This is mainly a discussion about the difference in mentality of hunters and cat lovers/animal rights advocates.
Australian Renee Sullivan, 20, enjoys hunting. She likes to hunt cats of any age. She uses a bow and arrow. She likes to kill kittens therefore. You can see three in the picture that she had just killed with her compound bow. She was on private land and the person gave her permission and she killed them legally under Australian law. However, she was vilified by animal rights advocates and cat lovers on Facebook and social media generally. She was heavily criticised to the extent that she took down her photograph on Facebook but before doing so somebody saved a screenshot which was then posted elsewhere.
“I posted the hunt picture on social media at 5:30pm on Tuesday afternoon and within minutes I was receiving hateful messages. Trying to keep the peace I decided to remove the post.
“My photo was unfortunately screen shot and posted and every page you could think of, even my local have your say page.”
“I tried to explain the situation multiple times but didn’t seem to resolve anything.”
“I’m a hunter and this what I enjoy doing and nothing will stop this. I have seen photos from multiple hunters with cats smaller than the ones I shot but never received this hate.”
Her shooting of the three kittens has highlighted the war, and it is a war, between cat loving animal rights advocates and hunters who inhumanely kill cats. Hunters simply cannot understand animal rights advocates. One is alien to the other. Their mentality is utterly different. The mentality of an animal rights advocate is incomprehensible to a hunter. I’ll try and explain…
The reason why this woman was vilified by cat lovers is because she made the kittens suffer and she enjoyed it. You cannot kill an animal humanely with a bow and arrow at a distance. There’s bound to be pain and suffering before the kitten dies. Therefore this is not an humane way of killing an animal and neither is it an effective way to protect wild species. Renee Sullivan justifies her hunting and killing of kittens on an ethical level by saying that she is protecting native wildlife species because once the kittens grow up and become adults they will be killing precious native species.
She claims, therefore, that she doing a service to the Australian nation. The chasm between cat lovers and cat hunters is that the former hate the idea of causing pain to an animal whereas the hunters don’t give a damn if they cause pain. Their only motivation is to seek pleasure in hunting and killing and it does not enter their heads whether they cause pain to the animal that they have killed or not. In fact some hunters like to cause pain. It is part of the fun and the process.
Hunters believe that animal lovers live in a fantasy world. They think that animal and cat lovers see feral kittens as cute fuzzy little balls of loving fur when in their eyes they are killers of native species. The hunters are wrong. Cat and animal lovers see feral kittens as exactly what they are which is cats living in the wild surviving. They don’t see them as cuddly little creatures. Cat lovers don’t live in a fuzzy pink world of sweet smelling roses and pink ribbons. They live in the real world but they’re simply concerned with treating animals humanely and not causing pain to animals. Hunters don’t get this.
Further, animal rights advocates see the futility in killing kittens with a bow and arrow as a means to protect native species and eradicate the feral cat in Australia. It does not work. Killing feral cats with a bow and arrow is not a sensible or practical way of going about protecting native species.
The RSPCA confirm this:
“…..bow hunting was not the way to control the animal. Bow hunting is not an effective method of controlling pest animals, as it is carried out by individual hunters and targeting only one animal at a time.”
My message to hunters who like to kill cats is to start thinking about the pain they are causing and how it is impossible to justify it and stop criticising cat lovers who find it incomprehensible how anybody can cause pain to an animal for their pleasure.
I am sorry if this page is upsetting. I know some people will think that there is too much bad news on this website but in fact in proportion to the whole there is very little bad news on this site and I feel a pressing need to relentlessly attack hunters who like to kill cats and kittens and justify it for various reasons.
Thank you. You are correct about too many.
Just curius, do you classify the meat industry workers in the same category?
I respect your opinion. For me all hunters are doing something unethical to varying degrees in the 21st century.
People like Sullivan give all hunters a BAD name.
Not all hunters are bad. Not all hunters want to wipe out the kitty cats of the world. Many hunters are kind, loving pet parents who are trying to supplement the meat supply.
Many hunters believe that population control for certain types of animals (food animals) is necessary to keep those animals from slowly dying from starvation or disease. These are also the types of hunters that only take the shot when they know the animal will die instantly.
Shame on the Sullivans of the world for giving all hunters a bad name.
Cats are acceptable targets in our society. I suppose someone who did not understand cat behavior would think I was cruel for allowing my 4 cats to torture a rather large moth that got into the house for hours. I don’t enjoy watching it but I have 4 apex predators in the house. you can’t teach a cat NOT to hunt.
I agree that people do confuse the mentality of humans and cats. And they put human attitudes onto cats and assess them on that basis. This is completely incorrect. You get some very poor arguments on that basis. The truth of the matter is that hunters who like to kill cats either feral or stray or whatever can never justify it with a sound argument. It simply comes down to the pleasure of killing animals but they hardly ever admit that.
Michael one of the common questions on an old cat board I belonged to would be someone asking how to keep their cat from killing birds, mice, bugs , snakes, lizards etc. The only answer is to keep them inside or provide a well screened enclosure. You cannot undo a cats instinct to hunt or kill.
You can however expect a bit more of the human variety out there. On occasion my cats get ahold of something and I’m inclined to let them finish the hunt because it’s part of what they are. By the same token I interfered on a regular basis with my niece who I suspect has the makings of a serial killer in her torture of animals. Why someone is confused about the different mental capacity of a cat and a human is beyond me.