And they all lived appily ever after.
G"night, sweetie.
In an ordinary house on an ordinary street...
Kyle, are you in bed?
...there lived a cat.
There"s my kitty. You"re so sweet.
He had everything a kitty could want...
Feed the gerbils, honey? Yeah, Mom.
...affection, food, shelter and a family who thought
he was the sweetest kitty in the whole wide world.
But this is only half the story.
There is another side to this contented kitty
one his family knows nothing about.
Like his ancestors, he has the heart of a hunter.
Well fed and showered with affection,
wildness still courses through his veins.
He may look domesticated, but look again.
This is a real life Jekyll and Hyde.
It is the paradox of the cat.
There are more than 100 million cats
in the U.S. Alone.
What goes on in their secret world?
In the next hour you may learn more about cats
than you ever wanted to know.
It"s 8 p.m. Do you know where your kitty is?
Magnificent, elusive and deadly,
the cat family species boasts 38 species of feline ferocity
including the diminutive, wild cat.
Since prehistoric times,
these cats have wandered Africa and Europe.
The presumed ancestor of our domestic cat,
the wild cat might look like a tabby,
but its canines and claws
are as lethal as those of any tiger.
In its eyes, there"s a haunting familiarity
How did this ferocious
feline jump the wild track and make its way
to our milk bowls and our beds?
Felis catus set out on the rocky road
to domestication more than 3,000 years ago.
In ancient Egypt,
this hunter extraordinaire kept rodents from the granaries
In return, he was worshipped as a symbol of life.
But history would not always
treat our feline friend so kindly.
Believed to be the devil"s companion,
more than a few were burned at the stake
for keeping wrong company.
Luckily, the cat would soon fall into grace once again,
for his hunting skills proved invaluable on the open seas.
Cats kept the rat in check.
Near the end of the road,
perhaps the most steadfast alliance
was forged between the farmer and his beloved barn cat.
Now, what you got there? You are a good cat.
Ironically, the cat"s very wildness
was its ticket to domestication.
There"s extra milk for you tonight.
Now to complete the journey.
...eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen...
ready or not here I come.
What lay ahead was one of the most complex
relationships nature has ever known
the remarkable bond between human and cat.
We were drawn to a creature we could never fully tame.
Wow! Hey guys look what I found.
We would overlook their wildness
and welcome them into our lives.
When the dust of the eons finally settled,
we found ourselves inexorably linked to the cat.
This extraordinary creature had found a permanent place
in our hearts and our homes.
Mama, Mama, Mama, Mom, Mama, look what I found.
Can I keep him, please, please?
At last, the cat managed to dethrone the dog
as the most popular pet in the Western world.
In the U.S. Alone, house cats
have doubled in number in just 20 years.
C"mon, chin up. That a good boy.
Cat-mania is sweeping the country.
These are piddle pants for cats.
The Chaise lounges are a new add- on to our products
that we"re carrying.
The Litter Maid Electric Self- Cleaning Litter Box.
We probably spend about eight grand a year.
$10, $20, or $30,000 a year, just on one cat. Yeah.
Throughout the world, cat shows pay homage
to our feline companions in a fury of grooming,
primping and keen competition.
Through the careful coupling of cats,
humans have created nearly 50 breeds of domesticated felines
Though some might look to the untrained eye like
mistakes of nature...
each coupling is carefully planned to make a winner.
But a cat needn"t be a winner to be the object of affection.
Well, it"s Rush"s third birthday.
We have birthday cakes for us, so why shouldn"t we have
a birthday cake for our four-footed child?
The Ross family has taken feline adoration to new heights
They"re very much our family. Well, hi, Neut.
Hey, Rush, here"s some food coming.
My husband spoils the cats. Of course, I don"t.
And so he always has the cats eating with us at the table.
One more bite, but don"t let it spoil you.
You won"t get the same thing tomorrow night.
They like to have the food that we"re eating.
And they oftentimes will eat very peculiar things,
things they would never eat
if you would put it in their bowl.
As you can see, our cats are very well fed.
But well-fed cats still do hunt.
So we keep them inside.
And our cats are never bored.
Shirley May loves her cats.
But even she knows,
there can be too much of a good thing.
When I was a child,
there was a family down the street who had some cats.
And they didn"t have them altered.
And there were kittens born all the time.
Well, of course, I thought that was great,
because I loved kittens.
