Thanks to all that have shared over the past. My 10 chicks just started laying about 3 weeks ago. When they began laying, they became much more more brave about ranging out in the open and have been roaming our 3 acres like never before. Up to the point of laying, they stayed within 25 yards of the coop and always under the trees. I witnessed the first hawk attack yesterday. One of the hens had wandered off down near the wooded creek area and a broad-shouldered hawk hit her twice as she skedaddled for the coop with me hollern' and shouting the whole time. All the others ran for the shrubs around the house. Fortunately, she just lost a good size clump of feathers. I'd seen another hawk doing reconnaissance a couple of months back and had strung two lines with some streamers from our 2nd story deck to near the coop about 10-20ft off the ground. Think I will add a couple of more today to other points at the edge of the woods to increase the coverage and maybe add an owl decoy. I haven't given up on free-ranging yet, but I guess my next step would be to build a penned chicken run.

Maybe it is my technical training but in this topic and so many others what I notice first is a failure to look at the big picture. A few observations: Many posters have said that the cat should have been trapped and turned over to an animal shelter. Lets get one thing straight. This already happens with countless cats, who frequently get euthanized because no one claims or adopts them. Yes there is a system in place to capture and place stray cats but like every other system devised by man it has its limits and unfortunately due to the fecundity of cats and the irresponsibility of many so called pet owners there are more cats than can be dealt with. The existence of shelters does not mean the cats won't die. The only thing that has any realistic hope of ensuring the safety of a domestic cat in the US is a comitted and competent owner who shelters and feeds the cat, provides medical care including spaying or neutering, and doesn't ever let the cat roam outside or reproduce at will. Consistancy is important. Logic doesn't work without it. If animal shelters could handle the feral cat population then there would be no argument for Trap, Neuter, and Release (TNR) programs that maintain feral cat colonies. The hypothesis is that if you removed the existing feral cats they would only be replaced by other feral cats moving in so it is better to maintain sterile cats in these available urban niches. The logic of this is totally lost on me because if there are other feral cats out there in the shadows, then THEY are starving and pushed around by the comparatively well fed and healthy TNR colony cats. If on the other hand there aren't that many feral cats out there on the fringes then it would be better to trap them, find homes for all that you can, and do what needs to be done with the rest. As for the fools who suggest "relocating" cats, you mean dumping them on someone else? Where they have to violently reestablish their place in the pecking order all over again, in an environment that all groups agree is overcrouded? Would any of us like to be "relocated"? Perhaps to some of the more colorful areas of LA, NY City, Detroit? Who thinks it would be any better for a cat? The people on the front lines know there aren't enough beds in the shelters. As much as I think the TNR programs are dodging the issue, I don't think they are making things worse as long as they do what they claim, sterilize the cats and feed them. Feeding them makes them somewhat less likely to hunt and makes them able to out compete the non-sterile cats. Not what cat lovers would like to hear, I'm sure. People should obey gun laws. Did this guy break any gun laws? Probably. It is hard to shoot a gun these days without breaking a law. Was he 500 feet from the nearest road? No. His target was under a road. Prosecute him for that. Did he break any wildlife laws? One post said it was legal to shoot cats at that time. Don't prosecute him for that. The guard claimed ownership of the cat, which was completely outside of his control. The moment the guard claimed ownership he should have been nailed for cruelty to animals, letting his cat live like that, and for property damage done by the feral cats in that area including his cat. I say his cat although that is a joke, but he claims it is true. Personally I don't see any difference between cats and rats. My brother's kids have some pet rats and they are sweet little things, totally unlike wild rats. Same with cats. This unfortunately is almost entirely a battle for hearts and minds without any logic to it. If cat lovers really want to secure the high ground they should be the ones insisting that that guard be prosecuted. People are the greatest invasive species, depending on your point of view. I personally want to have adequate food, water, shelter, safety, etc. If any other organism threatens to interfere with that it is in my opinion a pest. Here's where it gets complicated. According to this definition most of the "pests" in the world are other people. I can not justify defining other people as pests. If you want to be consistant and logical you just can't call people pests, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, it would be a load off of the world if half the population died. Who? Half my family, determined by lottery? Or perhaps we could decide by skin color or religion, like the Nazis did? You see where I am going. Don't waste any time talkng about how people are the problem, even though they are. There is nowhere useful to go with this argument. Now that that is off the table, understand that while habitat preservation is desireable, it is linked to population. Personally I think we ultimately need to talk about population but not in a polite forum like this. That belongs in a knock down drag out forum on doomsday scenarios, which this isn't. If we go there we would be talking about poisoning feral animals wholesale like we do rats. I have read alot about the pressure that feral cats put on bird populations. I think that it may be true that they prey more on rodents than birds because rodents can't fly and are easier prey. I imagine that some birds are much more vulnerable than others. To do this right we would have to evaluate each prey species individually. I'll bet that the seabirds that the ornithologist was allegedly protecting are among the more vulnerable species. My take is that I can see why a sane person would do what this ornithologist did. He had a vested interest in the welfare of these particular birds just as a farmer does in his livestock He would have understood the particular threat that feral cats would pose to a threatened population. He would understand population dynamics. He would have seen that the population of feral cats was doomed to remain at dangerously high levels due to the inability of society to come to grips with the problem, as is shown by how many posters naiively propose ineffective alternatives even as overwhelmed local health authorities throw up their hands and cave in to assorted cat fanatics who were feeding the cats anyway. Prosecute the guy for any gun violations if you must, but to do any more is fiddling while Rome burns.

