This is a nice infographic on free-living cats who have been ear-tipped (or notched) under a TNR program. I like it and it is the first time I have seen one of these. All cat lovers know what ear-tipping and TNR are but not everyone knows about these things. A nicely prepared infographic sums it up. There is an interesting debate about how to describe feral cats. The designer of the image calls them free-roaming or free-living. Interesting. It is a positive spin and God knows the feral cat deserves a positive spin because they are often heavily criticised.
I believe the creator of the infographic is Herman Benson but I am not sure. I like the way he says that free-roaming cats are a benefit to the neighborhood. They are but most people don’t see it that way. Perhaps if they weren’t there they would understand because they’d probably be problems with rats et cetera. Free-roaming cats have been around so long (since the first domestic cats in fact, 10k yrs ago) that they are part of the ecosystem. We should think very carefully before disturbing it.
Michael i have just returned a few days back from a tour of Central Europe and Istanbul. Didn’t comer across any stray roadside cats in Europe but saw numerous in Istanbul. Here is a clip of a pair of kittens indulging in early morning “Cat Play” near the Galata bridge. I feel one of them could have Turkish Angora genes or even be a “Turkish Angora”. Your special view on the same could be of value to readers including me.I have also posted a photo of that grown up kitten
Here is the video clip :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CfJyuOoYrI&feature=share
The myth about cats being good rodent control has been disproved on every island where cats were imported to take care of the imported rodents. Hundreds of years later and there’s nothing but a thriving population of cats and rodents — all the native wildlife on those islands now either extinct or on the brink of extinction — even those native species which are better rodent predators than cats (such as many reptiles and shrews which destroy rodents right in their nests), the cats having destroyed them directly or indirectly.
The rodents reproduce in burrows and holes out of the reach of cats, where they are happy to reproduce forever to entertain cats the rest of their lives, and make your own lives miserable, on into infinity. On top of that, when cats infect rodents with cat’s Toxoplasma gondii parasite, this hijacks the minds of rodents to make the rodents attracted to where cats urinate. scitizen . com / neuroscience / parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509 . html
Cats actually attract disease-carrying rodents to where cats are. The cats then contract these diseases on contact with, or being in proximity to, these rodents. Like “The Black Death”, the plague, that is now being transmitted to humans in N. America directly from cats that have contracted it from rodents. Yes, “The Black Death” (the plague) is alive and well today and being spread by people’s cats this time around. Totally disproving that oft-spewed LIE about having more cats in Europe could have prevented the plague — more cats would have made it far far worse. Many people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA in the last 2-3 decades; all three forms of it transmitted by CATS — septicemic, bubonic, and pneumonic. For a fun read, one of hundreds of cases, Cat-Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague — www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pubmed / 8059908
www . abcd-vets . org / Guidelines / Pages/EN-Other-Zoonoses-Feline-Plague . aspx
“Recommendations to avoid zoonotic transmission: Cats are considered the most important domestic animal involved in plague transmission to humans, and in endemic areas, outdoor cats may transmit the infection to their owners or to persons caring for sick cats (veterinarians and veterinary nurses).”
Cats attracting these adult rodents right to them further increasing the cat/rodent/disease density of this happy predator/prey balance. It has been documented many many times. The more cats you have the more rodents and diseases you get. I even proved this to myself when having to rid my lands of hundreds of these vermin cats by shooting and burying every last one of them. A rodent problem started to appear about the same time the cats started to show up, 15 years of it. And, if you check the history of Disney’s feral cat problem, their rodent problem also started to appear at the very same time their cats showed-up. Coincidence? Not at all. (BTW: All your beloved Disney’s TNR cats are no more, they’ve all been destroyed by hired exterminators this year. LOL) All rodent problems around my home completely disappeared after every last cat was shot-dead and safely disposed of. All the better NATIVE rodent predators moved back into the area after the cats were dead and gone. Not seen one cat anywhere nor had even one rodent in the house in nearly six years now. (So much for their manipulative, deceptive, and outright lie of the mythical “vacuum effect” too.)
Cats DO NOT get rid of rodents. I don’t care how many centuries that fools will keep claiming that cats keep rodents in-check, they’ll still be wrong all these centuries. Civilizations of humans have come and gone in great cities like Egypt, yet their cats and rodents remain in even greater pestilent numbers.
No cat population anywhere has ever been able to control rodents effectively, in fact cats only attract a rodent problem. But native predators can get rid of rodents — easily.
We have different views on this. Your views are highly biased and exaggerated as usual. I consider my views more balanced. The trouble is you hate cats and this means you can’t think clearly and present balanced arguments. It shows very clearly.
