Letter: What is the point of cats?

The domestic cat, Felis silvestris catus, is quite probably the most useless animal on the planet and we have an estimated 10.3 million of them in the UK.

They spend 85 per-cent of their lives doing nothing, sleeping or dozing.

Eating, drinking, killing, defecating and mating take up just four per cent of their time and 11 per cent just getting around.

They are highly intelligent animals and more often choose their owner rather than an owner choosing them, only 25 per cent of American cat owners admitted to choosing their cat – the rest just walked in.

Last year in the UK cats consumed 480 million cans of wet food, 150 million cans of dry, 232 million pouches and 43 million tit-bits which is probably the reason why the UK has 80 million rats running loose.

Wild birds are a different story and have been decimated by the domestic cat. Domestic life is not good for cats, milk gives them diarrhoea, cat food rots their gums and central heating causes them to moult.

Bob Wydell

Oswestry