Helpful Buckeye has been writing Questions On Dogs and Cats long enough to know ahead of time to expect almost-guaranteed reactions when certain things are mentioned. Take this issue's title, for instance. I know that most of our dog-owning readers are already figuring they can skip this issue. Not so fast, my friends! This has more to do with you than you might be aware. Stay tuned....
It has been almost 3 years since Helpful Buckeye addressed the subject of feral cats. Since the problem seems to be getting worse rather than better, it's time to discuss it again...along with more information about the far-reaching implications of the negative side of this situation. When Helpful Buckeye read this article from Utah, it became apparent that this topic has aroused even political interest:
Feral cat bill passes Utah House
The so-called "feral cat" bill allowing animals deemed pests to be shot was passed by the House Friday after several changes. House Bill 210 was stripped of much of its original intent in committee but the bill's sponsor, Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, managed to restore some key language. Oda said the bill is needed to allow farmers and ranchers to control feral animal populations without fear of being charged with animal cruelty.
The House agreed to add back a provision allowing the humane shooting of an animal in an unincorporated area of a county if the shooter "has a reasonable belief" the animal is feral. Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, said feral animals are ever-present in rural areas. He said it's not a matter of if they're coming for his cows, but when.
And while many representatives acknowledged the necessity of controlling feral animals in rural areas, Rep. Marie Poulson, D-Salt Lake, said her family encouraged keeping feral cats, instead of killing them, because they kept the mice population down.
Oda ended up circling his bill before the midday break Friday after a lengthy debate about where such shootings should be allowed. Rep. Jackie Biskupski, D-Salt Lake, said the broad language of the bill would allow individuals to shoot animals in unincorporated areas, such as Millcreek. "It's just so not appropriate," Biskupski said.
Later Friday, the bill was amended to apply only to areas where hunting is not prohibited, and quickly passed, 44-28.
Before the vote, Minority Assistant Whip Brian King, D-Salt Lake, said he is concerned the bill provides a loophole for individuals who want to "satisfy their own perverse sense” by killing animals for pleasure. House Minority Leader Dave Litvack, D-Salt Lake, spoke out against the bill earlier Friday, calling it "an embarrassment. We all had a lot of fun with the original bill, I don’t think that’s really where we want to go as a policy of the state of Utah."
There was some fun, too, during the Friday afternoon vote that sent the bill to the Senate. A number of representatives could be heard meowing as they cast their votes.
Adapted from: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705367509/Feral-cat-bill-passes-Utah-House.html
Right here, it's important to provide a definition of the word, "feral":
1) existing in a wild state; not domesticated or cultivated
2) having reverted to the wild state
3) ferocious; savage; brutal....
Bear in mind that this is Felis catus we're talking about, the domestic cat. These feral cats are descendants of cats that were regular domestic cats that spent most or all of their time outdoors, breeding, and having a lot of kittens. Most of them probably haven't ever been handled by a human. Let's see what researchers have to say about the life of a feral cat:
The Secret Lives of Feral Cats
Do feral kitties live good lives? The Washington Post asked that question last week in a story that examined the practice of controlling feral cat populations by trapping cats, spaying or neutering them, and then releasing them back into their former home environments (it’s often called Trap-Neuter-Return or TNR).
The Humane Society of the United States, the ASPCA and other supporters say the nation’s estimated 50 million to 150 million feral felines often live healthy lives. They also say TNR has added benefits: After a cat colony is sterilized, nuisance behaviors such as fighting and yowling are reduced, and the feral population stabilizes. Feral cats can keep rats in check, too.
Skeptics, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and some veterinarians, argue the life of an alley cat is rarely pleasant. In many cases, they say it’s actually more humane to euthanize cats, rather than condemn them to a harsh life on the streets.
Some insight into the lives of both feral and owned kitties comes from a new study, published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, in which researchers set out to track free-roaming feral and owned cats by placing radio transmitters on 42 kitties in and around Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Twenty-three of those transmitters also had tilt and vibration sensors that measured activity.