Claiming that everyone who doesn’t believe as you do must therefore hate cats is just another red-herring tactic. Red-herring, the favored food of cat-lickers everywhere. They open a sopping dripping can of it every chance they get. When they can’t refute the facts about them and their vermin cats they’ll even drag in the kitchen sink and politics to sway topics away from their own criminal-negligence and criminal-irresponsibility. And especially when anyone is posting the 100%-solution to them and their vermin.
Destroying cats is neither hating cats nor a fear of cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Kudzu, African Cichlids, Burmese Pythons, or any of the other myriad destructive invasive-species in the USA or elsewhere have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don’t even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Guess what happens to all those other non-native pets that became destructive invasive species? They are destroyed on-site by any means possible — no questions asked — none required. Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is people who let a destructive invasive-species roam free that tortures-to-death all the native wildlife, wasted for their cats’ play-toys, that have zero respect for ALL life. You don’t even care about your free-roaming cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons, etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. And if VERY VERY lucky your unwanted 100%-expendable invasive-species vermin cats will be humanely shot-to-death or trapped and drowned (common rural practice everywhere), for those are by far the MOST humane deaths that ANY of your stray cats will ever hope to have. You don’t even respect your fellow human being let alone any other living things on this planet, you now deserve and get back exactly what you deserve — ZERO respect and consideration in return. The way you torture cats and all our valuable native wildlife animals to death speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to all animals, cruelty to your own cats as well as all the native wildlife that you let your cats skin alive or disembowel alive for their and your entertainment. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law and environmental-protection-act in existence.
If people do hate cats today, have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You’ve done so much to make people care about cats, haven’t you. If you want to do something about it, direct your sadly and sorely misplaced energies at those that are causing the problem, not at those who are actually solving it AND HAVE SOLVED IT 100% by hunting every last free-roaming cat in the area to extinction (or, more correctly, to extirpation in the case of these man-made cats) — the ONLY method that works on an invasive-species vermin like cats that out-breed and out-adapt to ANY trapping method known to man.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat’s grave.
You are aware too, aren’t you, that out of ALL types of pet-owners on the face of this earth, that cat-owners and cat-advocates are directly responsible for the suffering deaths of more animals and more species of animals than any other pet-owners on the planet. CAT-OWNERS ARE A TRIPLE-THREAT TO ALL ANIMAL LIFE ON EARTH. If not having animals killed for their own consumption, then they are having animals killed and crammed into bags and cans and having a “CAT FOOD” label slapped on them for their cat’s consumption, and if they let their cats outside then they are senselessly torturing billions of native animals and countless thousands of native species to death yearly just for their cats’ play-toys. As well as the countless BILLIONS of offspring of all those animals that are either starved to death or never get born. How many animals are you going to have senselessly killed or tortured today for your entertainment and your purely and wholly self-serving “BUT CATS MAKE ME FEEL GOOD!!” values?
If your cat so much as touches one paw on my property, I guarantee you that I have the legal right no matter where I live to destroy your trespassing vermin cat for you. How many animals of yours are going to have to permanently disappear before you finally learn your much-deserved lesson in how to be a responsible pet-owner and a respectable neighbor and human? 12? 15? (those being the average disappeared cats per cat-licker before they even begin to learn their much-deserved lesson at long-last) 200? The ones by me who were adopting cats from “barn cat programs” were uniquely cretinized and lobotomized. I had to shoot and bury many hundreds of their cats to stop them from gutting-alive and skinning-alive the last of the native wildlife on my lands before these uniquely cretinized and lobotomized cat-lickers started to learn their much-deserved lesson at long-last. Yes, some of them are just that criminally-irresponsible and phenomenally stupid. Are you that criminally-irresponsible and phenomenally stupid?
Love ’em or lose ’em!
Bottom line: If you don’t want to take care of your cat in the manner that YOU see fit, then I guarantee you that I WILL take care of your cat in the manner that I see fit — ONE TIME. And it only takes one time. See one, shoot one, A.S.A.P. Simple as that.
YOUR CHOICE!
If your free-roaming cat gets hurt or dies, NO MATTER HOW YOUR STRAY CAT GETS HURT OR DIES, that’s ***YOUR*** FAULT. Make NO mistake about that. And you can be charged with all laws that clearly define animal-neglect, animal-abandonment, and animal-endangerment — not to mention every last national and international invasive-species law and environmental-protection-act on earth.
Do you actually love your vermin? Or are you just using it as a highly expendable animal-sacrifice to manipulate everyone in your life? I guess we’ll find out when your piece-of-shîť vermin never comes home.
PSA: The time is now …. Half-Past Kill-Kitty O’Clock …. do you know where your piece-of-shîť , disease-infested, invasive species, ecological disaster, vermin cat is? If not, grab a shovel and I’ll show you where its new “loving furever-home” is now.
Try that crap with me and mine and I will put you six feet under, Woody. Go take your meds, dude. You’re psychotic.
