This is the response by a person who commented on a Facebook thread where an animal advocate asked people to please spay and neuter their pets.
The comment below first made me think this person is clueless (I’d REALLY like to use more colorful words such as STUPID). The second thought that came to me is this person is WRONG!
“I have cats. They are not pets. Their job is to keep the area around my house snake and rat free. Spaying and neutering them would make them less effective. How about if we don’t try to force our opinions on others.”
Whether talking about cats or dogs, those who don’t spay or neuter their pets usually leave those who work in shelter rescue to pick up the pieces of their mistakes. We SHOULD try to force our opinion on others because hundreds of unwanted cats, dogs, puppies, and kittens are dumped each day in shelters across America when the owner decides they’re no longer wanted.
Does this person even realize how much they’re costing the community emotionally as well as financially? The majority of shelters operate on tax dollars. The cost of euthanasia has to fall somewhere. Rescue advocates are mentally exhausted trying to keep up with the demands for placement in an already impossible situation. Rescues are full and there are too few fosters to help all of the cats until a forever home can be found.
This has been another really horrible kitten season. Rural shelters are taking in HUNDREDS of cats each week as “owner surrenders.” These cats can be killed upon intake because they’re not lost or stray or missing. They’re simply unwanted and animal shelters have to deal with a problem that exists in part to no spay-neuter laws.
I don’t even want to go into how many stray cats are trapped and brought to the shelter. Does he even consider his cats are more likely to wander off and end up at the shelter?
The person who made this comment is also WRONG. Unfortunately, many who live in a rural area think exactly like him.
If you have to have a working cat (AKA barn cat), the cat will be more effective once spayed or neutered. I cared for a colony for several years and I watched the time the male cats spent chasing the females in heat until each was TNR’d.
I categorized this article under “changes in behavior” because “fixing” a cat definitely changes their behavior. The cat will not only be healthier, live a longer life and be more loving, it will cut down on the annoying habits of male marking (very stinky and nearly impossible to remove the odor) and the screaming at all hours of the night of the female.
It’s fine that the man (now confirmed it was a man) who made this comment uses his cats as working cats (providing he feeds them) but he needs a good lesson in how to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Can you imagine how many kittens he’ll be dealing with within a year?
Oh wait, he’ll just take any kittens or cats he doesn’t want to the local shelter and keep on the rose-colored glasses that have him believing all cute cats will find a forever home.
Thoughts, anyone?
NOTE: I have also learned this man has used this approach for 20 years now. He allegedly stated “They keep multiplying, or neighbor’s dogs or other critters get them. Mother nature has a way of balancing things out.”
The reason TNR doesn’t work is the same reason T&E (euthaniasia) and T&A (‘adoption’) doesn’t work–cats reproduce far more rapidly than they can be trapped. Consider: per every ASPCA estimate I’ve seen over the last four or five years–this is usually based on a formula where there is supposedly a 1:3 ratio of unconfined cats to humans in any given area–there are on average 84.5 million stray and feral cats (range of estimates 47 million to 122 million) in the US. Add to that an average of 58 million unconfined “owned” cats (range 50 million to 66 million), 80% of which–46.6 million–are NOT sterilized.
OK, per PRO-TNR veterinarians F. B. Nutter (no, that’s really her name) and J. K. Levy, the US feral cat population increases on average 29% per year [range 25% (Nutter, 2004) to 33% (Levy, 2003)]. That’s about 38 million new feral kittens surviving to reproduce themselves EACH and EVERY YEAR. Postulating a temperate-zone “kitten season” of about six months, to trap and sterilize, adopt or euthanize just ONE year-class of feral kittens, you would have to sterilize/adopt/euthanize 250,657 kittens a DAY. Even if by some herculean effort you could achieve this, you’d have to do it all over again very NEXT kitten season. In short, TNR or any other “passive” approach based on trapping is a MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY.
There is only one historically proven means of dealing with the unconfined cat scourge: active, sustained extermination. They must be hunted to extinction. Each and every one removed from our landscape–permanently.
