Vogt?

  Pretty good grades, though, right?

• 42:57Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 42:57PJ Vogt?

  Okay. And what do you think is the subject that you know more about than anything else?

• 43:02Speaker 14

  Birds.

• 43:03PJ Vogt?

  How do you know so much about birds, Callan?

• 43:06Speaker 14

  Um, when I was young, I just clicked on random videos on YouTube and then I just saw like these bird videos and then I just started watching that. Also, what also like influenced me a lot was because when I had chickens for like five years.

• 43:22PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 14

  That also influenced me a lot about birds.

• 43:25PJ Vogt?

  Calden, easily one of the most charming people I've ever met. Half Swiss, half Tibetan, raised in the ways of two peace-loving, neutrality-seeking cultures. We'd spend a lot of time on long drives where he would just talk about birds and offer bird facts. Some kids get into trains for a while, or fire trucks, or dinosaurs, but for Calden, it was birds. It had been birds for as long as I'd known him. And I really had begun to appreciate birds more through our conversations, a species that, unlike cats and dogs, have mostly resisted the cheap bribery of human domestication, who keep to the skies, who feel alien and strange and have never pretended to belong to us. I just want to, for someone, because one of the reasons I enjoy spending time with you so much is I like asking you about birds because you know everything about birds.

• 44:10Speaker 14

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:11PJ Vogt?

  But I just want to establish that for other people. So do you mind if I ask you some bird trivia questions?

• 44:15Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 44:18PJ Vogt?

  What species of bird lays blue eggs?

• 44:21Speaker 14

  Merkin robin.

• 44:22PJ Vogt?

  What's the word for the study of birds?

• 44:24Speaker 14

  Ornithology.

• 44:25PJ Vogt?

  What's the fastest bird in the world?

• 44:27Speaker 14

  Pergon falcon.

• 44:28PJ Vogt?

  What's the biggest bird in the world?

• 44:30Speaker 14

  An ostrich.

• 44:32PJ Vogt?

  What about the biggest bird in the world who's extinct?

• 44:35Speaker 14

  Uh, I think it was either the moa or the elephant bird is the heaviest. I know the moa is probably the tallest.

• 44:41PJ Vogt?

  I, I have elephant bird, but I have no doubt that you are more correct than this website that I've found. Uh, what species of bird can only eat when its head is upside down?

• 44:49Speaker 14

  Flamingos?

• 44:50PJ Vogt?

  Yep. What species of bird can fly backwards?

• 44:52Speaker 14

  Hummingbirds?

• 44:54PJ Vogt?

  You're seven for seven so far. What species of bird can fly underwater?

• 45:00Speaker 14

  Penguins or puffins technically either of those. They don't technically fly underwater, but they look like they fly underwater.

• 45:07PJ Vogt?

  Again, you're doing better than my website.

• 45:10Speaker 14

  What was the website's answer?

• 45:11PJ Vogt?

  Uh, they just said the puffin, but I think you're right. Cause I was like flying underwater. I'm not sure.

• 45:15Speaker 14

  Well, I guess puffin because puffins fly above water and underwater. So I guess that's what they mean.

• 45:20PJ Vogt?

  But I think you're being a bit more precise than they are. I think you're more correct than they are. How many different bird species are there in the world?

• 45:27Speaker 14

  Over 10,000, I'm pretty sure.

• 45:30PJ Vogt?

  There's some debate, but the most widely accepted number seems to be around 10,000. Okay, that's perfect. When I first wanted to talk to Calden, I just assumed he'd be a voice speaking for the birds. But then I saw this school project he did and I realized he actually had feelings in both directions. So I want to ask you about an experiment you did involving chickens.

• 45:50Speaker 14

  Oh, you mean when I hatched those eggs?

• 45:52PJ Vogt?

  Tell me about it.

• 45:53Speaker 14

  Um, we did it for a science experiment, none hatched. I don't know why. We're gonna try next year with duck eggs.

• 46:00PJ Vogt?