Super kitty flying through the air!
There are more than 10,000 human babies
born in this country each day
and more than twice that many kittens.
Sheltered and well-fed,
cat numbers can soar if reproduction goes unchecked
Cats are prolific.
One female can have as many as 30 kittens a year.
In just seven years, she and her offspring
could produce over 300,000 kittens!
Suddenly, sometimes, those kittens would disappear
and nobody seemed to be able to tell me
where the kittens went.
With such feline fertility,
unwanted cats are a sad byproduct of our domestic bond
This scene may be an echo from the past,
but the tragedy is still being played out today.
Even now, hundreds of cats are abandoned each day
in the U.S. Alone.
What"s to become of a castaway?
He is suddenly faced with the struggle
to survive in an alien world.
But the cat holds a wild card a gift from his ancestors.
He is one of the earth"s most adept hunters.
Good news for the cat... but bad for the locals.
There"s one more predator on the prowl.
And when push comes to shove, he"s not a picky eater
another key to the cat"s success.
In the face of adversity, the cat often has the advantage
Armed with sharp claws,
he"s not restricted to terra firma.
The cat nearly always lands on his feet.
This diminutive creature seems to defy the odds.
With a flexible backbone like a cheetah,
the cat can run up to 30 miles per hour.
His agile body is engineered for the chase.
But at times, the best strategy
is to seek shelter... and wait.
For the tables will soon turn for felis catus.
Night belongs to the cat.
He is a creature designed for the nocturnal hunt:
With night vision, whiskers to help navigate,
a keen sense of smell, and ears
tuned to signals that mere humans could never perceive.
The faintest squeak even from a distance
allows him to pinpoint his prey...
and launch his assault.
Only the fortunate manage to escape this master predator.
The cat is a marvel of engineering.
His supple spine allows acrobatics of which
we could only dream.
His uncanny sense of balance almost always insures
a safe landing.
With persistence and precision,
the cat gets his mouse.
This is a creature designed to survive.
He has landed in the most outlandish of places
and somehow managed to endure.
Near the Antarctic,
temperatures can plunge to 50 below.
On a diet of seabirds
and the occasional penguin carcass,
the cats of Macquarie Island
have persevered since they were dropped here
by sealers over a century ago.
Half a world away,
the volcanic Galapagos Islands offer little water
or prey to its immigrant cats.
Though lean, the population persists.
Abandoned cats are struggling
to survive throughout the world even in the U.S.,
where there are an estimated 50 million.
Here in Miami, Florida,
thousands of forsaken felines
have landed in the middle of a raging controversy.
Though the dumping of pets is prohibited
in Dade County parks,
it"s not uncommon to find colonies of up to 75
abandoned cats.
What are the consequences of so many predators?
Don Chingquina of the Tropical Audubon Society
is concerned about the wildlife.
You know parks like these
are so important to migrating birds,
because when you think about it,
these birds fly from as far away as the Yucatan.
They come across the Gulf of Mexico,
and they"re tired, they"re hungry.
They land in a small,
confined place like this to replenish
and they"re greeted by 50 to 100 cats.
It"s a recipe for disaster.
Through no fault of their own
these felines have stirred a fiery debate.
Kate Rhubee is one of many volunteer feeders
who have taken pity on these outcasts.
She, too, knows there"s no easy solution.
A lot of people are really concerned
about the impact that the homeless
cats have on the small birds in the area.
In an ideal world,
we wouldn"t have people dumping their pets,
and the cats wouldn"t be outside,
and they wouldn"t be impacting the wildlife.
But in this cycle of human neglect,
it"s not just the wildlife that"s in jeopardy.
These cats are at the mercy of world-class hurricanes,
aggression within the colony and disease.
It"s really upsetting to me
when someone dumps their pets here,
"cause this is absolutely no life for a cat.
In the last three-and-a-half months,
we"ve had 39 new cats dumped here.
With so many new arrivals, the population is exploding.
Spaying and neutering is critical.
But most of the strays have become so wild,
it"s impossible to even approach them.
Members of the Cat Network provide the traps,
the ingenuity and the sardines.
Still, there"s no guarantee
which cats will venture into the traps
if any at all. Only tomorrow will tell.
Hey, you guys, we got one already.
The night"s bounty has been good.
Kate? Is this the orange you were looking for?
Yes, he is.