Firstly, all cat-feeding stations should be commandeered and re-purposed as BAITING stations. Baiting is, with very limited exceptions for brown bears in Alaska, illegal as a means of taking game in the US–because it WORKS so well. Cats are not game–they’re vermin. Station hunters with noise-suppressed firearms (or air-rifles of at least 700 fps velocity) at feeding stations, and put out the same kibble the feeders were using. Sweeten it with raw or canned sardines. Shoot every cat that comes to feed. Rinse and repeat for as long as cats continue to arrive to be fed. Incinerate all carcasses to at least 160 degrees F to destroy the parasites and pathogens they carry. THIS is how you get the so-called “vacuum effect” to work for the public good.
Hunters should be encouraged with reasonably attractive bounties. Think this won’t work? Wolves were exterminated in the lower 48 states (AK wasn’t a state at the time) in just seven years–1880-87–after the US govt. put a bounty on ’em. This was misdirected with respect to wolves (at least to the degree it was implemented). It wouldn’t be misdirected if applied to cats, no more than it would be for eradication of invasive Burmese pythons, feral hogs, Norway and black rats or any other deleterious invasive species.
Unconfined cats must be outlawed–in fact, in most states they are. It’s just not enforced. Per Alaska Administrative Code Chapt 5.92.029, it’s illegal to maintain unconfined domesticated animals, and legal to shoot them in self-defense, defense of property, or if they’re seen harassing or harming native wildlife. If you consider the diseases with which cats contaminate our environment, the above-cited law applies to cats in every respect.
Onerous fines must be levied against violators, along with confiscation and euthanasia of their animals, and legal prohibition of animal ownership for repeat offenders. And in some particularly vulnerable areas, such as Hawaii, the Florida Keys, the Galapagos, New Zealand and Australia, ownership of cats must be outlawed–period–just as ownership of snakes is outlawed in Hawaii today.
Sustained eradication is the only thing that will work. The consequences of not doing this, and doing it successfully, may well be mass extinction-induced ecological collapse and/or cat-vectored disease pandemics.
The only monster here is you and your ignorance.
Ah typical remark from a scumbag who is trying to bait peeps on here,sorry ye have failed because I will no longer engage ye on here,I have better things to do so piss off.
He is applying backward logic. He starts with his hate of cats and goes from there to justify it. Facts are then twisted to fit his hatred.
Facts often left out of these debates include all cats are domestic. Any kitten taken from a feral environment in time can and will turn into a pillow hugging sunbeam hog in your living room. The same cannot be said about a wild animal. They will all revert to their wild instincts. There is a distinct difference in how we treat our domestic pets and vermin isn’t one of them. Domestic pet populations run a muck when humans fail to control the population. S/N has totally eliminated the debacle we see daily with feral cats and shelters full of dogs and cats waiting their turn for the needle. No longer is there a need for anyone to ‘ let nature take it’s course’ or play dunkies to control the local populations instead as one poster here demonstrates there is a significant population in first world countries that are willing to run through the bushes like animals themselves to kill a domestic pet that had no say in it’s situation.
Worse these troglodytes often marry and reproduce and then pass on this defective thinking to the next generation.
Just once I would love to see one of these cat hating idiots unleash that vitriol on the people who are causing the issue rather than those of us that are trying to mitigate it.
You probably won’t. This is the exact type of person who is likely part of the problem. They certainly aren’t part of the solution.
Only a clueless, closed minded person would perpetuate an archaic situation like this. Stating that these cats are not pets infuriates me. They are still living, breathing souls that suffer and feel pain both physically and emotionally. This is why we need guidelines placed and enforced by our society and the government regarding the care of animals. 😥😥😥
I put the count at hundreds for my in-laws and their treatment of domestic pets and livestock.
I asked my FIL one day as he loved on a cat that clearly loved him how he could let it roam and he said in his sweet voice. When this one goes another will come along. The words of a monster in my opinion.