In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

brooklyn1 wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:13:30 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:

ChairMan wrote:
In ,
EVP MAN spewed forth:
I see three different cats prowling around the neighborhood at
night and still have plenty of destructive rabbits.

they must not be hungry or don't like their owners.
i have one and he just brought one home last night and brings
"something" very very regularly and leaves it on the back patio.
Beams with pride for a little while, then eats it.
The grankids(boys) thinks it cool

Sadly you cannot train a cat that some prey is acceptable and others
are not, so they end up killing birds, reptiles and mammals that may
warrant preserving. While I quite like cats I will not have them
where they can prey on wildlife indiscriminately. OTOH a good dog
can be taught to deal with the bunnies and other pests and leave the
others alone. And they tend to eat in field which keeps the gore
off the patio.

It's the rare domestic cat that will go after rabbits, and they first
need to catch one and that is a near impossibility that a cat can out
run a rabbit. The domestic cat preys on mice, moles, frogs, and small
birds... they are not about to take on anything larger like crows,
geese and such.

Cats do tend to take only smaller animals and birds. In some places domestic
and feral cats have contributed to driving such natives towards being
endangered or extinct. I haven't owned a cat that hunted rabbits but I have
been told of cases where they hunt kits by surprise attack near the burrow
rather than running down adults which does seem unlikely.

I had a regular old domestic shorthair that stalked cottontails in such
a manner. She would bring home carcasses several times a week, many of
them adults.