Four paws walk on the pavement, ears twitch at the sound of a flutter yards away. Standing at about nine inches tall, the primary killer of wild birds — a cat — gets ready to pounce.
Outdoor cats in Bellingham are not unfamiliar. Approximately 25,000 outdoor cats roam the streets according to the Lake Whatcom Management Program. Bellingham is also home to over 70 different songbird species, according to North Cascades Audubon Society.
According to John Marzluff, professor emeritus of wildlife science at the University of Washington and a current field ornithologist, cats kill 2–4 billion birds a year in the United States alone.
“They’re natural killers, and they’re doing what cats do,” he said, “so you can’t blame the cat. It’s the people that are not being responsible cat owners and letting their cats go outside.”
Introduced to the United States by European colonists, the number of domestic cats has tripled in the past 40 years, according to the American Bird Conservancy.
Island bird communities such as San Juan County are specifically at risk due to the isolation, according to Marzluff. Island birds may not be a unique species but could be a unique race or subspecies which can easily be extirpated locally by cats. That is because the birds are a smaller population to begin with and one cat can have a big effect in a small area.
“It doesn’t take much to cause local endangerment of the species that might be found worldwide or might be abundant on the mainland, but your local populations could be severely constrained by something like a house cat,” Marzluff said.
According to Marzluff, ground nesting birds or sparrows are at risk or predation by cats in San Juan County. The western meadowlark and the Oregon vesper sparrow reside on the islands and are both declining in population.
Chelsea Beaugez, the creator and owner of Whatcom Feline Alliance, an organization that works in feline rescue, specializes in the complex cat crisis in Whatcom County. Beaugez works to home cats and uses the trap-neuter-release model for ferals.
“We are also proactive in spaying and neutering any cat or kitten we learn about to prevent needless suffering and counteract overpopulation,” Beaugez wrote in an email.
Whatcom Feline Alliance utilizes a program through Spay Neuter Northwest, a veterinary clinic in Ferndale, to do over 7,000 surgeries all over Whatcom County. They rescue cats daily, sometimes multiple times a day. It can look like picking up a sick kitten from a colony or being called about homeless or injured strays and getting them swiftly into vet care.
“We can have fixed ferals or unfixed ferals, but we will always have ferals,” she wrote. “Cats belong here by divine design and have provided far reaching benefits most everyone loves to take for granted.”
Cat waste is a pollutant in Lake Whatcom in Bellingham as well. Waste is left in yards and neighborhoods and can end up at Lake Whatcom, where Bellingham receives its drinking water. It is recommended to place a litter box outside for your cat and bag the waste and place it in the trash, according to the Lake Whatcom Management Program.
“There is a spectrum of cats and they vary by individual. Some being indoor only, some being indoor-outdoor and some being completely outdoor. It is not a black and white issue,” Beaugez wrote.
Cats tend to kill birds that are around people, said Marzluff, such as in various Bellingham neighborhoods, where there are bird feeders. Rural settings where people let their cats run free, such as agricultural land in Skagit County, is also where cats will prey.
Marzluff’s research showed that 15% of local Seattle residents both feed birds and allow their cats outdoors.
“Those people like animals, and they think their cats are happiest if they’re roaming around outside, or they might think that they’re doing a good service by keeping rodents down,” he said. “It’s probably the worst possible situation when you do that because you are indirectly, luring them in and creating a bad situation for the birds.”
Solutions are complex and contentious as it can be a challenge to change a cat already socialized as an outdoor cat to bring them inside.
“The cats are not going to tolerate that a lot of times. I always tell people, ‘you got an outdoor cat. Now, the next cat you get, think about having a catio for it, or just have it as an indoor cat, or train it to walk on a leash,’” Marzluff said.
Sok Khann, an amateur birder, had an outdoor cat once.
“I used to have a cat back in the day, and this was before I got into birding. And I did, you know, my cat was free range, and it ended up passing … Having cats stay indoors, it’s safer for them and for and for wildlife around,” Khann said.
— Mars Wetzbarger
Also read in Salish Current:
• *Bird flu is spreading to wild mammal populations,” Oct 9, 2025
• “Nonprofit reintroduces bluebirds to San Juan,” July 24, 2025
• “Animal owners step up action against threat of bird flu,” Feb. 24, 2025
• “Why count birds?,” Jan. 6, 2025
• “A delicate balance: the controversial plan to protect the spotted owl,” Aug 13, 2024