To adhmumrgh: You create a contradiction in terms by writing "Cats are not domestic animals, humans have domesticated them." Cats are not domestic. Humans have domesticated them. You even claim to have domesticated a cat. Yet you state that cats are not domestic animals. What ???? ALL home/house/farm/ranch animals were (and mostly are) still found in the wild. This includes dogs, goats, horses, cows, sheep, et. al. Domestication is the process of adapting a wild animal (or plant) for human use. In the case of cats, that use is usually pleasure, companionship, or mousing. House cats and feral cats are of one species (Felis catus). Feral cats are house cats that have gone from domestication to the wild (the opposite direction of domestication), and any of their offspring. So, the great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of a house cat from 10 years ago is still Felis catus, even though her bloodline is largely from feral cats. She is no longer a domestic individual of a species that is largely domestic, and is considered feral. I have a cat that was a house cat (domesticated) that I got from a shelter. I also have a cat that was feral (not domesticated) that is now domesticated. So, counter to your original post, this cat is a domestic animal. Oh, and I domesticated it. As an aside, I keep both cats outside year round. They grow wonderful coats in the winter, they hunt, they anger me when they kill my songbirds, they play with my children, and are wonderful outdoor pets. There's very little I can do regarding their killing of my songbirds. The birds are wild, the cats still have wild instinct, and things like coyote spray, collars (break-away, or not) simply do not work. I've tried *everything* for 20+ years. I now accept, with grace, when one of my cats ceremoniously deposits a dead cardinal at my feed after she's viciously killed it -- it's a gift, and it's a cat. :-) Cheers!

My very first cats were indoor pets, my apartment companions. Happy as clams, they lived for many happy, active years. Later on, we moved into a more rural environment and we opted for a cat door and an indoor/outdoor life for our cats. They all appeared to be very happy, actually spending most of their time inside whenever we were home. They loved the outdoors, no question. And so began years of testing for and treating numerous diseases, plus tapeworms, hookworms, roundworms, heartworms, fleas, ticks, cat scratch illness, and ringworm (fungus). Makes me a little ill when I think of it. Gosh, all of the visitors, young and old, that I exposed to these issues. I developed ringworm on two occasions, and had a long, debilitating bout of cat scratch illness on another. This was before the days of the powerful chemical treatments we now shower our outdoor pets with to prevent a few of those infestations so we had to fight flea infestations on the cats and in the home......even more exposure to chemicals. But if cats are eating birds and rodents (and who knows what else), they WILL end up with an assortment of internal parasites as well as other stuff that can infect their owners. You cannot vaccinate against everything. Be mindful, too, that humans can host some of these internal worms.