Monday, July 13, 2009

An ongoing conversation on a cat gurus blog and here...

This is an answer of mine to a response to Anonymous at LA Animal Watch The owner of that blog, Ed Muzika, and I have exchanged our views both there and here on our blog.

You feel these millions of unwanted pets somehow have an entitlement to continue to live outdoors in colonies murdering our wildlife and fouling our property because you somehow value their lives more than you do a half billion or billion of our native wildlife? Doesn't that sound irresponsible to you? It certainly does to me and most of our citizens, when it is presented to them in a rational form.

"The wild" belongs to our wildlife, the cities to the kitties? Wouldn't a better term be the outdoors? You see our migratory birds don't read street and city limits signs, and yes, there used to be and still are populations of our wildlife in and around our major cities. You may rarely see them in your city, but also consider I was told recently by a TNR practitioner there are perhaps as many as two (2) million feral cats in LA, perhaps the capital of TNR. Would you care to boast about how hugely successful TNR has been in the last twenty years?

Ah, there it is. You rate eradication success by number of shelter impounds. Would you admit the shelter population may be influenced by the large numbers of cat ranchers in California feeding their stock daily, and touting their successes?
Yes, I am being sarcastic here. The cat ranches don't stop the predation on our fauna, or the use of our lawns as cat boxes.

Thank you for making my point! TNR has no chance of success against that sort of numbers, yet you continue to hamper eradication efforts at every opportunity!

Of course I do, I value the lives of homeless dogs, too. Do I want to see colonies of homeless dogs subsidized fed and killing our wildlife? No, thank you.

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