26 



correspondents and people from all parts of New England report 

 many cats abandoned by "summer people." Several persons 

 note abandoned cats left uncared for in the city while their 

 owners are away for the summer. 



Many kindly people will not kill superfluous kittens, but 

 cruelly leave them in the woods or by the wayside, in the hope, 

 often a vain one, that some one will pick them up. One gentle- 

 man informs me that six were left at his door within a month; 

 another that a kitten was left at his doorstep several times, but 

 he refused to adopt it. Many such waifs either "go back to 

 nature" or get their living from garbage cans, rubbish heaps, 

 manure heaps and pigpens, killing whatever living things they 

 can catch during the summer. Their tracks may be found on 

 the first snows of winter as they wander, footsore and ravenous. 

 A few of the weaker may succumb to storm and stress, but the 

 hardy survive, to procreate their kind. This evil has gone so 

 far that there is now no place where birds and game can be safe 

 from this nocturnal enemy. Thirty-nine correspondents tell of 

 people abandoning cats; 14 assert that they see many cat tracks 

 on the snow; 46 that they often see stray cats in fields and 

 woods; 51 that they see such in cities and towns, and 42 that 

 they shoot them when known to be strays or seen far from houses 

 in the woods. 



It is difficult in many cases to determine whether or not cats 

 are ownerless or merely astray from villages and cities. Cats 

 continuallj'^ radiate from centers of population. Many of them 

 are homeless, others mere nocturnal wanderers, but most of them 

 are destructive to bird life. 



Cats unfed by Owners. 



Many cats, never fed or half fed by their owners, forced to 

 range in search of food, roam far at night. Mr. N. A. Xutt of 

 South Ashburnham, whose work takes him out during the latter 

 half of the night, has seen cats coming from a patch of woods on 

 their way back to the village, across the railroad track, so wet 

 with dew as to appear as if they had been plunged into water. 

 Countless village cats, farm, stray and feral cats extend the 

 rapacious influence of the species throughout the land. Dr. 

 Frank M. Chapman of the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, New York City, believes tliat there are not less than 

 25,000,000 cats in the United States, and that there may be twice 

 that number. 1 



> Bird'Lore, Marcb-April. 1902, p. 70. 



