Cats and Birds information on net.

I grew up with cats who moved between indoors and outdoors at will. We lost some to cars, some got sick, others just disappeared. Cat litter made full-time indoor feline living an option. We keep ours inside all the time, neutered and vaccinated in case they get out (Salvador made a run for it during our last earthquake).

The always-indoors option has forced cat keepers to confront a dispute as hot (among cat lovers) as gun control. One side sees free-roaming cats as individual sentient beings, misunderstood and unfairly maligned, deserving respect and care. Another side sees wretched, disease-prone killing machines, endangering human health and cutting a swath through wildlife populations.

The dispute is big. Most cat counters estimate about 60 million "pet" cats in the US. One third (20 million) stay indoors; the rest are indoor/outdoor commuters. Another 60 million are strays (abandoned or lost) or feral (descendants of strays). That would make one Felis domesticus for every two Homo sapiens in the country.

"Cats, whether owned, stray, or feral, should not roam free!" says The American Bird Conservancy. Its Cats Indoors! program (see access) estimates that free-roaming domestic cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year.

On the other paw, Alley Cat Allies (ACA; see access) counters that such numbers are extrapolations from very limited data. ACA claims that feral cats mostly scavenge and hunt rodents; that the real enemies of wild bird populations are habitat fragmentation and pesticide use.

Indoors-only advocates argue that cats can catch (and sometimes transmit to humans) rabies, distemper, toxoplasmosis, and a host of other diseases. Roaming cats can clearly become neighborhood nuisances, hunting at the next-door bird feeder, digging up and doing it in gardens, and singing love songs into the night.

Recommending indoor living may be reasonable for pet cats, but what to do about the 60 million homeless? Organizations agree that their numbers should be reduced, and, when possible, they should be trapped, neutered, vaccinated, and placed in good homes. The fur flies over otherwise healthy cats deemed too "feral" to be placed. Two options polarize the cat-concerned: (1) trap, neuter, and release cats into `managed colonies'; or (2) eliminate colonies in a humane manner (a euphemism for another euphemism, euthanization).

Domestic dogs and cats were infected by mosquito bite and evaluated as hosts for West Nile virus (WNV). Viremia of low magnitude and short duration developed in four dogs but they did not display signs of disease. Four cats became viremic, with peak titers ranging from [10.sup.3.0] to [10.sup.4.0] PFU/mL. Three of the cats showed mild, non-neurologic signs of disease. WNV was net isolated from saliva of either dogs or cats during the period of viremia. An additional group of four cats were exposed to WNV orally, through ingestion of infected mice. Two cats consumed an infected mouse on three consecutive days, and two cats ate a single infected mouse. Viremia developed in all of these cats with a magnitude and duration similar to that seen in cats infected by mosquito bite, but none of the four showed clinical signs. These results suggest that dogs and cats are readily infected by WNV. The high efficiency of oral transmission observed with cats suggests that infected prey animals may serve as an important source of infection to carnivores. Neither species is likely to function as an epidemiologically important amplifying host, although the peak viremia observed in cats may be high enough to infect mosquitoes at low efficiency.

THE FIRST HINT of dawn barely tints the summer sky when I slip out of the old bunkhouse on Tiritiri Matangi Island. Across the calm Hauraki Gulf, glittering night lights of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, remind me that the hubbub of civilization is only 15 miles distant. But as I head down into the forested valley, I am at once enveloped in the most wondrous, soul-lifting wild bird chorus I have ever heard.

As if directed by an unseen conductor presiding over an island-wide orchestra, the island's entire population of native New Zealand songbirds erupts in full harmony. Fuzzy-tongued nectar lovers, ancient wattle birds and forest-floor insect eaters all vie with each other to greet the new day. Their ethereal rhythms rise and fall not unlike those of a classical violin concerto. It is sheer bird magic, made all the more incredible because 20 years ago it simply did not exist here on this tiny speck of land, a mere 550 acres known for short as Tiri.

The story of this little island stands out as an example of the miracles that can be accomplished when people join hands to achieve a common dream. Tiri is a living illustration of what New Zealand once was, long before humankind arrived, and what it could be again if this vision were expanded countrywide.

But for the moment, down in the bush-clad valley where twilight lingers, I close my eyes and immerse myself in the sea of sound, picturing each musician still unseen in the thickets. Apace with the brightening daylight, every one chimes in a few minutes after the last.

First there's the tui, a grackle-size bird with blue-black and purple hues, filamentous white feathers woven through its nape and a white, tufty throat pompon worn like a bow tie. It quivers as it sings. Triple notes ring out arrogantly, like three big drops of water dripping loudly into a quiet pool, interspersed with delicate twitters so high- pitched I can barely pick them up.

Then comes the New Zealand robin, one of the least showy species on the island's bird list. Gray, chubby, long-legged and big-eyed, it spends most of its time on the forest floor. Its delectably sweet melody-clear and pure, urgent yet unstinting-goes on and on and on, not even pausing for breath, it seems.

A leopard has died from avian influenza at a zoo in eastern Thailand while a tiger there has survived infection by the deadly virus which is thought to have come from chickens fed to the cats, a zoo official said Monday.

Laboratory tests conducted at Kasetsart University confirmed that the clouded leopard that died Jan. 27 at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chon Buri Province was infected by the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus, the zoo's chief veterinarian said.

A white tiger was also infected with the same viral strain but has survived after receiving medication, according to the veterinarian.

He said the wild cats must have caught the virus from infected chickens that the zoo fed the animals before the government admitted on Jan. 23 that bird flu had broken out in the kingdom.

''There has been no other risk factor in the zoo except the food. We have stopped feeding chickens to our animals and since then we have found no other case of infection. Our birds have been examined and they are all fine,'' the veterinarian said.

He said five random samplings collected from wild cats and another 37 random samplings from birds, both those kept in cages and those living freely in the zii, tested negative for H5N1.

He said the 10-year-old clouded leopard could not survive the infection due to its age and because it had already been suffering from heart and liver ailments.

The zoo still has other 16 clouded leopards, an endangered species in Southeast Asia.

Khao Kheow Open Zoo has been closed down since Jan. 30 together with another zoo in Bangkok.