  Well, so I became aware of your science experiment because I had stopped by your school during the science fair and I saw the experiments and I was very impressed with yours. Not to disparage your classmates, but I found yours impressive.

• 46:12PJ Vogt?

  And in your display for the experiment, it included a little biography of you.

• 46:18Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:18PJ Vogt?

  And there was a part of it that surprised me that I wanted to ask you about, if that's okay?

• 46:22Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:23PJ Vogt?

  Okay, can I read it to you?

• 46:24Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:26PJ Vogt?

  Hi, my name's Calden. I'm 11 years old.

• 46:30PJ Vogt?

  I'm in fifth grade and I have two cats.

• 46:32Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:32PJ Vogt?

  I love fishing, skiing and animals.

• 46:34Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:34PJ Vogt?

  Ever since I was three, I was fascinated by birds.

• 46:36Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:37PJ Vogt?

  I've owned four chickens here in New York. Sadly, they all died.

• 46:39Speaker 14

  Exactly.

• 46:40PJ Vogt?

  Now I want to hatch. You're agreeing with yourself.

• 46:45PJ Vogt?

  Now I want to hatch new ones.

• 46:47Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:47PJ Vogt?

  Chickens are way smarter and social than people think.

• 46:49Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:50PJ Vogt?

  My chickens, for example, were always trying to escape.

• 46:52Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 46:52PJ Vogt?

  With cats, they do what they want and you can't change what they do. But with chickens, you have to stop the issue and the rush of stopping them is so nice. What did you mean when you said the rush of stopping them was so nice?

• 47:05Speaker 14

  Having to change the way of them escaping all the time was fun because they always found it a new way to escape. So then you have to try and solve the issue. Like when they were young, you have to bring them outside and that's fun to always move them. With cats, they just do what they want and you can't really stop them because they can wander on, they know the neighborhood. Chickens, you can interfere because if you don't interfere, they're not used to the city. They're smart, but they're not that smart that they might get run over by a car if they escape the whole time.

• 47:35PJ Vogt?

  It sounds like for you, raising chickens was kind of like having a young child, whereas having cats was like you were raising a teenager.

• 47:42Speaker 14

  Kind of.

• 47:43PJ Vogt?

  Can we talk about cats?

• 47:44Speaker 14

  Okay.

• 47:45PJ Vogt?

  Do you have cats? You have one cat shadow.

• 47:47Speaker 14

  No, I had.

• 47:48PJ Vogt?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 47:49Speaker 14

  He died like two years ago. Now I have three cats. One was dragon fruit, that's the one in June. Those two are living inside and the one that's outside is his mama cat.

• 47:58PJ Vogt?

  Mama cat.

• 47:59Speaker 14

  Because he just gave birth to dragon fruit.

• 48:01PJ Vogt?

  So have your cats ever killed a bird that you know of?

• 48:05Speaker 14

  Oh yeah, many times.

• 48:06PJ Vogt?

  Many times?

• 48:07Speaker 14

  Just many sparrows. Once this weird like swallow looking bird.

• 48:11PJ Vogt?

  You love birds.

• 48:13Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 48:14PJ Vogt?

  Does it bother you?

• 48:15Speaker 14

  I mean, I'm upset about it, but it's no different when they bring in a mouse.

• 48:19PJ Vogt?

  It's not different.

• 48:20Speaker 14

  And I also found in the corner of this garage at the house, there was like a dead blue jay corpse. It was like a body and then the head was detached and then there was like a wing detached. But I was impressed, but also sad because blue jays are very big birds.

• 48:35PJ Vogt?

  How long did you feel sad for him?

• 48:37Speaker 14

  I mean, not that, I didn't cry. I was just like upset and like, oh, come on, like that feeling.

• 48:43PJ Vogt?

  Calden said he couldn't imagine forcing his cat to live entirely inside. It'd be boring, it'd be unfair. But he also believes birds have rights that need balancing. I suggested cats might be killing more birds than he realizes, but of course, he said he was familiar with the literature. Calden's feeling was that to solve this problem, you'd actually need to think outside of the box. What's your vision for the future of how cats and birds in America can get along? Because people who have house cats everywhere want them to be able to roam free, but there are places where it's a real problem.

