Answering Timothy Sell’s letter ("Too many people are blind to the damage loose cats can do," February 15), I never said cats don’t kill birds. I have tried to make sense of an isolated statistic published by The New York Times.

Now, on page 7 of the Feb. 18 issue of Time, that magazine states, “500 million estimated number of birds killed by cats each year in the US, according to a University of Georgia study.”

Where does this fit into the Smithsonian estimate of 2.5 billion?  Who to believe?

— Diane Pleninger

Anchorage