Speaking of dangers to cats, although not specific to the question that started this thread, an even bigger threat than owls, dogs, and gourmet neighbors seems to be smokers. The following is excerpted from an ezine that I receive on health matters:
?I THINK there?s a lot of people who might not quit smoking for themselves or their family,? said Moore, a veterinarian at Tufts University. ?But they might for their cats.?
In the study, Moore and other researchers at Tufts and the University of Massachusetts say living in a household with smokers considerably increases a cat?s risk of acquiring feline lymphoma, which kills three-quarters of its victims within a year.
The researchers, writing in Thursday?s issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, studied 180 cats treated at a Tufts veterinary hospital between 1993 and 2000. They found that, adjusting for age and other factors, cats exposed to second-hand smoke had more than double the risk of acquiring the disease.
In households where they were exposed five years or more, cats had more than triple the risk. In a two-smoker household, the risk went up by a factor of four.
(And for Anna, who believes a picture is worth a 1000 words