Unfortunately, cat hating has become fashionable. Some people seem to think that hating cats makes them conservationists which, as the REARK survey notes, is quite unreasonable (1):

"Equating hatred of cats with environmental awareness is an emotive and dangerous practice. More importantly it obscures the truth."

In this climate, anti-cat statements can be accepted uncritically. Supposedly authoritative claims are made about how many animals, especially native animals, cats kill, but usually without any real evidence. 

It is very disappointing that well-respected conservation biologists (2) chose to refer to only 1 survey, not published in a refereed journal, which claims that each household cat kills 30 vertebrates a year.

These authors state: "Paton (1991) studied well-cared for household cats in South Australia..." (2), giving the impression that Paton actually observed and monitored these cats, which he did not. Instead he distributed questionnaries through bird lover groups.