Can we get feral cat colonies out of our ecology? Yes, we can. It will take organization and education on the part of all concerned parties, but we have a number of things in our favor.
Science is in our favor in that our ecologists and biologists have proven feral and roving cats are the most serious threat to our fauna, besides habitat destruction. There is no way the feral cat enablers can skew the numbers on that. Our opponents base most of their pro-colony arguments on myths they create themselves, and we all know rhetoric has a way of failing when push comes to shove.
Morally and ethically we have the high ground, but we will have to become activists and present our evidence to the public at large and our local and national lawmakers. There is nothing moral or ethical about abandoning a domestic pet to its own resources, despite all their rhetoric to the contrary. There is also nothing moral or ethical about their enabling the continued destruction of billions of our wildlife per year, and it breaks our wildlife protection laws. In most cases these groups lobby locally for exceptions from prosecution for breaking our laws. Their rhetoric of feeding a cat stopping it from hunting was disproved years ago.
One of the strongest things in our favor is the nature of the feral cat. It's noisy when breeding, it marks its territory by spraying urine on everything, and no one is fond of finding its scat in their flowerbed, garden, or child's sandbox. In large numbers they can be very objectionable and their numbers are growing.
What we have to do is get organized and get vocal!
Here's your contacts for the United States House of Representatives
and United States Senate. Please write them and send them a strong message to enforce our laws protecting our wildlife!
Here's the The Wildlife Society and American Bird Conservancy statements which you can quote.
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4 comments:
Everyone wants their preferred animal group to be protected. Why don't we all work together instead of against each other? I care for feral cats and birds. My goal is to get the feral cat indoors. Your goal is to protect the birds. Me too. But I can't bring the bird indoors. I can only feed them. Why is death the only answer for some people. The trap/spay/return program also makes a cat less inclined to "hunt" because it also adds the responsibility of feeding the cats.
Everyone wants their preferred animal group to be protected.
Yes, Sandy, and I'll point out my preferred animal groups are the mammals, avians, reptiles, and amphibians God/nature put here.
Why don't we all work together instead of against each other? I care for feral cats and birds. My goal is to get the feral cat indoors. Your goal is to protect the birds. Me too. But I can't bring the bird indoors. I can only feed them. Why is death the only answer for some people.
Trap, neuter, abandon is an unethical way to treat a domestic animal. By practicing it you make a conscious decision to expose the cats to innumerable dangers, while imposing them on our wildlife and property owners.
I'm sure you agree the original abandonment was unethical. I don't understand how you can then relax your ethical standards to reabandon them to suffer in the wild and kill more of our wildlife.
The trap/spay/return program also makes a cat less inclined to "hunt" because it also adds the responsibility of feeding the cats.
That is not only wrong, it's illogical. It has been proven repeatedly a cat with a full dish of food in front of it will leave it to kill something. TNR practicers enable the killing to continue.
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