Cats are cute -- but not in the park

While we understand Sonya Ferguson's sympathies for feral cats running loose in Wayside Park, the City of Gulf Breeze is doing the right thing in removing them.

Ferguson and other cat lovers should take advantage of the city's offer to let them try to find homes for the cats, if possible, as an alternative to putting them down at the Escambia County Animal Shelter.

While we understand why Ferguson and other cat lovers hope to save the animals, their sympathy for the cats is detrimental to other wildlife -- especially songbirds.

The group Neighborhood Cats (www.neighborhoodcats.org) says few feral cats depend solely on hunting for their food. But research shows that even fully domesticated cats, fed by their owners, still kill birds.

Researchers estimate free-ranging cats -- both feral and domestic -- kill hundreds of millions of birds a year nationally. University of Wisconsin researchers estimated almost 20 million birds a year are killed in that state alone.