cats and mixi...

[locum76]

after watching my young cat playing with another half dead and squealing rabbit (a really horrible noise) it occured to me that if she were to come across a rabbit with mixamitosis, she might get infected.

does anyone know if cats can get this nasty disease?

 

[Montivagus]

Unfortunately for britains wildlife,they can't!

 

[Jodie]

According to Wikipedia myxomatosis infects only rabbits.

Apparently the fleas of cats (dogs etc.) can harbour the myxoma virus and
pass them on to the rabbit, but from your post it sounds like that's the least
of the rabbit's concerns.

If you google myxomatosis cats there are some other interesting bits of info.

Jo

 

[locum76]

my cat is wormed and treated for fleas so she won't pass it around.

i think im going to get a collar and bell for her by the way - to protect next years garden birds. she's one year old now becoming a very effective predator.

 

[shona]

Locum, I can't warn you too strongly against cats and collars. Cats get into all sorts of awkward places and collars can get hooked onto branches etc, which could strangle the cat.

My friend's cat went missing for a couple of weeks then turned up having got its front leg stuck through the collar. The collar had eaten deeply into the flesh of both the neck and armpit (or feline equivalent.) The cat was in a terrible state and was very lucky not to lose it's leg, or to have choked.

.

 

[Stew]

My friend's cat went missing for a couple of weeks then turned up having got its front leg stuck through the collar. The collar had eaten deeply into the flesh of both the neck and armpit (or feline equivalent.) The cat was in a terrible state and was very lucky not to lose it's leg, or to have choked.
.

Eh?

How did it manage to do that?

 

[shona]

We assume it got stuck somewhere, caught by the collar and in a panic to escape, got its foot jammed through the collar while trying to claw it off.
Once the leg was through there was nothing the cat could do to free himself. He didn't come home for a couple of weeks, so maybe he was stuck for a while.
Not a pretty picture

.

 

[Spacemonkey]

I too have witnessed cats almost coming a cropper with collars. Not nice..

My dog doesn't have one either, but always has his harness on instead when out which also gives a nice secure dog carrying handle! I have a large kit marker beta light clipped on the top so I can see him in the dark when he trots off.

 

[Tengu]

I wouldnt collar my cats either.

unless I took them away then they would have them with contact details.

 

[woodchips]

My partner and I were thinking of getting a cat at sometime, but I had allways been worried about the environmental impact and had thought the collar and bell idea had been the way to go, but now hearing the cat strangling experiences I am not so sure.

Is there an alternative to a collar for attaching a bell to a cat, short of piercings etc!

 

[dave k]

I thought you could get the elasticated collar's? They are secure enough to stay put, but if the cat gets stuck and really pulls it expands and the cat gets off.

 

[Zodiak]

I thought you could get the elasticated collar's? They are secure enough to stay put, but if the cat gets stuck and really pulls it expands and the cat gets off.

SWMBO has this revolting black feline crap machine that whines and crys all the time.

It its youth it was an efficient hunter which used to really me off as I was trying to encourage wildlife to the area, so our bird feeders are on 2m slick poles, and our pond is like an aquatic fort knox, not to mention the hedgehog habitats with brick entrances or the baby one we looked after in our living room last winter

As a vague attempt to apease my wishes she tried all manner of collars none of which were effective. The leather one got stuck on a rose bush, she kept getting paws trapped in the elasticated one so that only lasted a week, and the velcro one didn't last 24 hours, it just went missing. Personally I was up for a bit of paracord round its neck but she wasn't having any of that so its free to roam, although I point blank refuse to clean up its kills, its puke afterwards, or its "mudsharks" when it "gets confused because its so old"

At least it leaves my daughters rabbits alone because the buck is very protective of his "bitches" and kicks the living out of the cat every time it gets near them, or any other cat come to that, but then he IS the big mean moody mother on the block and goes for humans too given the choice. I don't think he realises that he is supposed to be a herbivore.

 

[Marts]

My cats have plastic collars that snap if put under serious tension. In fact one of them caught its collar on a fence when she was younger and before I could get to her she had twisted about madly and the collar snapped off, so I know they work!
They're available in supermarkets and pet stores

 

[locum76]

yeah the environmental impact is something to think about. theres hundreds of house sparrows in the hedge around my garden and the cat has fun and games with them. she's had a couple of rabbits but i'm not worried about them too much because theres hundreds and they eat the cabbages. i'd be miffed if she appeared with a finch or something though. there's definitely a niche in the market for a cat friendly bird warning device...

