Birds Killing Cats: Blackie Is Abducted by a Sea Gull and Then Dropped but Her Fall Is Broken by a Barbed-Wire Fence

Blackie and John Bellshaw

"All her paws were really badly cut, so we had to work really quickly to get her out. If that hadn't worked there's absolutely no doubt I'd have had to destroy her, which I would have hated to have to do."
-- John Bellshaw

Snatched from her mother by a voracious black-backed gull, a five-week-old kitten named Blackie was saved from a sure and certain death when she landed on a barbed-wire fence after her abductor accidentally dropped her.

The incident occurred late last month at Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde in Faslane, sixty-five kilometers north of Glasgow. The base, which has sixty-five-hundred employees culled from the ranks of the Royal Navy, Ministry of Defense (MOD), Babcock Naval Services, and civilian contractors, is home to England's Trident nuclear submarines. 

Blackie was the recipient of a second bit of bonne chance in that her abduction was witnessed by John Bellshaw, a pest control officer with MOD, and PC David Duffton, both of whom raced to her rescue. Malheureusement, she was now impaled on the fence.

"She was absolutely terrified," Bellshaw later told Glasgow's Evening Times on July 30th. (See "Kitten Loses One of Its Lives Escaping from Killer Gull.") "We managed to get close enough to hold down the wire with a piece of wood, but the only way I could get her out was to grab one of her paws and pull her through the wire." 

"All her paws were really badly cut, so we had to work really quickly to get her out," he continued. "If that hadn't worked there's absolutely no doubt I'd have had to destroy her, which I would have hated to have to do."

It is unclear whether it was landing on the barbs or her rescuers' brusque manner that did the most damage; most likely it was a combination of both. In any event, she not only lost a considerable amount of blood but patches of fur as well. 

Once they were able to untangle her from the fence Bellshaw and Duffton rushed her to Cobb's veterinary practice in nearby Helensborough where medical personnel were able to stanch the bleeding and stitch up her paws. She is expected to make a complete recovery and Duffton has offered to give her a proper home.

One of Blackie's Injured Paws

Three of her siblings have disappeared, however, and Bellshaw suspects that the same gull may have eaten them. "I have seen gulls take ducklings before, but never a kitten," he told the Evening Times in the article cited supra.

Although statistics are not kept on this subject, avian predation of cats and kittens is widespread. Besides gulls, owls, eagles, and hawks also kill cats. (See Cat Defender post of July 31, 2006 entitled "Fifteen-Year-Old Cat Named Bamboo Miraculously Survives Being Abducted and Mauled by a Hoot Owl in British Columbia.")

Bird advocates, both private citizens and employees of the national and state governments, also kill cats with impunity. (See Cat Defender posts of August 7, 2008 and June 27, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank" and "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

This case also highlights the glaring dissimilarities in how the Royal Navy and its American counterparts treat felines. For their part, the English revere cats for the immeasurable contributions that they make not only toward rodent control but in boosting morale and providing companionship.

"We need the cats as they're great hunters," Bellshaw told the Evening News.

Not only are they well treated and appreciated during their lifetimes, but they are honored long after they are gone. (See Cat Defender post of November 13, 2007 entitled "Simon, Hero of the Yangtze Incident, Is Remembered with a Wreath-Laying Ceremony in Ilford.")

An Overview of Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde

Perhaps even more telling, there was widespread public outrage earlier this year when a trio of teens boarded the museum ship HMS Belfast and drowned its resident feline, Kilo. (See Cat Defender post of July 17, 2008 entitled "Trio of Laughing Yobs Board HMS Belfast and Hurl Kilo to His Death in the Thames.")

The American military, on the other hand, hates cats with a passion. In 2002, military brass issued General Order 1-A which mandated that all non-working animals on American bases be rounded up and killed. This same directive also outlawed TNR and the feeding of cats.

At the American base in Rota, Spain, naval personnel have taken matters one step further by poisoning cats with antifreeze and suffocating kittens in plastic bags which are then dumped in trash cans. (See Stars and Stripes, European Edition, April 28, 2004, "Navy Policy Has Compounded Problem of Stray Cats at Rota, Some Say" and Cat Defender post of November 14, 2006 entitled "Military Killing Cats and Dogs by the Tens of Thousands as Imperialistic America Attempts to Conquer the World.")

In addition to the military's own death squads, outside exterminators, such as Dick Cheney's partners at Kellogg, Brown, and Root, have been brought in to assist in these mass slaughters. (See Cat Defender post of June 16, 2008 entitled "Targeted for Elimination by the American War Machine and Cheney's Henchmen, Baghdad's Cats Are Befriended by an English Mercenary.")

Photos: Glasgow Evening News (Blackie with Bellshaw and one of her injured paws) and Wikipedia (HMNB Clyde).