….and poop all over your curtain tops and whatever else they can bomb! When I was a teen I fed my cockatoo scrambled eggs (I was a teenager, remember). He always wanted whatever I had. I fell asleep on my side with him out and when I awoke I had several “bread crumb” trails of diarrhea poop from my hip to my ankle. Poor birdie; no more eggs for him!
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Argh, am I strange for my first thought to be cannibalism…
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That’s funny! Clearly “vulture” was not in his bloodline!
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I’m not saying “I told you so!”, but maybe I did! 
Kudos to you for being a great host because clearly you earned that top notch rating (even if kitty had other ideas 
)
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Quite honestly, I think that it’s the people who can’t manage to take things in stride when it’s obvious that something wasn’t intentional nor a matter of being lax who have something wrong with them. Normal, decent people don’t fault others for things like that.
Because of my iffy water supply in a town with poor infrastructure, I once realized there was only enough water left in my big roof tank to flush the toilet a couple times and maybe take a 5 minute shower. I told the guest I had in residence the situation, to be super conservative with water for a couple hours- I had to attach 3 huge heavy hoses to my neighbor’s outside tap, who are in an endless well and have told me to take water if I need it, to fill my cistern. The guest actually offered to help me do that, which was awesome, and it never crossed my mind that she’d mark me down for it, which of course she didn’t.
Another time I ran out of propane in both the tank that’s attached to the hot water heater, and the one that fuels the cook stove. That had never happened before, that both tanks ran out at the same time. And there was a propane supply chain issue, so no one in my town could get propane that week.
I have a small BBQ tank I keep full for those sorts of emergencies, but I had to keep moving it as needed for the hot water and the stove. So both my guest and I had to coordinate showering and cooking times. She was fine with it- it was no big deal. Again, it never occurred to me to expect a bad review or ratings- it was 5*s.
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I’ve never given a host less than 5 stars overall because I always felt like I had a five star stay. But if something was less than optimal that they can control, I’ll deduct stars in the appropriate category. For example, I recently gave 4 stars on check in at an airbnb because the entry area was too dark and the lock box hard to operate. The host insisted the key be left in the box when you go out so you have to deal with the crappy set up more often than necessary. (Solution: Just make 20 keys and charge people who don’t return the key…don’t punish everyone.)
However, on this forum I tend not to excuse poor hosting. Advocate getting less that 4.7 so that your rating seems realistic? No. It’s okay to run out of hand soap? No. If I stayed at a place that was overall and they ran out of hand soap I’d just ask for more but I’m not going to excuse it on a public forum. We are one of the public faces of Airbnb hosts.
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So, dear readers, please excuse any oddball ‘hosts’ you might see posting here. The regular posters are lovely. 
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Fixed that’un for you.
JF
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This statistic is a projection based on a bunch of guesses and the guesswork has been shown to be wildly inaccurate. Should be labeled or taken down as misinformation. See the article “Garbage In, Garbage Out” : Garbage In, Garbage Out — Vox Felina. (The discussion of FTEs is particularly fun.)
But hey, the study author uses the numbers to justify his argument for shooting millions of feral cats. Gotta get famous somehow!
Birds are important, but perhaps humanity could focus on far larger threats to birds such as loss of habitat due to human development, climate change and its effects on migration, food and diseases, pollution, smuggling, human-facilitated disease transmission etc., and stop conveniently shifting the blame to something smaller than us.
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I understand. I was walking my 7lb dog & 8lb dog. Fortunately both were short leashed so close to me. A large hawk breezed by. His wing tip gently grazed my arm. I know he was considering if one was an easy meal opportunity.
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Maybe he’d had his fill of dog
JF
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My pups find the steps & upstairs incredibly alluring. The steps are blocked by a baby gate. If I open it, sound asleep pups will immediately burst into action & try to get past me and zoom up the steps. Why? No clue except It is forbidden turf.
There are scent messages up there for them they haven’t had a chance to retreive. 
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It’s probably difficult to keep accurate counts of birds killed by cats since it’s worldwide, but it’s huge. Humans can chose to make something that is destructive to the natural world be less destructive.
Windows in high rises and houses have been shown to be another huge killer of birds.
I certainly wasn’t putting all the bird deaths on domestic cats, it’s just one of the parts of the puzzle.
I honestly don’t understand what is so terrible about cats killing birds. It’s natural. (Unlike glassed high rise buildings)
The world is full of predatory animals and their natural prey. Are we going to try to stop bears from eating salmon? Owls from hunting rodents?
There have always been cats and birds. Cats have always hunted birds.
Sure, it’s distressing if your pampered cat kills birds and leaves their dead bodies around. But whose fault is that?
Animals don’t just naturally hunt for fun- they hunt because they’re hungry. A feral cat, or one that is only fed minimally by humans, eats what it hunts and doesn’t just keep killing things if it isn’t hungry.
What isn’t natural is to feed the kitty nice little bowls of Whiskas so their natural hunting instinct simply results in pointless killing.
Humans seem to deem some animals worth protecting, because they are pretty or cute or sing.
Nature tends to balance itself. It’s when humans get in the way of that and try to impose their human values, constructions, and preferences on other species that things get messed up.
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Last year I would’ve probably would’ve said the same thing.
This past summer there was an expected number of sick & dying/dead birds with a strange illness. The illness has decreased but I would be afraid Mittens would gift me with a bird with something contagious. I wouldn’t want Mittens sickened either.
Next summer perhaps cats can run through the neighborhood with the breeze blowing in their ears as they meow out “Born Free”.
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Yes, that’s a different scenario. Like if I have any rodents around, I use traps rather than poison, because my cat, or one of the many in my neighborhood, could eat it and also get poisoned.
In my observation, it’s actually not at all easy for a cat to catch and kill a bird. My cat kills lots of rodents and some lizards, but I’ve only found feathers once, and there are tons of birds around my place.
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