The scientists found that the feral cats had home ranges that stretched across large areas; one male kitty’s range covered 1,351 acres (2.1 square miles). They roamed over a wide variety of habitats, most often in urban areas and grasslands, including a restored prairie. In winter, they preferred urban spots, forests and farmland, all places that would provide greater shelter from bad weather and help them keep warm. Cats that had owners, meanwhile, tended to stick close to home, with their range sizes averaging a mere 4.9 acres.
Feral kitties were also more active than cats that had homes. Unowned cats spent 14 percent of their time in what the scientists classified as “high activity” (running or hunting, for example), compared with only 3 percent for kitties with owners. “The unowned cats have to find food to survive, and their activity is significantly greater than the owned cats throughout the day and through the year, especially in winter,” says study co-author Jeff Horn of the University of Illinois.
In addition, the feral cats’ daily activity patterns—sleeping during the day and being active at night, which likely reflects the behavior of their prey, small mammals, as well as lets them better avoid humans—was very different from kitties with homes. Those animals were most active in the morning and evening, when their owners were likely home and awake.
Only one owned kitty died during the study, compared with six feral cats. Two of the feral cats were killed by coyotes, and the researchers believe that at least some of the others were killed by other cats, as the owned kitty was. Cats that live outdoors, even just part of the time, are at risk of death from other cats as well as diseases such as rabies, feline leukemia and parasites, the researchers note.
And of course there’s the fact that cats, owned and unowned, kill wildlife. “Owned cats may have less impact on other wildlife than unowned cats because of their localized ranging behavior, or conversely, they may have a very high impact withing their smaller home ranges,” the scientists write. “Free-roaming cats do kill wildlife and pose a disease risk; cat owners should keep pets indoors.”
But there’s nothing in this study that convinces me that feral cats are living such harsh lives that death would be better, as PETA and other TNR skeptics have contended. Feral cats do have harder and shorter lives than our pets. They have to find their own food and water and shelter, and this isn’t easy. But that’s what any wild creature has to do, and to imply that their lives are worthless because they are hard is, frankly, ridiculous.
Adapted from:
That study points out some of the dangers that await any cat that spends much time outdoors. A further comparison of outdoor versus indoor cats:
Should your cat be an indoor or outdoor cat?
Some people think cats need the freedom to roam, while others say indoor cats have a longer life span and better health. The decision is, of course, yours.
On today's Pet Vet, our contributing veterinarian, Randy Aronson, stopped by to talk about this choice. He says the difference in lifespan between an indoor car and his outdoor counterpart is amazing.
"On average, an indoor cat lives twelve years but some cats can live for as many as twenty years," he said. "In comparison, an outdoor cat's life expectancy is less than five years."
Some of the dangers of living outdoors include:
Birds of prey, like hawks and owls, coyotes, automobiles, cacti and their spines, pesticides, spoiled food, poisonous plants, and intentional poisonings.
Adapted from: http://www.kvoa.com/news/pet-vet-indoor-or-outdoor-cat-/
Protecting Pets From Wildlife
As pet owners, we do all we can to safeguard our pets from dangers in and around the house. We can do a lot to keep some risks—like medications, poisonous plants, and antifreeze—away from our pets, but some dangers—like wild animals—may be out of our control. In this podcast, Dr. Bernadine Cruz, associate veterinarian at Laguna Hills Animal Hospital in Laguna Woods, Calif., talks about what we can do to protect our pets from wildlife.
Listen to this short podcast from the American Veterinary Medical Association at: http://www.avmamedia.org/display.asp?sid=415&NAME=Protecting_Pets_From_Wildlife?utm_source=smartbrief&utm_medium=email
As Dr. Bernadine Cruz points out in this podcast, dogs and cats that are allowed to be outdoors can face conflicts with snakes, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, scorpions, javelinas, porcupines, ground hogs, skunks, and rats. In addition to bite wounds inflicted by these wild animals, your pet may also come in contact with parasites, bubonic plague, and other diseases. Look around your yard to see if you are offering an attractive situation that might lure wildlife: trash cans, bird feeders, ponds, open crawl spaces, overgrown bushes and shrubs, and fallen fruit. Keeping your pets up-to-date on their vaccines, in particular, their rabies vaccination, will help relieve your worries if there is exposure to a rabid animal.
