If you owned a dog that kept dumping in everyone elses garden there'd be hell to pay.
Also cat owners always claim to be animal lovers, yet their pets go around killing all the songbirds
I absolutely love birds. Cats are evil,couldn't hurt one though,I'm as soft as shit when it comes to any animals.
Repairing a window at eldest daughters house, a tree rat(grey squirrel) walked up the drive with a blackbirds egg in its mouth. Five minutes it went back down the drive, then re-appeared again with another egg in its mouth. I have heard people say they also take chicks from nests, but cant confirm that. Reminds me, when we were kids we used to collect birds eggs (yes, shame on me) and pretty much every hedgerow was full of bird nests of all types. About 15 years ago, I built a smashing bird table to see what we could attract into the garden. Over the ensuing months, pretty much all of the food was consumed by tree rats, when I opened the blinds in the morning, there'd be 3 or 4 of them jumping on and off the table, and they found there way into the lofts in the house and garage. I decided that if we were going to get birds here, then the squirrels have to go. So I bought a.22 air rifle with telescopic sight. Fuck me if I didn't shoot at least 80 of the fucking things over the next couple of years. At one point I almost gave up, as the numbers never seemed to diminish, but over time, they appeared less and less, until maybe 3 or 4 years ago, we had a spell where none were seen, so I must have got them down to an unsustainable number. As of then, the increase in birds visiting has been nothing short of sensational, and includes birds on the red list, with several now nesting in the garden. The occasional squirrel visits, but I can live with that until it becomes any more significant.
Its not just the cats that have impacted on bird numbers