L"m concerned that he"s really sick,
looks like he"s gonna have AIDS with all of those marks.
Off to the vet you go.
Dr. Ted Sanchez works with the Cat Network
at a reduced rate caring for homeless cats.
The rest of the funds come
from volunteers like Cindy Hewitt
who contribute thousands of dollars each year.
We"re going to be taking a little blood test
and we"re just gonna try to
rule out a couple of viral diseases
that they commonly get.
It"s a male.
And these guys tend to be a little bit more prevalent
in the males than the females
because they tend to have more sexual contact.
We"re just going to take a little blood.
Cats are vulnerable to two lethal viruses.
Feline leukemia and feline AIDS
are both highly contagious and deadly.
It"s not a pretty death.
Cindy, I think we may have a positive here.
You can tell here.
We"ll see what the test comes out.
But you see the gums?
They"re real, real red.
He"s got a pretty good gingivitis here,
which is one of the common things we see with feline...
plus the fact that he"s a male.
So we"ll wait.
He"s got a couple of variety of skin lesions as well,
so he"s not in the greatest shape.
He"s been eating well, he"s not too thin,
but this is a bad sign.
It really makes me sad that the animals suffer.
And anytime I have to put a cat down,
it really bothers me.
But, if you leave him,
then he"s gonna infect the others.
It"s the right thing to do, unfortunately.
And he"ll also have a really miserable death.
If they go through the course of this illness,
it"s not fair to them.
They suffer too much.
Cats that test negative for disease
might be candidates for adoption.
But first they must be spayed or neutered.
I don"t think it"s the solution to the problem.
But at least
we are controlling the population somewhat.
Thousands of cats are being
put to sleep every year, needlessly,
because owners are just not complying
with spaying and neutering.
We have to tell these people
that are abandoning cats, this isn"t the way to do it.
Spayed and neutered cats
have the tips of the ears clipped,
to serve as a permanent record.
This kitten has become too wild for adoption.
Once she"s recovered from surgery,
she"ll return to the colony to face an uncertain future.
You doing alright? Alright.
It"s a dismal solution for the cats
and a precarious one for the wildlife.
Well-fed and spayed, a cat can still hunt.
But where are the thousands of homeless felines to go?
Until an answer can be found,
migrating birds may come face to face
with yet another predator.
But it"s not just the homeless that hunt.
There are more than 60 million house cats in the U.S.
And many are on the prowl night and day.
What is the impact of these unleashed predators?
The answer is clear at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.
Dr. Gentz, cat attack coming in from Harrisonburg.
Many of the patients
are casualties of ordinary house cats.
We have two injured bunnies.
Most are mangled beyond repair.
Cat attack coming in from...
Each day brings new drama for Dr. Ned Gentz and his team,
as they try to piece together the victims of cat attacks.
Well, I think this one"s going to make it...
although probably half don"t.
Casualties pour into the Wildlife Center night and day.
Pet owners are often shocked
to find that their well-fed cats are killers.
Though some have been de-clawed,
the attack is often just as gruesome.
This one was injured on it"s eye right here.
And it was bleeding this morning.
And this one was injured...
...on his leg... ...right there.
Oh, you better put it back in.
The hospital recovery room is filled with creatures
that fell prey to the claw.
Most require intensive care.
But for every recovering patient...
there are four others that didn"t make it.
This represents two weeks of cat attack victims
brought here to the Wildlife Center of Virginia
the non-survivors.
We probably have an equal number of
animals in the intensive care unit
still being treated now that we hope will do better
than these,
but statistically about 80 percent
of the cat attack victims that we see here don"t survive.
Cats are incredibly efficient hunters and predators.
This poor bunny was effectively disemboweled
by the cat that caught it.
Creatures lucky enough to survive an attack
face yet another peril.
Cat saliva is almost toxic by itself.
Getting bit by a cat is like injecting
poison into a wild animal.
A wild animal with a cat bite that doesn"t die
from the trauma will die of
an infection within 24 to 48 hours.
As a wildlife veterinarian,
it"s my job to take care of sick
and injured wildlife and I like to do that,
but this is a waste.
These animals didn"t have to die.
If people would keep their pet cats indoors,
these animals wouldn"t end up in my wildlife hospital.
What"s a cat owner to do?
Just three hours from the Wildlife Center of Virginia,
on 25 acres of rolling woodland,
lives a cat named Ting Tang II.
