2 NOTICES: WARNING AS THIS PICTURE IS NOT PLEASANT. Secondly, in some ways I am sorry to publish the picture. Yes, I am reluctant to do it. I have blurred the child’s face and the text on his shirt to anonymize him although Facebook has not.
I know how people become sick of this sort of picture. It is unsettling and distressing to a lot of people and we become tired of them. However, set against this genuine concern I feel that we have to discuss and criticise the actions of people, particularly kids, who think it is okay to be cruel to animals. The outdoor cat, stray or domestic, is always a target for shooters (people who like to shoot and kill animals for pleasure).
Of course cat haters and hunters would argue that this boy, who looks about ten-years-of-age, is doing a great job and should receive praise. He’ll go on to shoot many more cats, some of whom will be someone’s cherished pet and he’ll enjoy hunting bobcats and anything else that moves provided it isn’t human although he may not stop at humans.
Sport hunters would say they that he ‘euthanised the cat’ and provided a service. BS I say. It is just plain cruel and if they don’t realise it I feel sorry for them. A part of their brain is missing. This photo is particularly disturbing because it is a boy. As Empty Cages Worldwide said:
“One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it!”
Disgust
Yes, this child is no longer innocent. His father has taught him to enjoy killing rather than to respect animals. He has been taught that it is okay to shoot animals for fun and disregard: the pain he is causing for his fun, the fact that the cat might be a pet, the inherent immorality of killing animals for pleasure. I feel sorry for the boy. He’ll live with his peers who will in the main see his behaviour as normal. But outsiders to his community, enlightened thinkers, the decent people of the world, will look at him now with sorrow and when he is an adult with disgust.
Cat-feeders, TNR practitioners and other “no-kill” rescue fanatics fit the terrorist profile far more than those who shoot invasive felines. They deliberately proliferate and perpetuate invasive disease-vectors by subsidizing them with food and transporting them illegally between communities, thus subjecting said communities to deleterious and potentially fatal zoonotic disease. Thus they are bio-terrorists.
Thanks to their unconscionable practices, the infectious agents of Toxoplasma gondii now occur in our environment at densities of three to 434 per square foot, and they persist–and remain infectious–for up to 4.5 years. They are contaminating our food chain and water supplies. The oocysts aerosolize, so don’t bother with the “undercooked meat” excuse–recent research has found that accidental ingestion and/or inhalation of oocysts directly from the environment is now the primary means of infection. About one-fifth of our population is infected. No matter how an individual was infected, the oocyst responsible originated in the feces of an unconfined cat.
Thanks to these cat-loving bio-terrorists, one out of every three African-American children living in low income communities are infected with toxocariasis, which causes blindness and/or developmental disabilities.
Thanks to “humane colony caretakers”, cat-vectored rabies now accounts for one-third of all human exposures annually. That’s about 13,000 human exposures each and every year for the last 28 years, which not-so-coincidentally is how long TNR and other worthless “no-kill” programs have been widely practiced in the US. Each exposure requires administration of PEP inoculation at a cost of $6,000-$26,000 (USD). Once symptoms develop, it’s too late.
Feral cat extremists may work more slowly than those who throw bombs or crash airplanes, but they harm far more people and they are no less terrorists.
Finally, you said:
“The only exception are the military and their snipers, but that is something totally different.” Really? Yet another example of valuing animal lives over humans’. One such military sniper, Chris Kyle, was a state-sponsored serial killer who murdered children from rooftops, and said it was “fun”. Apparently you consider him a “hero”. As someone with Iraqi relatives, I don’t.
“…because I am bored.”
Allow me to translate: “I can’t refute you, won’t admit it, and this is my excuse.”
While I agree with some of what you say, “crime and punishment” simply doesn’t apply to non-human species. Therefore it isn’t relevant to my position with respect to invasive felines. It’s predicated on the reality that controlling the stray and feral cat population via worthless “no-kill” strategies like TNR is a mathematical impossibility. And I can prove it with simple arithmetic.
On St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea (where I used to work), the Native Tribal Council there destroys every rat they find. Further, they prohibit vessels without rat-guards on their mooring lines from tying up at their docks. This isn’t because they want to “punish” rats, it’s because they want to protect their native seabird rookeries where King Eiders, Puffins and other beautiful species nest. Do you feel they should practice rat-TNR? If not, why not?