Here’s how you can make any facts-twisting, propaganda-spewing fool reveal just how absurd, hypocritical, ignorant, stupid, and ludicrous ALL their beliefs are; all with just ONE simple question. Ask them:
“If you believe that these man-made (through selective-breeding), environment destroying, deadly-disease infested, pestilent, invasive-species vermin cats are a natural part of the environment and belong out in nature; then why are you even bothering to sterilize them?”
Answer that question, Michael. This I’ve got to read.
Blatantly ignorant hypocrite much?
Your agreement to sterilize your domesticated cats is your very agreement that they don’t even belong there in the very first place. Is this too difficult for you to comprehend? Is your 3rd-grade bible-home-schooling, replete with your bambi-cartoon-sing-along curricula, now failing you? Must be.
Firstly nearly all cats are not selectively bred or man made so you have that wrong from the outset. Poor start Woody. Secondly, there must come a time when an animal has been around so long (in the case of America at least 400 years) that it has be described as a natural part of the environment. They become part of the ecosystem.
I guess you are a descendent of a European settler. You aren’t ‘native’. You consider yourself as a natural part of the environment so why not describe cats in the same way?
You just revealed that you don’t even have so much as a Freshman’s high-school level of education in matters of ecology and biology! THANKS!
Here’s my standard-issue prepared reply for bible-home-schooled cretins just like you:
Humans ARE NOT an invasive species ANYWHERE — classified as a “weedy” species, yes; an “invasive” species, NEVER. Since humans have the genetic code to give them the capability to travel/migrate to ANY part of the globe, this means they are native to any area they have migrated to on their own. Just like birds that have this capability and can travel to different continents and islands. Those that have the flight-range required to do so are NATIVE to those areas that they are capable of traveling to ON THEIR OWN.
(And for the love of all that’s good in the world, PLEASE don’t display your further ignorance and stupidity by trying to claim that Europeans, Native Americans, Africans, Aboriginals, and Asians are different “species”. That’s usually your next huge omelet-on-the-face move that you astoundingly ignorant fools make.) (edit: OOOPS! You already did! Like that’s any surprise. Is anyone else surprised? I’m not.) Aside: I actually leave those last “edit” lines in now. It’s so much easier to delete them on rare occasions than to add them back in for how many times they’ve claimed races of humans are the same as different species.)
Whereas, an animal genetically engineered through selective-breeding (a rudimentary form of genetic-engineering), such as CATS, are NOT AN INDIGENOUS SPECIES ANYWHERE on ANY continent. They are no more natural to any native environment anywhere on earth than some insect that was invented by humans in some lab, that once released out into nature will destroy all native wildlife, JUST AS CATS DO. Someone kept a “pet” bee one time. He too selectively bred this pet. After he selectively bred it it was called an Africanized Bee. It accidentally escaped his supervised confinement in the Americas. Luckily for everyone they’re not destroying the complete food-chain where they are found, are limited in their range, and they’re not spreading many deadly diseases to all humans and wildlife — all those fun things that these domesticated-species cats do.
If you phenomenally stupid cretins are going to use ecology, biology, speciation, and genetics in your arguments, the very LEAST that you could do is have a base comprehension of what you are talking about. Don’t you think?
No. And that’s the problem with terminally ignorant morons like you, you CAN’T think.
Oh, if ONLY there was a legal cure for “stupid”!
If the sum of your education comes from bible-home-schooling replete with sing-along bambi-cartoon curricula then you have ZERO weapons in this argument — as you’ve just proved to the whole world. Next time, try to not bring your imaginary cartoon-magic-wand to a real gun-fight. Thanks!
What’s the matter? Can’t you answer this simple question?
“If you believe that these man-made (through selective-breeding), environment destroying, deadly-disease infested, pestilent, invasive-species vermin cats are a natural part of the environment and belong out in nature; then why are you even bothering to sterilize them?”
Or do you just like to come up with more red-herring excuses to evade the issue again and again. 🙂
An excerpt from “The TNR Con-Game” list of facts. (Google it, include the enclosing quotes.)
FACT: These manipulative, deceptive, and deceitful TNR proponents are now clipping cats ears ONLY. WITHOUT vaccinations nor sterilizing them. They do this to save money and protect their outdoor hoarded cat colonies from being trapped and euthanized by the state because the clipped-ear shows officials that they have been sterilized and vaccinated. Why pay $140 for each cat and all that time when just a trap and a simple snip of scissors on each one can also protect their hoarded cats from being destroyed? (I have absolute proof of this.)
Even people who practice and promote TNR can’t be trusted to ever do the right thing. They don’t want cats gone, the very purpose of TNR, they want cats to destroy every other life on earth.
