Feral cats - I've made no secret of the fact that I hate them, I want them gone.
From the outset, I do want to point out the very important distinction. We're not talking about domestic cats here, I happen to love domestic cats.
But feral cats are a different beast.
There are an estimated 2.5 million of them. They are huge, angry pests. They are breeding out of control across the motu, and they're killing as many of our native birds, lizards, bats and our taonga species, as any of our other predators.
And right now, we’re giving them a free pass.
We've got a plan to target rats, possums, stoats, ferrets and weasels. It's called Predator Free 2050. Yet, feral cats aren’t in this. Why? Well it’s because we love our cute domesticated cats.
But if we don’t start to think about feral cats differently, we could lose some of our native species forever.
Next year the government is going to review the Predator Free 2050 strategy. Conservation Minister Willow-Jean Prime told me the public will have their say on whether feral cats should be included in the list.
"When they developed the first strategy (in 2017)...the feedback from the public at that time was possums, rats, stoats, mustelids should be included," she said. "There was strong feedback from the public at that time that it shouldn't include cats. However…in 2024 we begin the process of reviewing that strategy."
And while the Minister can’t predetermine the outcome of the review, she says feedback from the public will be "very informative" in terms of the decision.
So, it's up to us.
We have got to separate feral cats from domestic cats in our minds.
When this Predator-free 2050 review happens next year, we can’t be squeamish about it, we have to do the right thing and put feral cats on the list.
It must have a strategy to make sure our domestic cats are kept safe, and that we are as humane as possible.
But if we get this right, then we have a real chance to protect and save our native birds and precious taonga.
For me, this whole feral cat debate started with the North Canterbury Hunting Competition.
It attracted attention and criticism from around the world. But at the heart of it was a bunch of rural Kiwi farming families trying to eradicate pests from their farms while raising money for the local Rotherham School and Pool.
The competition last weekend resulted in farmers killing 231 wild pigs, 145 possums, 142 deer, 128 hares, 69 rabbits and a whopping 243 feral cats.
The organisers of the competition were forced to pull the category that allowed children to hunt for feral cats, after furious backlash to the story that went global.
Last month, the section was reinstated with new rules, this time only allowing adults to compete as opposed to children 14 and under, like previously. Participants were also told to only hunt feral cats with box traps, kill them using a minimum of a .22 rifle and only hunt them a minimum of 10km outside residential or lifestyle block areas.
North Canterbury farmer Mat Bailey is an organiser of the North Canterbury Hunting Competition. He invited me out to go hunting for feral cats on his farm.
He told me the issue for the "apex predator" is that nothing else hunts it.
"Which is why we have to play our part," he said.
"We are going to take the side of native animals. I haven’t heard a tui or a woodpigeon barrel through for (here) for ages," Bailey said.
He said it is "madness" feral cats aren't included in the Government's goal for the country to be predator free by 2050.
"[I] don't know how we’ll be predator free if they're not," he said.
Just down the road from Mat’s farm, along the Waiau Uwha River is a nesting spot for the critically endangered Black-Fronted Tern. There are as little as 5000 of the birds left.
"We had 17 nests here last year, all taken over by cats," Dave McKenzie said. "No survival at all."
McKenzie is part of a volunteer conservation group that has caught feral cats on camera killing the birds and eating their eggs.
He says these aren’t people’s domestic cats. “We’re 5 to 10-kilometres away from the nearest house..these aren’t the cats that sit on the sofa at night.” He says a lot of time, effort and resource goes into protecting the birds. And it’s frustrating that it only takes one cat for “the whole thing to be finished”
Are cats controlled in New Zealand?
The first cats arrived in New Zealand in 1769.
Early Europeans had them on board to control rodents but they quickly got a feral population.
These cats have been breeding in the wild for over 250 years, and cats breed fast.
Cats breed two litters a year from the age of four months and each litter contains three to six kittens - that's six times faster than possums.
And of course, when domestic cats stray or get dumped, they breed and boost the feral population.
Humans haven't helped the feral cat populations, as farmers once released cats to try to control the rabbits, but it failed.
There are now an estimated 2.5 million feral cats on our motu and they are killing machines. They kill our lizards, bats, and an estimated 100 million birds a year.
They even kill our dolphins. Toxoplasmosis, which is a parasite that lives in cat poo, gets into the waterways, killing Maui and Hector's dolphins and also, making sheep miscarry.
Predator Free 2050 gives New Zealand strategies, targets and funding to get rid of our most deadly pests - but it deliberately ignores feral cats.
We're too chicken to target them, for one reason: People like domestic cats.
Cats get special treatment in New Zealand, for instance, we have regulations to control dogs but the only law about owning a cat in New Zealand is you have to take care of it.
No microchipping law, no wandering law and no desexing law. That makes for happy cats at home.
But our native species are far from happy when there's a 7kg monster out there with only one thing on its mind: Killing them.
Stream Paddy Gower Has Issues in full on ThreeNow.
