I thought I saw a puddy cat

I was quite taken aback to hear a leading advocate of field sports warn recently about the supposed threat cats pose to Ireland's wildlife. They are sinister, sneaky little buggers, he cautioned, that kill for sport rather than for food, and he urged that the cat population needed to be controlled as matter of urgency. He ranted in earnest about the perfidious felines and the "breathtaking ignorance" of all those silly people who fawn on them. He even rhapsodised about a book he read years ago entitled 1001 things to do with a Dead Cat, which he said he thoroughly enjoyed and just couldn't put down (the book, not the cat).

The same gentleman has on other occasions voiced strong support for fox and stag hunting, and for the civil liberties, enshrined in tradition, of gunmen who shoot game. And yet he has the neck to criticise a non-rational creature that engages in similar behaviour.

Cats kill songbirds, he sighed. None of us will deny that. But what about gunmen who litter the countryside with songbird carcasses...in the process depriving parts of rural Ireland of the magnificent Dawn Chorus?

These jokers move across country, shoulder to shoulder, blasting at everything that moves. Our friend didn't even criticise them. Let alone condemn their indiscriminate killing of thrushes and blackbirds.

Naturally, when shooters wreak such havoc it's deemed necessary to our tourist industry. And when hunts kill for sport, they aren't nasty or underhanded or sneaky at all. They are just affirming an ancient right and boosting the local economy, or so they tell us.

Cats are different. Of course they are! They can't speak on local radio or write to letter columns to defend their position on songbirds.

These field sport apologists should lay off our cat population. Cats make wonderful pets. Apart from keeping rats and mice at bay in farmyards and indeed in urban households, they have a proven therapeutic value in bringing consolation and comfort to elderly people living alone. A recent report in the USA stated that they act as an antidote to depression and help to prevent suicide.

There is a quite simple solution to a cat's propensity to target songbirds and other wildlife in accordance with its predatory nature: the placing of a bell on its collar! This ensures that a bird will hear your cat sneaking up behind it and no harm is done.

The bell alerts an otherwise unsuspecting singer to approaching peril so that it can "say", in the words of Tweety Bird in the famous cartoon: "I thought I saw a puddy cat...I did...I did see a puddy cat".

John Fitzgerald, Campaign for the Abolition Of Cruel Sports