It didn’t take you long to come around and mess around in your inimitable style, did it? You make the usual outrageous statements such as calling TNR people “deceitful” and “manipulative”. You are generalising and lying. There will of course be some people in TNR who are less honest than others but by and large they are great people, decent people.
Also provide some proof that there is ear clipping without TNR. How prevalent is it? You can’t and you don’t know, do you.
Here’s one of thousands of posts I’ve read on TNR practitioners only clipping cats’ ears and nothing more. They don’t talk about this practice too openly, usually when “off-the-record” in teaching others how to practice TNR — just like they like to teach each other how to hide their cat-hoarders’ illegal invasive-species colonies and how they attempt to do so (also revealed in the thread this post was taken from, verifiable link below).
“Chris Cook We had a culling of the neighborhood cats 2 years ago when there were only 10 or so (I lost 4 under my care in the same week). Now there’s over 25 – that I know about (about half fixed)… it’s just a matter of time before someone decides they have the ‘solution’ to the cat ‘problem’. All I can do is get them tipped (in case Animal Services gets them, there’s a small chance they’ll release them back to the area they caught them) and hope for the best by making my own yard a hidden sanctuary of sorts. At least my HOA knows I’m TNRing them and not just feeding them so they (for now) look the other way while slamming the feeders-and-breeders who contributed to the problem getting out of hand and refusing any and all offers of assistance.”
facebook . com / permalink . php?story_fbid=295067530554567&id=110911218963121
Not only is this criminally irresponsible TNR practitioner hoarding and feeding unsterilized cats, they even attracted MORE cats to keep reproducing — which again disproves their oft-spewed “defend their territory” and “vacuum effect” LIES. While also lying to their HOA to boot. They even believe that what they are doing *IS* TNR, that’s just how demented these people are. I’d say this person reflects the norm rather than the exception, since TNR advocates relentlessly lie about so much and so often.
Aside: I learn a lot by reading all those in-house communications on all those popular TNR sites that I volunteered to help-out at. How do you think we find all their TNR colonies to help step-up their rate of “attrition” like they want all their TNR cats to die? Shooting, poisoning, and drowning also fall under the definition of “TNR attrition” to reduce cat-population, just like they hope and pray for. 🙂 Without others applying faster “attrition” rates to their colonies then none of their outdoor-hoarding cat-colonies would ever reduce in size. They need to be thanking us for any successes they’ll ever claim that TNR actually works to reduce cat populations. If someone else doesn’t step-in and kill all their cat for them, their cat-hoarding colonies grow in size for decades. Just ask some of them that have been at it for over 30 years now. We still haven’t found their colonies to help them make TNR actually work — yet.
I am in favor of the TNR program, as opposed to strays being brought to a shelter, to possibly be killed. But, we all know that these cats will not live long lives on the streets, due to the many wild predators,natural elements,diseases, dangerous motor vehicles,and those that simply believe they are a menace to their neighborhoods. And, let’s not forget the animal haters and abusers. Is there a better solution? I’m not sure..As a young girl, growing up in Sheepshead Bay, New York and living on the water, we had our own colony of ferals. Everyone fed a certain small group, and the kittens were most often adopted ,and became house cats. In the winters, we created warm shelters, in sheds, and in boats that were downturned for the winter. We used warm blankets and towels that everyone donated.. Some of us took in one or two, that were friendly, during the snowstorms. Even in that animal loving community, I don’t remember any one of these cats being around for any length of time..As a long time cat lover and animal rescuer/advocate I have to say the ear tipping upsets me. It makes them look so beat up, and unadoptable. Can we not find a more favorable way of identifying them, without disfiguring them? How about just a punched hole in the tip of the ear Please? ! God bless all of those who work so hard to save these beautiful, precious creatures…
So, basically, you were using everyone else’s public and private property as your own personal and free cat-hoarders’ kitten-mill while you destroyed all the native wildlife around you with cats. How nice of you.
Your comment is full of aggression, anger and bile. To describe someone engaged in TNR as running a kitten mill is absurd as the objective of TNR is the exact opposite.
Sharon, I like your idea about the punched hole in the tip of the ear.
I believe the ear tipping is considered safer for the cats. A punched hole could easily get caught up on something and might result in the ear being torn.
A punched hole might also give people the idea that it’s okay to pierce cats’ ears so they can wear jewellery.
You know what? I forgot about human stupidity? Never mind the hole getting snagged on something, I can see some moron putting earrings on a cat.
I have seen some brutal ear-tipping with about one-third of the ear flap snipped off. I find that strange as TNR is carried out with a love of cats so to then take off too much of the ear is incongruous.
I’ve seen cats with their ears clipped like that and I suspected they were in a TNR program but I wasn’t sure. Thanks for posting this, Michael.
I hadn’t seen the “V” shaped ear tipping before. That was new to me.
I’d never seen the notched one before either.