Can you own cats and still attract birds to the garden?

[Buddleja]

DSs really really really really want a cat.

I'm a big lover of garden birds and at the moment we get a good variety of birds in the garden at various points.

There are cat visitors in our garden - mostly feral ones! Which has seemed to deter the birds but they don't visit as often as a cat who lived here would be here iykwim!

Anyway in a nutshell can you still successfully attract birds to your garden if you own a cat (or cats if DSs get there way!)

I have a cat and I also have many bird feeders in the garden. My cat sits quite happily under the plum tree watching them and they ignore her totally. If she starts moving the birds set up a warning and that is it.

The trick is to only have hanging bird feeders that a cat cannot reach or climb e.g do not hang them near a fence or from a low hanging branch.

In three years she has never caught a bird

Brilliant!! THe bird table is falling apart anyway.

All I have to do now is break DH down - he's not found of cats (weirdo)

I have many hanging bird feeders and 3 cats.
One cat is toothless and occasionally covers a bird with spit which we rescue.
One cat is so lazy when he is lying on the lawn the birds walk over his tail.
One other cat seems to be anti blood sports but does catch flies.

On the other hand my ghastly neighbour's cats (the neighbours are ghastly as well as their cats) have mauled several birds so badly we had to put them down, beat up my cats and have eaten every wood pigeon for about 50 miles.
The smaller birds stay way up in my big tree and when I see the two predators I go out with buckets of water.

Despite the cats we had 6 great tit chicks fledge last year and also a family of goldfinches who had 5 chicks with them.

Have big trees which cats can't climb is the trick.