You attitude I do not understand – you love wildlife, you encourage it to come but you hate cats.
What happens when the birds you encourage start eating worms and bugs and cats?
I don’t understand your inability to understand that cats are effectively an apex predator (apart from me of course) that is introduced into an environment where it isn’t wanted, by irresponsible owners who adopt an latch-key mentality to animal ownership.
Not only do I encourage birds directly (by using nesting/roosting boxes and carefully selected planting and coppicing) but I’ve created habitats for everything from microbes up to deer.
I’m more than happy for mother nature and her “circle of life” to crack on and take care of the earwigs, moths, bats, owls… Even sparrowhawks and foxes, as they’re part of the natural food chain. But I’m not happy about some middle-aged divorced woman letting her cute little predator free all day to decimate my woodland, just because she can’t be arsed looking after it.
Cats don’t kill for food – why would they when they’re spoon-fed prime cuts of meat and fish by their bed-wetting owners?? They kill indiscriminately because they have an unquenchable instinct to kill.