To close out this part of our discussion on feral cats, here are some important tips on:
How To Care For An Outdoor Cat
Do your cats live outside? Or come in and out of the house? If your cat does spend a lot of time exploring the great outdoors, there are some concerns and dangers you should be aware of. A sad statistic is that the average lifespan of an outdoor cat is half as long as an indoor cat's. In fact, according to PetPlace.com, it may be more like one-third: 5 years.
The purpose of this post, however, isn't to shame you into locking your cats inside. Instead, we want to arm you with the information you need to keep your outdoor (or indoor/outdoor) cat safe in the great big world. To help us with this, we've enlisted the help of former American Veterinary Medical Association president, Dr. Gregory Hammer.
According to Dr. Hammer, the dangers posed to outdoor cats fall under three categories: infection, trauma and parasites. The threat level of each of these risks can vary depending on your location (rural, urban, suburban, etc.), but unfortunately the risks are always significantly higher for outdoor cats.
Danger: Infection
The more contact your cat has with the outside world, the more likely it is to be exposed to some sort of infectious disease. "The most common diseases to watch out for are distemper, leukemia and upper respiratory infection from contact with other cats," Dr. Hammer tells Paw Nation.
Contact with other neighborhood cats is a primary source for respiratory illnesses and feline leukemia, which is highly contagious between cats. More like HIV than the leukemia that affects humans, feline leukemia (FeLV) is an immuno-suppressive virus that infects the white blood cells. Yet another dangerous infection outdoor cats may be exposed to is, of course, rabies.
What you can do: The mantra here from Dr. Hammer is vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. Many of the common infections that can threaten a cat's health -- like distemper, rabies and leukemia -- are preventable with simple vaccines. If you own an outdoor cat, it's imperative to keep these vaccinations current.
Danger: Trauma
Outdoor cats have a greater risk for traumatic injuries. These include, but aren't limited to cat bites, abscesses, dog attacks, and getting hit by cars. When you take these into account (especially car accidents), it's easy to see why the average lifespan of outdoor cats is so much lower.
What you can do: Perhaps the best way to combat these injuries is to focus on treatment. Abscesses are a fairly common result of a territory dispute between two rival cats. If your cat does sustain a wound due to a fight with another animal (even another cat), it's a good idea to have the wound checked out by a vet before it has a chance to get even worse.
Danger: Parasites
Obviously, a cat that lives outdoors is more likely to come in contact with fleas, ticks, lice, and other pesky insects. However, a number of common parasitic threats are less easily detected, e.g. hookworms and roundworms. To make matters worse, many of these internal parasites are transferable to humans.
What you can do: The best chance you have to avoid parasites is by using preventative measures, such as flea-and-tick medications, as well as routine inspections. Dr. Hammer recommends monthly spot checks for external and internal parasites. External parasite checks are fairly straightforward. When it comes to internal parasites, it's probably best to consult with your vet to come up with a workable strategy.
"There are a number of good products available," says Dr. Hammer, "The over-the-counter products can sometimes get the job done, but the prescription products are quite a bit stronger."
Are There Benefits to Letting Your Cat Go Outdoors?
Unfortunately, there aren't many clear advantages for letting your cats roam. "The bad things far outweigh the benefits, I'm afraid," Hammer tells Paw Nation. "I've seen too many bad things happen to outdoor cats."
If your cat loves being outside, one option is to treat your cat more like a dog and train it to walk on a leash. "I have a number of clients that take their cat out in the backyard on a leash like a dog. That's perfectly safe," says Hammer.
