Plague: the urgent need to have cats roaming our streets

By Gina Shahbandar

Intro by Michael. Gina makes the point that community cats (managed outdoor cats living in harmony with people) can provide an essential but underappreciated service to humankind in keeping down rat populations and therefore diseases such as the plague. For example the bubonic plague is spread through flea bites and rats. The bacteria responsible is yersinia pestis.

I understand the reasons many governments want to keep the numbers of plague cases confidential, but to continue the systematic killing of street cats rather than helping them spread out in a difficult-to-escape-areas is wrong.

In Orange county Florida, there is only one brochure about cats in the animal services that deals with how to keep your neighbor’s cat off your yard rather than educating people about the importance of roaming free cats for the public health and man’s survival.

The World Health Organization had several conferences on the plague, I was lucky to find info from a relatively old one (over 8 yrs old). I am sure the numbers have tremendously increased since. This is the link and below is an extract concerning China.

Since the 1990s, the incidence of plague in China has been increasing rapidly, with fewer than 10 human cases per year in the 1980s, nearly 100 cases in 1996 and 254 cases in 2000. A total of 631 human cases were reported between 1995 and 2004, with a fatality rate of 6.67%.

No numbers are reported from Australia and US although we know from media that they exist.

Here is another indication of the urgent need to have cats roaming our streets. Bill Gates funds a study at UCF to find an affordable vaccine for the plague. Dr. Daniell presented his research to the Gates Foundation on developing genetically modified plants to create low-cost vaccines against the plague.

“Should Dr. Daniell’s vaccine receive FDA approval, it would open the door for the production of a variety of cheaper, more effective vaccines around the world….”

We have not heard yet if this vaccine has got FDA approval, but note it is made of genetically modified substances!

It took Dr. Danielle 11 years of study and research which indicates the disease has been spread enough to alert the governments of great nations for the need of vaccine. Here we are in the 2014 and Australia and US East and West coasts are flagged red on the plague map around the world, yet animal services continue to kill the cats rather than protect them and educate people about the importance of their existence for man’s survival.

I sometimes wish I lived in Old Egypt where the knowledgeable old Egyptians and Great Greek philosophers understood the importance of the cat; they treated it with utmost respect. Cats saved Egypt from over population of rodents, spiders, locust, reptiles including crocodiles and alligators..etc..These are the same problems we face in the world nowadays, and selling poison manufactured by corporations to the public is not the answer.

Our water is so polluted, potable water has became as expensive as milk if not more. I am not calling for people to start worshiping the cat like the Egyptians once did, but we need to understand that with man comes rodents and rodents can’t be stopped by poison, the only effective predator is the cat which contrary to man, doesn’t kill to extinction but controls the over-population.