Cats. They eat birds. Pampered domestic cat creatures annually kill half a billion birds in the US alone; feral cats, wanton killing machines, destroy up to 3 billion more. (http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n1/full/ncomms2380.html) But . . . somehow it’s like in the movies, when you forgive the sexy hero for being a murderer. These are, or at least sometimes are, among the most beautiful living beings on the planet. I forgive them. But not their utterly irresponsible servants (also called ‘owners’) who let them roam free to engage in mayhem, killing even more small wild mammals than birds. House bound cats are cleaner, safer, and more, well, sustainable in our dying ecosystem. We don’t allow horses or cows or Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs to wander freely. Neither should cats. Franzen’s ‘Freedom’ has some good ideas on this subject. Still, I do love cats. And cat fanciers who show their cats in places like the Brockville Cat Show are relatively unlikely to let their cats out of the house. Not for the sake of the birds, but for the cat’s own health and safety. For my money, the most beautiful cat in the show was a ruddy abyssinian.