Tell me, do you regard the campaign to eradicate invasive Burmese pythons from Florida a matter of cruelty and “punishment”? They are either abandoned/escaped “pets” or the descendants of same. They are every bit as much “victims” as you say cats are, according to your argument. Should they be “managed” via TNR rather than killed? If not, why not? I’ll await your reply.
Firstly, the word “pure” doesn’t appear in any of my posts with respect to wildlife, or in any context whatsoever. And what do you mean by “pure”? Non-GMO? Is that somehow “un-PC” according to the tenets of your ideology?
As for where you’ve heard this before, you didn’t hear it from me. Neither I nor my family are “purebred” anything–our heritage encompasses Middle-Eastern, west African, western Pacific islander and western European. There are probably more colors in my immediate family than you have in your entire voting district. So please do me the courtesy of not “projecting” your own racial hangups and assumptions on me and mine.
As for why I’m here, it’s to disagree with Michael Broad, not to put too fine a point on it. I find his arguments unscientific and emotion-driven, and his advocacy irresponsible. That doesn’t make me a “troll”. Now go find your own bridge–I was here first.
1. One has to be on the extreme side to make the point because there are individuals like you who simply can’t see the cruelty in shooting animals when you don’t need to.
2. “the majority of our own species is starving” this is BS in the US. And there are very few places indeed where this statement applies.
3. If those Baja California people were genuinely starving that’s okay but 99.9% of shooters in the US are not starving. They shoot at animals because it is fun. That’s evil in my book and bloody ignorant.
4. I support the woman who shot her husband but this does mean I prioritise animals over people. Really, you imagination is running riot.
5, If you raise goats for meat then I would expect you to kill them humanely without pain. Shooting cats at a distance is not killing without pain. There is a difference between humane killing and shooting at animals. Why don’t you understand that. I guess you don’t understand the concept of pain in animals.
6. Raising livestock for food is obviously not a sport. I have no idea what you are getting at. You are mixed up.
7. I am not criticising people who kill livestock humanely for food although personally I don’t like it. The article is about a boy who has enjoyed shooting a cat and that is both almost certainly illegal, cruel and immoral.
That’s the end of the conversation because I am bored.
If you agree with PETA you are an extremist. They demand humans all practice veganism “for the sake of the animals”. The reality is the majority of our own species is starving and have to eat what it can get. Only a tiny minority of humanity is comfortable enough to restrict its diet according to its own delusions.
Example: I once found the shell of a critically endangered hawksbill turtle on a beach in Baja California. The folks who killed and butchered it for food weren’t “evil”, and they didn’t do it for “sport”. They did it because they were hungry. They probably didn’t know the turtle was endangered, nor were they in a position to worry about it if they did. The extinction they faced was of themselves and their children, from starvation.
Another example: I know Native Alaskans which live in regions were there ARE no stores, and where the growing season isn’t long enough for farming. They hunt and fish as their ancestors did. Sometimes they take moose and bears for food. Is that “sport”? Would you prefer they STARVE rather than harm the cute little animals? Or round them up on reservations to miserably subsist off government-issued rations? If your answer is “yes”, don’t bother to deny that you value animal lives over humans’ anymore. Besides, you’ve already admitted your indefensible “priorities” in the article about the woman who shot her husband over a cat.
But let’s test your logic: if I raise my own goats and chickens for meat, am I doing it for “sport”? How about if I grow my own vegetables? Is that a “sport” as well? I have raised, slaughtered and butchered my own meat, and grown my own vegetables for my family’s table most of my adult life. And I have supplemented our diets with wild fowl and fresh-caught fish. How is this a sport, but raising goats, chickens, quail and tilapia to be killed and eaten NOT a sport? Would you prefer the term “hobby”? That term also applies to “sports” hunters, and the two terms are used interchangeably.
Did it ever occur to you that some of us don’t wish to pollute ourselves or our children with the hormones and chemicals found in commercially raised meat-animals? We don’t find commercial and processed foods particularly healthy and try to obtain our own whenever we can?
PS: do you agree with PETA’s stance on TNR? Perhaps you should have researched that one.