Nine Lives, the feral cat that terrorised New Zealand’s rare ducks, is caught after three years

A notorious feral cat given the name “Nine Lives” because it eluded trappers for three years has been caught and killed in New Zealand, ending its devastating rampage against one of the country’s rare duck populations.

The cat, a large grey tabby, is estimated to have killed dozens of New Zealand’s rarest mainland duck – or 1% of its population – plus a host of kiwi chicks, native geckos and other native wildlife during the three years it was known to be roaming the Purerua peninsula, near the top of the North Island.

“We don’t take for granted that we’ve had this success because it had us baffled for so long,” said Andy Mentor, the project manager for Pest Free Purerua, a conservation project.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of cat ownership in the world, and the impact of feral and domestic cats on biodiversity ignites fierce debate. Some on social media were horrified Nine Lives had been shot, believing it deserved to live, while others said its capture was “a fantastic result”.

Nine Lives will form part of that debate long after its death, with its body set to be taxidermied for use as a tool to educate the community about the devastating impact of feral cats on native species.

Nine Lives was first spotted on the Purerua peninsula in Northland in 2023. What ensued was a frustrating and twisted game of cat and mouse.

Nine Lives ate dozens of pāteke, or brown teal, that were being introduced back into the wild. Photograph: Pest Free Purerua

Pest Free Purerua had just introduced 20 pāteke, or brown teal – the country’s rarest mainland duck – to the peninsula, believing it had control over the feral cat population.

“But within a week we had our first death. We put up some cameras and we identified a particular cat with specific markings,” Mentor said. Another 15 pāteke were killed, with the same cat turning up.

“It was a really stressful time. So we brought in more traps, gear, night cameras to try and get to the root cause of the problem.”

The project managed to catch other feral cats over the next year, but Nine Lives remained elusive. They decided to release more pāteke in 2024 but the same cat appeared, killing another 15 of the 20 birds.

“This particular cat would be very erratic. It would show up in a particular place and then not show up for another two or three months. It would show up in the dusk, midnight, early morning, through the day, so it was never a predictable pattern, which made it very, very difficult to track,” Mentor said.

The team came close to catching it on a number of occasions, but each time it slipped their grasp, earning it the name Nine Lives.

At the end of July, Mentor and his team noticed the cat had turned up to a quarry three nights in a row, which was “quite unusual”. They laid out salmon, fried chicken and rabbit to attract the animal, and deployed cages and traps.

On 30 July, a notification on a cellphone camera showed a cat in one of the cages.

“We dispatched our trappers to check it out and there it was. So it was humanely shot,” Mentor said.

The animal will have its stomach contents examined to see what it was feeding on before being taxidermied. Mentor said it has likely also fed on kiwi chicks, native geckos and other native wildlife.

More than 2.5m feral cats roam New Zealand’s bush and on offshore islands, where they can grow up to a metre long, including their tail. They have destroyed native wildlife and hunted some bird species to the brink of extinction.

In November, the government announced feral cats would be added to the country’s world-leading Predator-Free 2050 strategy. Mentor said moving from the suppression of cats to an elimination strategy will be a “real step up” for the peninsula and the team may restart introducing pāteke once more.

But for now, conservationists will celebrate the capture of Nine Lives, as well as honour their most evasive adversary. “Nine Lives needs to be given a certain amount of dignity and respect,” said Mentor.