Ironically, he lives with a biologist
who"s specialty is birds.
As a devoted cat owner,
Ruth Beck has been grappling with a personal dilemma.
I specialize in ornithology
and l"m very interested in birds.
But I also love cats. Ting Tang II is a hunter.
It is not the cat"s fault,
it"s what he does and what he does successfully.
He has some basic equipment,
just as every hunter would have:
First of all,
you can look at these nice teeth.
And then we have an excellent set
of switchblades and they indeed
can inflict quite a wound.
C"mon, breakfast.
Ting Tang II is a well-fed cat.
But breakfast never puts a damper
on his favorite pastime.
He"s an avid bird watcher and hunter.
Each morning, after a full can of food,
Ting Tang is ready for his favorite sport.
But he has to comply with the rules of the house.
Most bird species feed early in the morning.
So just by not letting him out until 10 or 11 o"clock
and for just a few hours mid-afternoon,
when the birds are less active... will certainly help
to prevent the cat from capturing the birds.
Ruth has found a compromise that gives the cat some freedom,
but gives the birds some protection, as well.
Ting Tang II must make the most of his hours
in feline paradise.
He is a cat with a curfew.
When day is done, he"ll be called indoors.
I think that true cat lovers don"t see their pet as killers
l"d like to see us make everyone aware of the fact
that our pets are also predators.
If we come to terms with the fact
that our cats do hunt,
the question then becomes: How much are they hunting?
That"s just what the British Mammal Society
set out to discover
when they launched their survey called,
"Look What the Cat Brought In"
...a bit ghoulish, really.
This is brilliant.
Yes, it"s good, isn"t it?
Excellent...
The Society has found itself
buried beneath a mountain of responses.
For Michael Woods,
processing the results has been daunting.
C"mon, I can"t have you sitting on
top of all my work.
Well, I have a very ambivalent relationship with cats.
I love the way
that they move and I think they"re beautiful animals,
but I just hate what they do to the wildlife.
The Society invited the public to register their cats
for a five-month period, detailing every creature
their kitty dragged home.
The amazing thing is we"ve had the results from 750 cats,
which is a huge amount
and much better than we"d expected.
We"ve got a lot of them analyzed
and it"s giving us some really good answers.
And some of them are real big killers,
they"re some big killer cats out there.
And they"re causing quite a lot of mayhem.
Remarkably, almost as you"d expect,
the traditional prey of the cat,
the mouse, has come out much the highest.
If you extrapolate up to the number
of cats we have in Britain,
which is around about seven million
and that"s just the tame ones
the wild ones are on top of that
then we are looking at something around 200,000 mice
are killed every year by cats.
And then we have voles, and then after that, shrews.
The mice are interesting,
because a lot of people think we don"t need mice,
you know, because they can be a pest and a problem,
particularly if they get into the house,
but mice are very important,
along with the other small mammals,
as prey species for natural predators.
Then, if we turn to the information
we"ve got about cats, we find that a third of them,
approximately, wear bells.
Wearing bells seems to make almost no difference
at all to the amount of prey that they catch.
They still go out and catch just as much.
And color of cats seems to make a difference.
White cats appear to catch
a lot less than some of the other more camouflaged cats,
and I guess it"s color that does that,
particularly at night, if they"re hunting at night.
The survey"s certainly shown
that however much you feed a cat,
it makes no difference at all and the cat feeds
and is just as likely to start hunting immediately.
Out of 750 cats, one of the biggest killers is Missy,
a female cat who lives down in Dorset,
and who has killed over seven pages
worth of small mammals and birds
for us to include in the survey.
So she"s a real, you know,
wicked thing to have out there.
Knowing her record,
I thought it would be interesting to enter her
and I was really surprised
myself when I started to fill in
the form and found out how many
things she did bring in.
Hilary and Jim Pike have become accustomed
to Missy"s daily offerings.
For Jim, the rabbits are the worst.
They all start from the skull and eat the head first
and all we get left are two ears
and four little paws...
...which is not a very nice thing
when you come home
and it"s on the middle of the mat or stuck on the tiles.
There must be some sort of driving force that
makes her do it all the time... ...nothing to do with hunger.
They obviously just do it because they love it.
The spot you see along here,
she lays in there in the summer time,
and the swallows zip along,
come down to along the top of the pond to drink,
and she just leaps up and grabs them clean out of the air
And, you know, just a big snatch,
and they"re just stunned the moment she"s got them.