• 49:17Speaker 14

  Places where it's a real problem, the easiest thing to do is just give your cats a bell on like the collar so that when the cats move and try to creep up on the birds, it makes like a sound so the birds can hear it. And then they can just fly away or walk, scare away.

• 49:32PJ Vogt?

  Do you have any other ideas? I think that's a good one.

• 49:36Speaker 14

  Let me think.

• 49:37PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 49:38Speaker 14

  Maybe having like your cats either less outside, not outside at all, or hmm, that's all my ideas.

• 49:51PJ Vogt?

  I think those are good ideas.

• 49:55PJ Vogt?

  I had not expected to find myself taking an 11 year old's ideas back to an academic like Pete Mara, but I found Calhoun's perspective refreshing. I know human culture changes slowly, stubbornly, but I also know technology can accelerate those changes. It actually felt easier to imagine popularizing bells on cat collars than it did convincing people with outdoor cats to just start keeping them inside. Pete Mara is a bit skeptical about bells, but he is a believer in this idea that technology can help birds and cats and people coexist on our planet. And he sees some of those technologies taking off.

• 50:34Speaker 05

  Since I've started to work on this issue, I've seen, no question, an increase in the number of folks that are walking their cats on leashes. I see more people that are aware of this issue at all and they just say, yeah, we're cat owners, but we're indoor cat owners, which is totally, totally fine. That's great. And we also see a growth in something called cattios, which are

• 50:56PJ Vogt?

  Cattios.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  Cattios, which are screened in cat enclosures. So your cat can go outside, enjoy outdoors, can watch and get stimulated by nature, just like, you know, we get stimulated by nature because it's in their best interest to be stimulated by nature so they're happy, but not cause any damage to birds. But they can watch a bird fly by without actually killing the bird.

• 51:22PJ Vogt?

  So you see people changing the architecture of their homes because they're trying to find a balance between their love for their pet and their desire to conserve nature?

• 51:32Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yep, it's happening in lots of places.

• 51:35PJ Vogt?

  I had no idea that was happening.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, just Google catio and you'll see more and more folks putting up cattios in their houses to accommodate their cat.

• 51:44PJ Vogt?

  Oh yeah, I'm looking at some gorgeous cattios. I think I was just picturing a covered patio, but it's real small for some reason. And this is more like, it's sort of like a cage, but it doesn't look particularly. It's somewhere between a cage and a jungle gym.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, and there's all kinds of versions out there. But the point is, is that it allows your cat to have controlled access to the outdoors where there aren't native wildlife that will be injured by the cat.

• 52:14PJ Vogt?

  So what are we gonna do about all these cats? If you believe the ecologists, our house cats are looking at a future of bells, cat leashes, and cattios. And this is the harder part. Some unknown cats need to be humanely killed, particularly in places like the islands of Hawaii and Australia, where they're wiping out endangered species. Cats, Pete Mara says, have already contributed to the execution of 63 species on this planet.

• 52:42PJ Vogt?

  He thinks we should try to prevent the 64th.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  I look at these natural areas, when I see a bird, that to me is like going into a museum and seeing a Monet or a Picasso. This is our natural history that we're losing. It's like losing a Monet on the wall when you lose a species. And we know that species loss is a massive problem. And we almost lost species like the bald eagle. Could you imagine if we didn't have the bald eagle in the United States, our national bird? And now thankfully, we got rid of DDT and the bald eagle came back. And future generations can now appreciate species like the bald eagle and the brown pelican and the osprey because we protected them. And we have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the earth. I mean, I don't know if that's convincing to you or not, but it's convincing to me.

• 53:30PJ Vogt?

  I feel like a general sense of like, we should conserve species. I just feel like, I feel like who cares about the birds is probably... It's a taboo thing to say, you know? Nobody's going to advocate for the extinction of a species. But if you, while nobody would say that, if you look at people's behavior, clearly, people believe that, you know?