Adapted from:
That one statement from Dr. Hammer seems to resonate in your mind, over and over..."I've seen too many bad things happen to outdoor cats"....
Magnify that by considering that a feral cat faces all those concerns 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...without the prospect of having a home to return to. Yes, the feral cat problem is a big one, both for the public and for the cat. Next week, Helpful Buckeye will introduce even more concerns related to pet animal interactions with wildlife.
SPORTS NEWS
The Ohio State basketball team is still in the top 5...even with a few losses. I still don't think we're quite as good as we were last year but we'll be much tougher by the NCAA Tournament.
Helpful Buckeye got tickets this week to see the LA Dodgers in spring training in March. The prospect of getting a new owner who actually cares about the quality of the team is invigorating. Baseball fortunes are looking up!
PERSONAL STUFF
For Desperado and Helpful Buckeye, 2011 was a year of turmoil. A lot of things happened that were distressing, disrupting, and disturbing. However, through it all, I somehow knew that things would eventually straighten out...and they have...thanks to Desperado. She was my compass for re-acquiring a proper perspective on what lies ahead:
“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” Albert Schweitzer, Physician and philosopher
We have been looking at several short excursions around the state of Arizona to places that played an important part in the early history of our state. With the Centennial coming up on 14 February, we'll choose a few of those trips to get under way...beginning with a hike this week down in Sedona. Desperado hasn't been able to hike for more than a year and she's now eager to get back on the trail. As the Latin majors used to say...Carpe Vacationum! Which means, Seize the vacation!
Posts
On advice of the local sheriff where I live I used a .22 equipped with a good illuminated-reticle scope and a laser-sight for use when they are most active, dusk to dawn; as well as to afford precision aim for a humane kill. I shot every last one of them on my property, hundreds of them, to restore all the native wildlife to proper balance. Mission accomplished! 100% total success! This is even a more humane method than terrorizing trapping and animal-shelter methods; and why it is the preferred feral-cat management policy in so many areas today. One moment the cats are happily stalking defenseless animals to cruelly torture again, the next they are dead and don't even know what happened, they don't even have time to make a sound. Making your land 100% cat-free is something that cat advocates haven't been able to solve nation-wide for 30-40 years. On my land only 1 person in only 2 seasons was able to accomplish what they couldn't attain in decades. Why is that? The cost per cat was also only 0.3 CENT, 3 cats PER PENNY, a ONE-TIME expense (5000 rounds on sale for only $15). All cats gone for the price of a few cups of coffee. And contrary to another famous TNR-Advocate's bald-faced "vacuum effect" LIE ... NO CATS REPLACED THEM. The NATIVE predators and their required NATIVE prey that WAS here and BELONGS here is what replaced their lousy invasive-species cats that had destroyed the entire native food-chain. This year I'm even enjoying birds I've never seen in my life before. Two of the warblers listed in the top 10 songbirds of the world for their song. What an amazing sound to awake to each morning. You have no idea what you're missing if you have cats by you. I now feel sorry for anyone who has cats. Their lives and world are dismally empty and they don't even know it.
ReplyDeleteMay you have as much success as I did, and so quickly and inexpensively too.
Look up the term TNR advocates just LOVE to use on how they reduce their feral-cat numbers, their candy-coating feel-good term of "Death by Attrition". This means that their cats will die from disease, cat-attacks, animal-attacks, exposure, road-kill, starvation, and any other means that drastically shortens cats' lives. They don't die from old-age, you know! ALL their cats suffering for how many months it takes to die that way. Just because they don't see how that cat lies there, gasping for air, dying for days, after it's been hit by a car or survived an animal attack means that it didn't die inhumanely? Is that how it works with TNR advocates? They didn't see it suffer to death so it didn't suffer? Are they THIS self-deluded? A cat dying from poisoning is even more humane than a cat dying from TNR's "attrition" (of which poisoning by any means; plant, snake, insect, or chemical; is one of the many methods that falls under the definition of "attrition"). In most parts of this country and the world TNR practices clearly falls under the guidelines for cruelty to animals, animal-abuse, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and animal-abandonment laws. Including being in direct violation of every invasive-species law in existence.