The two sucker fish that we bought
specifically to take out all the algae,
within two weeks of us buying them
and they were quite expensive...
We paid 40 pound for the pair.
And in two weeks they"re on the kitchen mat.
We found them on the grass.
So that was a waste of time and money.
Well, l"ve been collecting what Missy"s brought in
for the last two weeks, approximately.
So, would you like me
To show you just a few of the items
or bodies, I should say?
It was a little bird, l"m afraid.
Just looks to be asleep, but
unfortunately, there"s one gone.
And then this is one of the many mice we have around here.
This is what Missy"s brought in in less than two weeks.
She"s quite a hunter.
She"s really surprised us on the amount of carnage.
L"ve got to say that it"s really shocked me
when we started counting them up.
In the last two weeks she"s brought in maybe 30, 36... plus
maybe a dozen or so that we"ve let go.
And I think that"s a little bit too much, really.
Well, l"m quite proud to think
that she was one of the top cats.
But knowing how much stuff I didn"t write down
Because I wasn"t here to see it,
um, I think she"s actually the top cat.
For many a cat, such extraordinary hunting prowess
at one time translated into a ticket to travel the world.
They kept stowaway rats at bay...
But not all the cats that left port
made the long journey home.
Some jumped ship and soon had a foothold in a new frontiert
New Zealand is a unique place.
Like many islands,
its wildlife evolved with few natural predators.
Today, rare shore birds still lay their eggs
on the sandy beaches completely exposed.
Attentive parents tend to their chicks,
but their nests are vulnerable.
Until recently, the system worked fine.
But today, New Zealand"s shore birds are in trouble.
Here at Mangawhai Wildlife Refuge,
the fairy tern is down to less than six breeding pairs.
Each chick represents the future of the species.
With the Department of Conservation,
Richard Parrish and Leigh Honnor
are part of a team trying to
save the last of the fairy terns
and Mangawhai"s other threatened species.
Five years ago,
they found themselves confronted with a mystery:
Something was killing the chicks
and no one knew what.
The team had to do a little undercover work.
One year we lost a lot of nests of the fairy terns
and we didn"t know who was doing it,
so we decided to set up an infrared camera
24 hours a day on the nests
and try and work out who was taking the eggs and the chicks
The new lens is good, isn"t it?
The wide-eyed angle lens...
Oh, it is.
...taking in a much bigger field of view.
Well, those chicks will probably
stay here another day.
You think so?
Initially, we set it up on a Caspian tern colony,
just to get used to the equipment and iron
out the problems.
What they discovered was both alarming...
. and macabre.
We ended up catching a cat on film,
and over four nights, that cat took out 40 chicks.
The interesting thing for me was that the cat
only ate the heads.
They left the bodies behind.
Over the next four years, they trained the camera
on various nests and found more gruesome evidence
against the alien predator.
As a result, feral cats
are now being eradicated in Mangawhai Park.
New Zealand is just one example
of what can happen when a cat comes to stay.
Here, in a land where temperatures can soar to 120
and there"s often no water in sight,
it"s hard to imagine any creature
surviving for long... but the cat has adapted once again.
In the middle of Australia"s Outback,
it must eat whatever it can find
be it road kill
or Australia"s endangered wildlife.
Bilbies, bandicoots, and other rare marsupials
have been pushed to the edge of extinction
by a barrage of pressures, including introduced species.
One of the culprits is the cat.
For at least a century, feral cats have roamed
this harsh expanse.
And yet they remain elusive... ...even to those
whose ancestors were here long before them.
In an effort to unlock their secrets,
Parks and Wildlife biologist Rachel Paltridge
has enlisted the help of experts.
Searching for a cat in the Outback
is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Yet these Aboriginal trackers
are able to read even the most elusive signs
in the shadows of the sand.
So the pussy cat, him sitting down,
jumping here, jumped there, jumped there, and over there...
With their extraordinary expertise,
Rachel has begun to unravel the secrets of the cat
Where"s that pussy cat now long ways?
Must be a long ways off.
With their greater insight, she hopes that, someday,
cat numbers will be controlled.
They"re a pretty amazing animal you have to respect them.
But they just don"t belong out here.
They didn"t evolve out here.
The native animals didn"t evolve with
them and just can"t really tolerate their predation.
