Give Cats More Meat and Playtime, Says Study Definitely Not Written by Cats

Give Cats More Meat and Playtime, Says Study Definitely Not Written by Cats

People looking to keep their outdoor cats from killing local wildlife might want to heed the findings of a new study released Thursday. It suggests that feeding your feline a diet rich in meat and playing with them regularly will help satiate their appetite for hunting.

Animal researchers in the UK enlisted the aid of 355 cats from 219 households in England for their experiment; the cats were specifically chosen for their habit of bringing home prey. To provide a reasonable baseline, all of the cats were observed in their natural setting for seven weeks before the experiment began. Then, over a period of five weeks, they had most of the cats experience various conditions that might affect their outdoor hunting behaviour (a control group was left to their own devices the entire time). These conditions included different diets, toys, and devices marketed specifically to keep cats away from prey, such as collars with bells attached or a brightly coloured collar easily seen by birds.

[referenced id=”1158212″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/we-have-to-do-something-about-outdoor-cats/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/28/eb0j3vvlhfmfmlmgqkrz.png” title=”We Have To Do Something About Outdoor Cats” excerpt=”I hate outdoor cats with a burning passion. I set out to write a blog calling for an Isle of Dogs-style roundup of feral cats, a mass adoption drive and cat cull, and outlawing outdoor and community cats. But I’ve realised that things aren’t that simple.”]

Compared to the control group and the cats’ baseline behaviour, the researchers found that several methods seemed to cut down on wildlife hunting.

In cats that were given high-quality, protein-rich diets with plenty of meat and few grains, for instance, the number of animals brought home was reduced by 36%. In the play group — where owners played with their cats using feather wands and mouse-sized toys for five to 10 minutes a day — the reduction was 25%. The brightly coloured collars also reduced predation of birds specifically by 42% but had no effect on the hunting of other small animals. Cat bells had no significant effect at all, and puzzle feeders seemed to actually increase hunting for some reason.

Though many commercial cat diets are high quality and rich in protein, it’s possible that some plant-based diets lack certain micronutrients that cats instinctively try to supplement with hunting. It’s not exactly clear why puzzle feeders failed so badly. It’s possible, the authors theorised, that the cats’ inexperience with them made them frustrated and hungrier at the same time.

Of course, the best way to keep cats from killing wildlife is to keep them indoors at all times. But some owners insist that cats need to have a dose of outdoor activity to stay healthy, and there may be semi-feral cats that remain adamant about living a double life. So for these situations, the researchers hope their conclusions can at least help some owners find a comfortable middle ground.

[referenced id=”993823″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/australian-researchers-say-feral-cats-are-an-ecological-disaster/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/20/ewlrnxba3ib8pr21hgfu-300×184.jpg” title=”Australian Researchers Say Feral Cats Are An Ecological Disaster” excerpt=”If you’re like me, your brain is so riddled with cat virus that you never want to hear anything negative about our whiskered overlords. But sometimes, the truth is so dark it simply begs to be thrust into the light. This is one of those times.”]

“In managing predation by domestic cats, owner behaviour is as important as cat behaviour and so, to reduce killing by cats, management strategies need to be both effective and implemented by owners,” the authors wrote in their paper, published in Current Biology. “Positive interventions, aimed at benefiting cats and appealing to owners, can reduce cats’ tendencies to hunt, and might therefore form the basis of a conservation win-win.”

The researchers plan to investigate if cat hunting can be reduced even further through behavioural tricks, such as by combining two or more methods. They also plan to study cat nutrition more closely, to see if they can identify any missing micronutrients that could be added to less-meaty diets.


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