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget how TNR advocates don't hesitate to carve up cats with scalpels as well as cutting off parts of their ears, from which they have to heal-up for weeks before they try to survive again. As if letting them die of "attrition" wasn't bad enough, TNR-advocates start them off by terrorizing them with traps, cages, and sticking knives into them first. (Which is also precisely why they can't trap them a 2nd time to keep them vaccinated.)
Not only are they cruelly torturing cats, but also all wildlife they inflict their cats upon. Their cats literally ripping the skin off of and clawing the guts out of any wildlife to use it as an agonizingly and slowly dying twitching play-toy for their cats. And as soon as all the "fun" has drained out of their play-toy, they go on and find another one to torture. This is no different than if cat-owners went to a pet-store and bought canaries and hamsters then threw them at their cats to watch their cats tear them apart for their amusement. What about all the native predators that depend on all those animals for their ONLY food? Their cats cause all those animals to STARVE TO DEATH. TNR-advocates' cruelty knows no bounds.
If you want to raise revenue for your towns and cities in order to deal with this invasive-species ecological-disaster properly and effectively, start charging all these TNR advocates with severe fines and imprisonment for CRUELTY TO ANIMALS AND VIOLATION OF INVASIVE-SPECIES LAWS.
They're not doing this out of any goodness of their hearts. THEY DON'T HAVE HEARTS, nor minds. Proved, 100%.
Be cautious about using any cats rounded-up from outdoors for adoption or you could be held criminally responsible for destroying families and their pets. There's no way to know a wild-harvested cats' vaccination history, if any, nor their exposure to all the deadly diseases cats carry. If a cat has contracted rabies then a vaccination against it later will do no good. It's already too late. There's also no reliable known test for rabies while keeping the animal alive. They really need to be destroyed after they are trapped. It's the only sane and sensible solution. This is precisely why all wild-harvested animals in the world, of any type intended for the pet-industry, must undergo an extended quarantine period of up to 6 months before transfer or sale of those animals to prevent just these things. Cats are no different than any other animal when harvested from the wild. You're just risking this following story happening in every shelter across the land.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/09/23/2631106/rabid-cat-adopted-from-wake-county.html
Adopting any cat that's been taken from outdoors is just playing Russian Roulette.
These are just the diseases cats spread to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife and even other cat species. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Plague, Rabies, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasma. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Flea-borne Typhus and Tularemia can now also be added to that list.
The plague:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8059908
http://www.pagosasun.com/archives/2011/07July/072811/webplague.html
Tularemia (rabbit-fever, transmissible to humans):
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/health/miscellaneous/2011-09-14/cats-savoy-test-positive-rabbit-fever.html
http://www.westyellowstonenews.com/news/article_02fceec6-f695-11e0-b752-001cc4c002e0.html
Flea-borne Typhus:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/county-317133-animals-cases.html
Hookworm -- that ruined businesses in parts of Miami:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-11-24/news/fl-miami-beach-hookworms-20101123_1_hookworm-infections-feral-miami-beach
And perhaps the most insidious one of all, the common Toxoplasma gondii parasite that they spread through their feces into all other animals and even livestock. This is how it gets into meats and humans get it from undercooked meats, from cats roaming around stockyards and farms. This is why they are ROUTINELY destroyed around any gestating livestock or important wildlife by shooting or drowning them. So those animals won't suffer from the same things that can happen to the unborn fetus of any pregnant woman. (Miscarriages, still-births, hydrocephaly, and microcephaly.) It can even kill you at any time during your life once you've been infected by it. It becomes a permanent lifetime parasite in your mind, killing you at any time that your immune system becomes compromised. It's now being linked to the cause of autism, schizophrenia, and brain cancers. Its strange life cycle is meant to infect rodents. Any rodents infected with it lose their fear of cats and are actually attracted to cat urine.
http://scitizen.com/neuroscience/parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070403-cats-rats.html
So even the often proclaimed use for cats to control rodents is now false. Cats actually attract rodents to your home, with their whole slew of flea-borne and other diseases. If you want rodents in your home keep cats outside of it to attract them to your area.