• 53:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. I think, I think there are some people that are thinking that. But I, you know, at the end of the day, I also think that a lot of folks on the other side of the aisle that are cat advocates are also animal advocates. And they're in a quandary, honestly, because they love wildlife. They love nature. They love cats. And they want to believe that cats are not having the impact that they're having because the solution here is just not great. It's a difficult situation, any way you slice it. And I, I think that many of them really appreciate birds and like birds, but they don't know what to do within the short timeframe that they're present on this planet and don't think that their single cat or their five cats really matter.

• 54:33PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  But they do. But they do. They have a hard time scaling it up. And I see it because I think about things at much larger scales.

• 54:47PJ Vogt?

  Today, more than 100 million American cats live mostly outdoor lives. If Dr. Pete Mara and people like him are able to convince people to see the world how they see it, that'll change. They'll have to do something that seems impossible, convince people that their individual choices add up to something larger. But that impossible thing has been done before. We don't smoke inside. We don't litter. Our dogs in America rarely roam free. Pete Mara says it's important that we change all this because there's a generation after us that'll inherit the earth we leave behind.

• 55:21PJ Vogt?

  Calder, are you 11 right now or 12?

• 55:23Speaker 14

  11.

• 55:24PJ Vogt?

  I interview a lot of people who know more than me, but they're usually not 11.

• 55:29PJ Vogt?

  Just saying. What do you want to do when you grow up?

• 55:32Speaker 14

  Be an ornithologist, well, go to college. And then I want to go to the, what college is it called? The bird col-, the...

• 55:42PJ Vogt?

  There's a bird college?

• 55:43Speaker 14

  Not bird college, but it's like you can study ornithology there. It's, um, Cornell, Cornell University.

• 55:52PJ Vogt?

  I've heard of that. I've heard of Cornell University. And they have a good ornithology program?

• 55:57Speaker 14

  I think so. I'm pretty sure.

• 55:59PJ Vogt?

  And so after Cornell, would you want to be a professional ornithologist?

• 56:02Speaker 14

  Yes.

• 56:03PJ Vogt?

  Do you think you'll ever be less interested in birds than you are right now?

• 56:07Speaker 14

  Um, probably not. Maybe when I'm like in the teenage years.

• 56:13PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 14

  Cause then I'm not gonna care about that much. Then I'm just gonna care about like Fortnite with friends or like something like that, like COD or something.

• 56:21PJ Vogt?

  So boring.

• 56:22Speaker 14

  Exactly.

• 56:23PJ Vogt?

  Thank you.

• 56:25Speaker 14

  You're welcome.

• 57:03PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by VistaPrint. As a small business owner running a podcast, I'm always looking for authentic ways to connect with listeners, which makes VistaPrint such a valued expert partner for us. I was on their site the other day brainstorming new things we could make for our show, and the creative momentum took over. I ended up designing search engine stickers and I tried to make a sign for our office. When your physical branding looks this sharp and professional, it immediately communicates credibility and shows your audience that you mean business. VistaPrint truly helps every dollar go further, delivering premium quality and design support that make your company look established without breaking the bank. Whether you need your design tweaked or a total rebrand, VistaPrint has you covered with the expert service small businesses deserve.

• 57:47PJ Vogt?

  That's why over 17 million businesses trust them every day to bring their ideas to life. VistaPrint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at vistaprint.com using code NEW20.

• 58:15PJ Vogt?

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Trudy Pinamaneni. This episode was produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Special thanks this week to Kim Naderveen-Petersa and to May Abdullahholu. At Odyssey, our executive producer is Leah Reese-Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gainer, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk Courtney and Hillary Shaff. Our agent is Orin Rosenbaum at UTA. If you would like to support our show, get ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and some additional audio, please consider signing up for incognito mode.

• 58:58PJ Vogt?

  You can learn more at searchengine.show. Follow and listen to Search Engine for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.