How do I keep my kitten away from my bird?

My 12 week old kittie "Savanna" has just discovered my amazon parrot "Pedro." I caught Savanna trying to reach up to the bird and it scared me. My calico "Darla" is bigger and sometimes she'll get near the bird but she knows not to get too close. Now I'm afraid to leave Savanna loose. My bird could hurt her. Any suggestions on what to do to keep Savanna away from Pedro's cage.

I'm going to guess it's a very large cage. Can you keep her out of the room the bird is in? At least while you're not there to supervise. Might sound mean, but letting the bird give her a good scare might work too. No idea if your bird would squawk at the kitten since it's used to your other cat.

Savanna is fearless and the funny thing is that my bird will climb down to the bottom of her cage and stand there quietly staring Savanna down, kind of teasing her. It's really funny to watch. They have stare contests that are pretty long. I just don't want my baby getting bit by the bird.

Well, it took getting bit for most of mine to leave the bird alone.
Ivory though still tries to bug him, but Murphy tells on the cats if he feels they are too close.

I have a budgie and Bella who is still a kitten 9 months, when we are not at home we put the budgie in another room as we came home one day and the cage had been knocked down and was on the floor. They have staring competitions occassionally and sometimes Bella pounces but Sam the budgie stands up for himself. I wouldn't like to take the chance that she could hurt him so we seperate them when we are not home. I would imagine a parrot would be scary for a kitten.

Let her learn a lesson or two. She'll take cues from your other cat and hopefully learn on her own, too. My cats still watch and are curious about my larger birds, but they know not to get close enough for a bite and loud screeching. With the smaller birds, it's just easier to make sure they are in a separate room that can be closed off and supervised at all times when they are together.

Please remember it was FERAL domestic cats that were responseable for almost wiping out the kakapo which is the worlds largest parrot, which is larger and more powerful then any of our "pet store" parrots which just shows us how powerful cats are. If ANY domestic cat put its head to it, it can EASILY get a hold of ANY parrots neck and kill it.


Just a few days ago I whitnessed a neibours cat catch and kill an ADULT male ring neck pheasant, which is a pretty large bird it was a shocking experience. I didnt really know what the cat was stalking in the grass until I saw it with that HUGE bird in its mouth! These phesants are often let lose by hunters to increase their population for hunting season and are larger then any parrot.


A friend of mines big barn tom cat killed his PRIZE fighting asil game cocck **** (type of fighting rooster) which is a very powerful agressive bird in its own sense.

What happened was the rooster usually dominates the cats and makes sure he gets first pickings when they are fed, well one day the boss tom cat was in a bad mood and instead of moving away when the rooster came to "pick" at its food the cat counter attacked mauled the rooster the way it would maul another male cat that would tresspass on its land, and in a matter of seconds before the owner could get in the middle the rooster was on the ground gasping for air & ended up dying from bacteria infection that night

Birds are extremly delicate creatures

Kakapos are in danger because they are flightless, and live only in NZ.
They are 8 pound birds, not the largest as most large Macaws weigh more.
Kakapos are also nocturnal.
And you are speaking of feral cats, with a reason to hunt and kill, versus your average housecat, who's main purpose if curiosity/play.

Birds and cats should never be allowed to interact when possible, as the risk of pasteurella as you describe is very real, and doesn't even have to come from a wound.
Simply ingesting cat saliva is enough to kill most birds and small mammals.

You do not ever want your bird out of it's cage around a cat that has yet to learn to leave a bird alone, and you never want any bird uncaged unsupervised.

It did take getting a very painful macaw bite for most of mine to lose interest.

ive NEVER heard of a macaw weighing more then or even anywhere close to 8 pounds do you have any links for this?

Hyacinths and Green wings are easily 10 pound birds.
No, no links, just memories from working with them and having to weigh daily.

Kakapos though, don't even have the instinct to fight back or to run, too many thousands of years of no mammalian predators, they will just sit there.

my book here says Hyacinths (blue macaw) are the largest of the macaws but that they only get to a max of 4 pounds

I wonder if it's the difference of captive versus wild as I would assume the wild birds are a much lighter weight since they aren't sedentary.
Maybe the rescue just got grossly obese birds?
We frequently had Greenwings come into rescue at 4 kilos, only ever had one Hyacinth come in, she was 5 kilos.
It's a shame that the Kakapos do not do well in captivity as I'm sure there would be a lot of zoos that would open a breeding program for them.