Can feather and fur coexist in harmony?

Recently on the news there were sad reports of eight kororā being found dead in Napier. The penguins were taken for necropsy and results linked the deaths to either a roaming cat or dog.

Last week, Urban Wildlife Trust also shared a clip of a live stream video from a kororā colony in Wellington, showing a cat walking curiously around a nest occupied by a kororā pair. One of the penguins was going out at about 5 am and had to run back inside to avoid being caught. The clip was really stressful to watch, as the kororā pair carefully left the nest and ran for the exit pipe that leads out to sea.

Aotearoa is a nation of cat lovers. Did you know that New Zealand has one of the highest cat ownership rates in the world according to this report done in 2020? There are over 1.2 million cats in 41% of the households in the country.

Sharing the house with a furry friend can be shown to reduce stress and anxiety, especially during challenging times (like we had during the Covid lockdowns). But this wasn’t the original reason why cats became pets. They were initially bred for keeping mice and rat numbers at bay, especially if a household was looking for ways to protect their crops from rodents.

Being such skilled hunters, cats are not selective, and have strong instincts to kill all kinds of wildlife. Being domestic animals, cats also have no other predators above them in the chain. Therefore, it is crucial that cat-owners take responsibility for our pets and try to minimise their impact on our land and marine birds, lizards, bats, insects and even marine mammals as much as possible.