Bad Cat Stats?

No, the cats aren't bad, the statistics are, at least according to Wall Street Journal Numbers Guy Carl Bialik. At the urging of my friend and well-known pet columnist Gina Spadafori, he took a look at the theory that one unspayed cat and her offspring could produce 420,000 kittens over a 7-year period. That's probably a little high, experts say. Taking kitten mortality and other factors into account, the real number is probably closer to 5,000. Phew! We'd be buried in cats, otherwise. Not that that's a bad thing...well, except that all those cats in laps combined with global warming would make for an awfully hot planet. And it doesn't mean that pet overpopulation isn't a problem, just that more realistic numbers make the solution seem more attainable.