The time has come to destroy them all whenever spotted away from quarantined confinement. There's no other solution. We have nobody but cat-lovers to thank for this disaster.
TNR-Advocates "Vacuum Effect" is an absolute 100% LIE (OR "The Deadly Cat-Attractor Equation")
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting study done by the Texas A&M University on TNR practices. They started out with about 12 sterilized cats. At the end of 9 months they had over 30. An increase of more than 200%, all moved in of their own volition. This isn't due to any mythical "vacuum effect" that cat-advocates spread and lie about so often. For that to have happened you would have had to remove cats to create a vacuum for others to replace them. The exact opposite happened in this study.
Simple reason being: CATS ATTRACT CATS
Cat scents attract cats. This is why they spray everything, to attract mates and rivals and mark territory. Cat sounds attract cats. Mewing kittens will even attract stray toms who will kill the kittens if they are not their own (basic feline behavior of any cat species).
If you want more cats, keep some around. More will find you. Get rid of them all and there's no reason for other cats to come to that area. I proved this myself by getting rid of every last cat on my own land. ZERO cats moved in to replace them.
Another interesting finding, sterilized cats do not defend their territory. Any new cats see this as easy-pickings and move in to take over. If that cat-colony is being fed then non-sterilized cats will actually overtake the sterilized colony's food-source because the non-sterilized cats are not as docile and complacent.
The DEADLY Cat-Attractor Equation
Another fun kicker. Cats' Toxoplasma gondii parasite they spread through their feces is meant to infect rodents. This cat-parasite alters the mind of any animal it infests (even humans). Any rodents infected lose their fear of cats and are attracted to cat urine. http://scitizen.com/neuroscience/parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509.html Not only do cats attract more cats, but they also attract more rodents to the area with their slew of flea-borne and other rodent diseases. If cats eat rodents then they contract those rodent diseases to spread those diseases to humans. The attractor-equation is not just CATS = CATS + CATS, it's actually CATS = CATS + CATS + RODENTS + DISEASES.
TNR IS 100% FAILURE -- no matter which way you try to spin that sorry hole-filled story.
ANY cat -- stray, feral, sterilized, or fertile -- is just a magnetic "seed cat". No matter how they are there or in what state of reproductive-viability that they are in, you'll attract and grow more of them. Even worse -- then you attract cat-advocates that want to turn your life into a living hell too. They're all part of the same life-destroying equation.
The FULL cat-attractor equation is actually: CATS = CATS + CATS + RODENTS + DISEASES + LIFE-DESTROYING CAT-ADVOCATES.
This is why you MUST destroy all cats on your land. So cat-advocates will never be able to control or rule your life ever again. It's THAT simple.
I did it on my land. Now it's YOUR turn.
Some further information to help you do the RIGHT thing. ALL the required laws that you need to deal with this problem are already in place and have been for decades most everywhere.
ReplyDeleteCats listed in THE TOP 100 WORST INVASIVE-SPECIES OF THE WORLD in the "Global Invasive-Species Database": http://www.issg.org/database/species/ecology.asp?si=24&fr=1&sts=sss
Cats are _NOT_ exempt from invasive-species laws.
IT IS YOUR CIVIC AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO DESTROY ANY INVASIVE-SPECIES WHEN FOUND AWAY FROM SAFE CONFINEMENT AND OUT IN A NON-NATIVE HABITAT. In fact, it is against the law to NOT destroy an invasive-species on-site. Since cats are genetically engineered through selective-breeding and no longer have ANY native habitat ANYWHERE on earth, these laws include cats. This is precisely how they are dealt with on my own land, destroyed by using any and all humane methods** (see note). You also CANNOT make any distinction between stray and feral cats. STRAY CATS ARE THE VERY SOURCE OF FERAL CATS. If you don't destroy the source as well you'll never be rid of feral cats. They are BOTH the very same destructive, wildlife-destroying, deadly-disease spreading, INVASIVE SPECIES. NEITHER HAS ANY RIGHT TO BE AWAY FROM SUPERVISED CONFINEMENT.
