It has been confirmed: your cat is a troublemaker.
The respected scientific institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PASIFIC) has officially classified cats as an “invasive alien species,” according to the Associated Press.
The study, led by PASIFIC biologist Wojciech Solarz, found that the damage cats cause by hunting and killing birds and other wildlife was reason enough to consider the animals invasive.
The species “Felis catus,” also known as the domestic cat, was entered into a national database run by the Academy’s Institute for Conservation of Nature – which includes 1,786 other species – and there were no objections to it.
But the public reportedly reacted to this new entry with sheer disapproval.
The scientist told the AP the public may have been angered by false accusations that the institute was pushing to euthanize feral cats.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the state-run Polish Academy of Sciences for comment.
Cat owners should limit the time their pets spend outdoors during bird breeding season, according to the Polish Academy of Sciences. Shutterstock
The cat meets “100%” all the criteria to make the invasive species list, Solarz argued, due to the animals’ detrimental impact on biodiversity.
In an appearance on independent broadcaster TVN, Solarz mentioned that cats kill 140 million birds in Poland every year.
The institute addressed the controversy on its website last month, emphasizing the Academy’s opposition to cruelty to animals, the AP reported.
The institute stressed that it only recommended that cat owners limit the time their pets spend outdoors during the bird breeding season.
But Becky Robinson, president and founder of the Bethesda, Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies — a leader in a global movement to protect cats and kittens — is skeptical that other parts of the world, like Australia and New Zealand, have made no effort continue to get rid of cats.
“Make no mistake: labeling cats as invasive is a privileged first step in a broader strategy to kill them in large numbers through cruel cat hunts and poisoning,” she said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“This idea of killing cats will never be accepted by the compassionate society that we live in,” Robinson said.
“It will never be effective to kill cats, nor will it be morally acceptable.”
Robinson said biologists and environmentalists have proven that other factors, such as climate change and habitat destruction, are the main cause of species loss – making it “completely inappropriate” to blame cats, she said.
Cats kill 140 million birds in Poland every year. Shutterstock
The institute’s guidance to limit the time cats spend outdoors is counterintuitive to the species’ composition, Robinson claimed, since cats have lived alongside humans for thousands of years.
She said they only recently started living indoors, given the invention of cat litter in the last century.
“There is no future in which people can exist without cats. You are here to stay,” she said.
“The only way forward is through humane, non-lethal programs like Trap-Neuter-Return, the scientifically proven approach to effectively and humanely targeting community feline populations,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed coverage to this article.