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CatAlert is an electronic sonic collar that beeps every 7 seconds to alert birds to the presence of stalking cats. The Mark II can be switched on and off by its owner e.g. so that the collar can be silent when the cat is indoors. The collar has a light sensor and can also be switched so that it automatically stops beeping in the dark. Alternatively it can be switched so that it beeps both night and day. The CR 2032 battery, or two CR2016 batteries, that drive CatAlert II last about a year, and very few cats object to the collar or the beeping. Worldwide, cats may have been involved in the extinction of more bird species than any other cause except habitat degradation and are contributing to the endangerment of populations of other rare small mammals. In Britain alone, domestic cats, now numbering 8 million, are said to kill at least 75 million birds annually. The EU contains a further 50 million domestic cats. In Australia, a recent report suggested that the country's 21 million feral and domestic cats were killing 3 million animals per year including 67 native bird species. The 73 million pet cats living in US households are estimated to kill more than 1.4 billion birds each year. The issue of domestic cats killing wildlife has always been controversial, with cat owners becoming defensive about their pet's habits or going into denial. The subject regularly generates fierce arguments between cat lovers and those who favour birds. One of the main reasons cat owners are reluctant to take action is because it would mean confining their pet indoors, thus depriving the animal of it's traditional entitlement to freedom of movement. Willana Lifesciences has designed "CatAlert" a collar based device that will allow the cat to continue moving freely, while eliminating most of the risk to wild birds and small mammals like chipmunks. |
Bird Flu in Cats GENEVA, 02-28-2006: The discovery of bird flu in a cat in Germany underscores what scientists have long known: that the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus can infect a wide range of mammals, not just birds, a WHO spokeswoman said last night. "We know that mammals can become infected with H5N1, but we don't know what this means for humans." The cat in Germany is the first confirmed case of a mammal being infected with H5N1 in Europe but the virus has proven deadly to tigers and snow leopards in a Thai zoo where they were fed chicken carcasses, she said, dying from H5N1 in 2003 and 2004. France on Saturday [25 Feb 2006] confirmed the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu at a farm in the east of the country where thousands of turkeys had died. The outbreak was discovered on Thursday at the farm with 11 000 turkeys in the Ain department, where 2 cases of H5N1 had already been confirmed in wild ducks History of CatAlert The proprietor of Willana Lifesciences, Dr W. J. (Liam) Martin, started to develop a system to reduce predation by domestic cats on wildlife early in 1997, and built his first experimental prototype in July of the same year. A SMART award application to the UK Department of Trade and Industry begun in August 1997 was successful in December of the same year. This funded the development of the novel electronic cat collar, "CatAlert" designed to emit an intermittent sonic signal to warn birds and interrupt cat predation. A pilot trial of the collar was carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology in 1998 and a large scale BTO programme of testing was completed in 1999. See latest results. |
