76 Wild Bird Guests 



matter for the writer to fill a book with the testi- 

 mony of conservative people — naturalists, game 

 wardens, owners of bird sanctuaries, yes, and 

 avowed cat-lovers, too — all pointing to the fact 

 that cats, despite their wonderful beauty of form 

 and movement, and their many charming ways, 

 are among the most cruel and destructive of all 

 bird enemies. The writer himself has seen not a 

 little of this destructive work on the part of cats 

 — his own and others. He was a cat-lover once, 

 owned seven attractive cats, and knows all their 

 lovable attributes from amiability to wistfulness. 

 But they were seen devouring young birds in 

 their nests before the eyes of their grief-frantic 

 parents ; they were seen torturing terror-stricken 

 adult birds for which they had lain in wait, and 

 when their owner made up his mind that this 

 sort of thing would go on as long as they lived, 

 death, swift and painless, removed them from 

 their feather-strewn path. 



The most destructive cats, as a rule, are those 

 which either have no owners or whose owners so 

 neglect them that they are obliged to forage for 

 themselves. And these constitute a very large 

 proportion of our cat population. Among them 

 are the so-called "tramp" cats and "stray" cats, 

 with which many parts of our country are over- 

 run. In the city of New York alone the Society 



