I would love to have a cat at home, but I don’t because I’m allergic to them.
But hold on, I’m lying – I do have cats at home, in a way. Three of my neighbours’ cats make my backyard a regular part of their day. There’s a big fat orange cat, a waify calico and a jet-black one too. They love to hang out on the back fence and show how nimble they are at striding along its narrow top. The orange one loves to mark the door to my sunroom and make it smell like his pee. (Anyone have any solutions? I never catch him in the act, but have a loaded spray bottle ready in case.) And they all love that I have a bird feeder up – it’s like TV for cats, only more ominous.
It would be great if it happened voluntarily, but I think it would be completely reasonable if pet owners were required to bell their cats. (Aside from mousers, perhaps. Is this a double standard?)
Unless the fat cat’s fuzzy neck obscures its view, I’m pretty sure that none of these cats wear collars, let alone bells. But the University of Wisconsin estimates that, on average, 14 birds are killed by domesticated cats every year. It’s not about being hungry, it’s about following instincts. (Red squirrels are also a bane to birds, because they eat their eggs.)
Have you found that bells work, or are cats so stealthy they can keep the jingling at bay until they’re in mid-pounce?
Eastern Bluebird
I was thinking about Earth Hour on the way home from work last night. It was around 7:30 p.m. and, as usual, lights were on in closed shops, office towers and picture windows everywhere. I thought a little about the benefits of having a darker night. Here are a few; let me know if you can think of others.
1. Fewer birds will die. I know that Toronto’s mayor, David Miller, encourages office towers to turn off the lights at night with the Lights Out program. The problem: When lights are on in a building, birds see the rooms inside as open spaces to fly into. Since many bird populations are in serious decline, it would be great if we could help more of them survive. Here’s a Homemakers story on building birdhouses for native songbirds.
2. You can get a better night’s sleep. Ambient light from street lights and other sources keeps us from sleeping deeply. In our new house, my partner and I use blackout cloth behind our bedroom curtains to block out the street light’s orange glow.
3. Star gazing. I used to have a great piece of software called MPj Astro. Fabulous for the mid ’90s, it would show you the night sky for your location, in whatever direction you wanted to look, and label whatever you liked. These days I could really only use it to find out what’s there, behind a wall of light. But I think I’ll see if I can find it and load it on my machine before Earth Hour — a window of an opportunity to try it out again.
What other fringe benefits are you expecting from Earth Hour?