Hopefully, this work will lead to a better understanding
of feral cats and eventually lead to better management.
To reveal the patterns of these elusive predators,
Rachel uses radio telemetry,
tracking individual cats over time.
Finding them is only half the challenge.
Feral cats are as ferocious as any wild animal.
Before handling one,
Rachel must first anesthetize it.
Cat bites are not only dangerous to prey,
they can infect humans as well.
We caught this cat about four months ago,
using the Aboriginal trackers to catch it,
and radio collared it,
and we"ve been following its movement patterns
in those last four months.
This cat normally only roams over about
two or three kilometers a day and he has a fairly
tight home range that he lives in.
He"s lost about 300 grams in the last four months.
I don"t know if its maybe times are getting a bit tough
there may be a bit less food around.
I just wanted to check that his collar was still okay
and not rubbing on his neck
and just check his general condition.
But he"s fine, so we"ll
just let him go here and continue tracking him.
Any cats that are not part of Rachel"s study
might find another fate awaits them.
It is a twist of irony: The cat has helped push
much of the Aborigine"s traditional food prey
to near extinction.
In doing so, it now fills an important niche itself.
Like a game of cat and mouse in this scenario,
it is the cat that has become the mouse.
Going to cook this one up for supper tonight?
Yeah. Good meat.
These people have been eating cats
all their lives and it"s quite an important part of their diet
So they"ll probably cook it up on the fire tonight.
Good bush meat? Yeah.
Now that the bilbies, bandicoots
and other medium-sized mammals have all but disappeared,
the cat has taken a place in the food chain.
Back at camp,
Rachel collects as much information
as possible before the cat becomes dinner for the trackers
l"m trying to look at the predation pressure
on all the wildlife out there in the Spinnefex Grasslands
and l"m looking at
gut contents as probably the best way
of understanding what they eat.
This cat was obviously a very good hunter.
You can see quite plainly
each object"s quite intact still.
What"s this one, snake?
He"s got a little snake in here.
Well, there"s heaps in his stomach.
There"s three different sorts of lizards,
three of these military dragons,
one quite large... and there"s also
some remains of some bird feathers.
So you can just see how much of
an impact they"re probably having
on the native wildlife out there if just each cat eats
that much in just one day.
Ideally, we"d like to get rid of them altogether
and see the native animals that have declined severely
returned to their original status out here.
Until the cat is better understood,
it will remain a fixture in the Outback.
It has worked its way into the food chain,
for better or worse.
There is a new order here in the heart of Australia
and it"s not a kind one for the wildlife or the cat.
The cat wars are raging throughout Australia.
Halfway across the continent, there"s a new chapter unfolding
On 160,000 acres of land, a wire fence
stretches as far as the eye can see.
Why would anyone put up a 150-mile fence
in the middle of the Australian Outback?
The world has lost 40 species of mammal
over the last 200 years; 23 of those were Australian.
At present, about one a year
we"re losing and that"s just not acceptable.
John Wamsley is a self- made millionaire
and rabid conservationist.
Considered controversial by many,
his passion for native wildlife
has fueled his ire against the cat.
Let"s talk about cats.
This is a feral cat... they came to Australia
about 500 years ago,
probably with the early shipwrecks off
the West Australian coast, but they couldn"t cross
Australia until the rabbit came.
The rabbit came late 1800s, and that allowed the cat
to cross Australia,
and that"s when the devastation started.
I love Australia and I love the Australian wildlife.
L"ve taken on the job of saving them
and I am going to save them.
It"s as simple as that.
For over a decade,
Wamsley has bred endangered species
in captivity to insure that Australia"s unique creatures
don"t slip away.
We"re an island.
We had no serious predators and all these incredible
creatures evolved... little marsupials,
most of them and they evolved to do wonderful things.
We"ve got banded anteaters with fluffy tails.
We"ve got kangaroos that burrow in the ground
like rabbits.
And we"re losing them.
We"ve got the bilbie that looks
just like a cartoon character
The world would love to see our animals,
but they can"t, because they"re all going.
Wamsley"s dream to create a safe haven for native creatures
is getting closer all the time.
But fencing in habitat is only half the battle.
Before endangered wildlife can be released,
the enclosure will have to be free
of introduced species.
This fence is all about cats and rabbits.
It puts a pretty big boot in it.
It"s a massive charge and it"s like getting hit
in the middle of the back with a sledge hammer.
