By Linda May, Georgia Department of Natural Resources

Domestic cats are popular and wonderful pets, but they also are unnatural predators of many wild animals.

Keeping your feline companion indoors will help save the songbirds, rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks that call your yard home – especially in the spring and summer when young are venturing out from their nests.

The National Audubon Society estimates that hundreds of millions of birds and more than a billion small mammals are killed by free-roaming cats each year. Keeping your cat indoors certainly benefits wildlife, but you’ll also have a safer, healthier cat.

For advice on how to keep your cat happy indoors, visit www.abcbirds.org and read more about keeping your cat healthy and the animals outside healthy, too.
http://www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/cats/index.html