cats

I don’t think anyone is saying the country side is crawling with cats that look like Samurai Wrestlers, but there are certainly some very big one out there. Why do cats and all animals fight ??? because it is the nature of the beast that the biggest and the superior male keeps the bloodline going ,hence the resulting offspring are bigger than normal and when there is an abundance of food the big get bigger. The biggest male lion controls the pride, the biggest Roo controls the mob etc. there is a hierarchy system in most wild animals etc. There are millions of cats that would barely weigh 3 to 4 kg but there are many well above that and many on record weighing 7 and 8 kg. The problem is not just a recent event but revolves around the plagues of Long-haired Native Rat which appear from time to time with an explosion of breeding by Cats, Foxes, Dingoes, Raptures, Snakes, Goannas etc which gorge themselves on the rats and breed many times more a year than normal times. Countless Barn Owls breed in the Cloncurry to Blackall districts and were killed on the roads at night. The recent plague I am told started in the South West of Qld and spread to Northern N S W and S. A. and then North and West across into the N.T. and up through Birdsville, Bedourie, Boulia ,East to Blackall, and Winton right through the Mitchell Grass and Spinifex country and eventually to Alice Springs and the Barkly Tablelands, North to as far as Mt Isa and Lawn Hill with the cats, raptures etc following. I rarely saw a Letter-winged Kite when going down the Strzelecki Track in 2009 but when camping there a year later there were a lot of Letter-winged and Raptures nesting along the track and rats would come around the camp at night right up to your feet and crawl over you if you if you were sleeping in a swag only. ( I had to buy a tent ) They are not a vicious rat but would chew into any food left lying around, and chew anything leather, plus the elec. wiring on cars etc As the rat plague ran it natural course and they died out the cats turned to alternative food sources which included the native animals and birds as there were very few rabbits left in this type of country. In 1992 there was a survey done on a S. W. of Qld cattle station where 175 cats were shot by the survey group and the Army shot another 400 in three days in a 10 sqr km area. This caused a vacuum and others moved in and the army returned two weeks later and shot another 200 in the same control area. It is not a new problem but has got a lot worse with the amount of road kill in some area the cats are not dying out as they have done before.