Rory wrote:My father pretty much barks at the idea of keeping cats as native animals.
I have a cat, I've always had dogs but we took this one in as a stray. While I'm totally in favor of wiping out most feral animals my personal experience with this cat is probably out of the ordinary.
When we moved to the currant property (7 acre) it was a horse paddock and nothing more. There where just a few Cypresses planted along some of the boundry, the rest was open field. Much to the disaproval of my farmer neighbour, I started to plant trees everywhere. Angophoras, Eucs, Melaleuca, Callistemon, Heaps of Casuarina, Acacia, flowering natives etc etc and lots of exotics too like 5 species of oak, Cedar, Pine, Palms, Liquidambar, Cypress...the list goes on and on but you get the idea.
When we got here, the only fauna to be seen was the odd magpie and a few ibis visiting after rain. Now after only 7 years we have created enough habitat to support many perminant residents. Birds: fantails, rosellas, butcherbirds, 3 species of wren, finches, shrikes, 4 species of honeyeater,....I can't even think of them all right now. We've also had a healthy population of native swamp rats, skinks, bluetounges move in. Many of these species actually nest on the property so we have in fact increased the local wildlife numbers from what they where before we came.
So now to the cat, He is only allowed outside during daylight hours. He mainly hunts mice in the grass but I admit that he has killed a few blue wrens and probably some others, no great harm is done as ther continues to be a build up of these birds. Realistcally, he has only killed what would not have existed if a new habitat was not created!
Apologies for straying off the subject.
) websites all the time, you get used to them after a while. 