 

[C_Claycomb]

OT
Cat collars. Ours has a collar and bell, the collar has a bit of elastic in it, not too much. A cat that is mousing tends not to move too much, the bell has not stopped ours catching mice, voles and a few young birds, even a couple of young rabbits before he got too middle-aged and dignified to get up to that kind of thing. The bell only serves to help us find him at night when it is time to get the little blighter indoors!

He has only been d-collared once after getting hung up, and has never had a foot caught. I reckon it must go down to the individual animal whether they try to push the collar off, or scratch in such a way as to get a paw caught. Getting hung up in the brush is a real problem though and collars do have to have the give to let the cat escape.

We got our cat from the RSPCA, he had been hit by a car on the far side of our town and had no ID, and no chip, it was suspected that he wasn't from that area. Cats aren't always the smartest critters and ours did like to explore the inside of visiting delivery vans and such!

 

[Klenchblaize]

Sorry to add to those who’ve already taken this away from the original question but I too feel there is a great deal more cat owners could do to make life that bit easier for our songbird population and this might best start with some 90% of owners facing up to the fact that they own a predator born of superb hunting skills. In fact this is just about all they are good at!

Put another way you wouldn’t buy a whippet and then be surprised when it ran after rabbits but, talk to so many cat owners, and they would have you believe the hunting gene has been surgically removed from their particular model!

I remember one summer when my wife and I seemed to spend all our spare time defending a flycatchers nest from the attention of no less than five cats and armed with nothing more than a washing up liquid bottle filed with cold water. Even this drew gasps of horror from the owners when I told them why their cats were wet!

To avoid strangulation when using a collar with bell why not have cats ears pierced and attach suitably proportioned earring bells???? Could develop into the latest pet fashion statement in certain parts of West London! Yes, I am very serious.

Cheers

 

[madelinew]

Bells on cats collars make no difference. They are so stealthy in their stalking and quick at the pounce that their prey know nothing about it until they've been got. As for mixi, I can confirm it doesn't pass to cats but fleas on cats do carry it. This I discovered after nursing my kids pet rabbit with mixi and being told by the vet how it can pass to domestic rabbits. Ten days of crap and we had to have it destroyed anyway. It was awful to watch - and hear. And I shy away from collars altogether having rescued a cat that had one embed in it's neck when it got caught on a branch and attempted to twist free. After that, my own cat's collar was removed. As for ID, in the UK it is fairly common to have ID chips injected into cats and dogs and any strays are scanned by rescue centres as a matter of course to check if one is present.

A cat wasn't responsible for our rabbit's mixi on this occasion though. She and a wild rabbit had been squaring up to each other through the mesh run.

 

[mick miller]

The answer to a predatory cat is simple...just overfeed it until it´s too fat and lethargic to even bother chasing birds! Works for mine, in fact I swear the local robin taunts him in his obesity by sitting on the fence about a metre away as fatso basks in the infrequent sunshine.

I also wonder whether the boom in the grey squirrel population has a more pronounced effect on bird populations as I have heard that they often eat the eggs before they even get a chance to hatch, it may be incorrect but given the plethora of grey´s around me I often wonder whether a stealthy cull might be a good idea?

 

[sandbender]

I also wonder whether the boom in the grey squirrel population has a more pronounced effect on bird populations as I have heard that they often eat the eggs before they even get a chance to hatch, it may be incorrect but given the plethora of grey´s around me I often wonder whether a stealthy cull might be a good idea?

I recently spent a day with a local bird watching group and their main guy was quite certain that squirrels were the main culprit.

 

[Toddy]

Cats are by nature a bundle of rubber bands with the attention span of a gnat. They're quick but they tire easily.
If you want your cat to stop chasing birds, feed it well and play with it lots, but not fluttering things going up and down like fake birds.........trail a string, roll a marble, use a laser pointer, to get it to chase around. Even adult cats are really emotionally stuck in the kitten stage apparantly, so they do adapt, and they're selfish little furballs so their comfort matters but all toys are theirs If toys are running things instead of flying ones, peace all round

Love mine dearly pain in the neck at 4.30 in the morning when she wants out though and no, she doesn't wear a collar either.
Earring bells on cats are an old idea, might stop them hearing the cheeping from the nests that attracts them though............don't know how the vet would take fitting them I do know that their ears are really sensitive however.

I too reckon the grey squirrels have a lot to answer for in the numbers of small birds nests that get predated. They take squabs too; the blackbirds now divebomb the blighters around here.

cheers,
Toddy