For an example of how invasive-species laws are properly followed and enforced: It is highly illegal for a person to transport an African Cichlid fish species to just the other side the road if you catch one in the canals of the Everglades when fishing. THEY MUST BE DESTROYED ON-SITE. Yet Cichlids are often kept as pets, that's how they wrongly got into the canals to begin with. There are hefty fines in place for anyone found transporting these invasive-species alive if caught in the wild. (Interestingly, these Cichlids are FAR FAR LESS damaging to the environment and all other native wildlife than ANY cat.)
All of this much to the dismay of criminally irresponsible and psychotic cat-lovers who are desperately trying to raise these invasive-species cats to some absurd level of "Community Cats". If they do that then just raise "Community Pet Piranha" and release them in all your lakes and pools, or "Community Pet Black-Mambas" and release them in all your backyards and parks, then claim the exact same protections for them as cat-advocates want for their invasive-species cats. It'd only be fair! Are you starting to see just how absurd and ludicrous these cat-advocates are yet?
** (Though to be perfectly honest, considering how cats cruelly torture and destroy all other animals by ripping the skins off of live animals or disemboweling them for slowly dying and twitching cats' play-toys (not even using them for food), I'm not sure why cats should be given the privilege of a humane death. I've been drawn to many animal screams in my woods to find their cats shredding another animal to death; which I had to then quickly put that animal out of its misery, torment, and suffering caused by that cat. Lucky for those I found so fast from their screams. Other wildlife that I'd find days later had died a slow and agonizing death from wounds after being shredded by their cats. I guess I'm just more humane than all cat-lovers and their cats, that's why their cats get shot and die instantly on my land instead of equitably and justifiably tortured to death. If cat-advocates want REAL justice for their cats then any cat found outdoors would have to be cruelly tortured to death the same way their cats cruelly torture all other animals -- something that I couldn't do. Maybe that's why TNR-advocates don't mind that their cats slowly suffer to death by means of "attrition" -- by disease, attacks, exposure, starvation, road-kill, etc., on ad-infinauseum. They have absolutely no problems in torturing animals. They're just like their cats.)
Okay Advanced PSer, so there was too many cats on your property and you shot them all and had to fight with local animal groups over it. That’s why your blasting the internet with irrelevant studies and distorted calculations.
ReplyDeleteThe reason cats are able to breed out of control on your land is because YOU killed all the coyotes, wolves, etc. Please don't make cats out to be anything other than another creature in our ecosystem. The links you post citing studies about fleas, etc, are meaningless. All wild animals have fleas, ticks, etc.
People cannot just go around shooting everything that inconveniences them. And "cat-lovers" are not all lunatics. Though some are. (I prefer dogs myself). But what happens when my neighbor decides there's too many owls bothering his chickens? Too many fish breeding in his river? Etc.
Most people who promote TNR are on the same side as you (trying to reduce cat populations). However, they realize that allowing people to just shoot them is a mistake because a large percent of people are simply ignorant jerks, who will abuse such rights.
Many of these cats are domestic cats that ignorant jerks have released. Also, there’s a lot of photos and videos online of feral cats being domesticated and making their owners very happy. An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0c3shTi-A
Think ahead a bit... if TNR programs are allowed to continue and grow, eventually science will find a more effective way to mass sterilze cats (via biotech or perhaps some sort of dna-altering substances which can be fed to them and will not affect other species). This sort of breakthrough would drastically reduce the problem for you and "cat lovers" who just want to end their suffering. But the basic concept of TNR instead of shooting needs to continue for that pat