When a cat touches that fence once,
it doesn"t come back.
On the other hand,
we don"t want to stop the big kangaroos,
the wildlife that already live here,
we don"t want to stop them with this fence.
And this fence is designed to let them through.
The kangaroos just hop through.
What we"re going to do here,
is we"re now watering the cats.
The cats have plenty of water here.
And on the hottest day in summer,
when we get there in February
when all the rabbits are gone
we"re gonna cut off their water.
There"ll be water outside the fence.
They"ll come over the fence to get the water.
They won"t be able to get back in again.
For the cats and rabbits that don"t take the bait,
Wamsley called in an expert.
I guess Adam O"Neil is the real live Crocodile Dundee.
He understands animals
and the bush better than anybody else
l"ve ever met.
He"s probably the best shot that l"ve ever seen.
He can knock over a rabbit at 500 meters
without any trouble.
Yeah, he"s got the job of getting rid of
the cats and the rabbits.
Well, I love the cat
along with every other animal on this planet.
They"re not exactly calculating and malicious with intent.
They"re just out there acting on their instincts to survive.
It"s just unfortunate the way things have panned out
I suppose.
But they"ve obviously got to go from this environment.
Once again, the cat has been caught in the crossfire.
If you walk down the street with this cat hat on,
then you are noticed.
I can guarantee you that.
Some people might try and ignore you,
and they"ll have different things to say to you,
but you"ll be noticed by everyone.
Here at CATS, Incorporated, we say,"No dead cats for hats."
Right, Nippy?
Not everyone approves of Wamsley"s approach.
At the other end of the spectrum is Christine Pierson,
the president of CATS, Incorporated.
She is dedicated to the care of strays
and the control of cat numbers through sterilization.
Killing cats
or trying to get rid of the cats
is achieving nothing.
Christine Pierson has her own theories
about the cat crisis.
If you leave the birds and the animals alone,
they have a natural balance between them.
But the trouble is that people come along and
they upset the natural balance and they stuff everything up.
And so the cat wars continue to rage.
Where does the solution lie?
Perhaps it begins in our own backyards.
In the Adelaide Hills,
there is a cat whose lifestyle changed
a few years back.
Owner Christine Colyer is a bird lover who"s found
an unusual solution for her beloved cat.
Diddles is a happy cat.
The more comfortable she is, the happier she is...
...the further out that tongue will hang.
She is the most beautiful cat in the world.
We just don"t think that there"s another one like her.
Nestled in this garden of Eden,
Diddles has the run of the house
and access to an open cat flap... 24 hours a day.
The world outside for Diddles is a labyrinth of bridges
and tunnels a playground for cats.
We have what we call a London Bridge,
which Diddles just loves to run from one side to the other
up and over and down.
It"s not a cage. And that"s the beauty of it.
The garden is full of birds be it the [... pigeons,
the red finches, rosillas, the cockatoos] that fly in.
They will graze directly around the cat units.
It"s lovely to see the birds coming around so close.
It certainly is peace
of mind for me to know where Diddles is,
that she is safe and that she can go outside and
enjoy life just as normal, but she is protected.
And so are the birds.
Back in Virginia,
another cat is yielding to domestication.
Ting Tang! Time to come in.
Ting Tang ll"s moment in the sun has come to an end.
You know the rules. C"mon in now.
It"s curfew time.
Good boy. Yes, it"s time to come on in.
Until tomorrow, there will be one less cat on the prowl.
Through the millennia, cats have found their way
into our hearts and our homes.
Mama, Mama, Mama, Mom, Mama, look what I found.
Can I keep him, please, please?
But has our passion for these creatures
also blinded us to their natural instincts?
Has domestication gone awry?
With cat numbers on the rise,
Felis catus is getting away with murder.
Well-fed and sheltered,
these predators are gaining a competitive edge
against which few creatures can contend.
Most simply can"t compete with the extraordinary cat.
In the time it"s taken to watch this film,
cats in the U.S. Have caught as many as 100,000 mammals
and over 30,000 birds.
As for Missy, last month she caught five rabbits,
17 shrews, 11 mice and seven birds.
Nine more cats were dumped in the Miami Park.
Neut celebrated another birthday.
Diddles communed with the cockatoos.
And Ting Tang II broke his curfew twice.
It"s 9 p.m.
Do you know where your kitty is?