It’s no secret. I love meme, but when I came across this one from Winograd’s No Kill Nation Facebook page, I tasted the acid come up in the back of my throat.
Everything wants to live, and this feral kitten actually is of an age when it might be tamed down.
But even with that simple observation, the meme is manipulative.
“You want to euthanize cut kittehs? You bastard!”
The thing is that feral kitten will grow up to be a feral cat, and if this is in one of those managed colonies, it will be trapped and desexed and released back into the wild. It will be fed cheap cat chow, which will subsidize its sport hunting proclivities. Kind of like a Meow-cescu. (Don’t give me hell for that pun!)
in an urban area, it will be at best a reservoir for disease. In a rural area, it will be part of the great mesopredator guild expansion. This is the world were the little predators now live without much fear of the big ones. This is a part of ecology we are only just now starting to figure out. North America was not always filled with raccoons and foxes, and feral cats are only very recent arrivals. Our small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphbians didn’t evolve with so many little carnivores, and it is hard to see how they could be benefiting from this new ecological realty.
I am tempted to make my own meme, maybe a photo of little rabbit or robin, that says almost exactly the same thing that this Winograd one says.
You can only support TNR if you don’t understand the science behind the mesopredator plague that has swept much of North America and Europe over the past few centuries.
Once you realize what’s actually happening in this wolf and cougar depauperate land, you won’t be so cavalier about saving the kittehs or letting your own cat roam outside unsupervised.
I’m reminded of one of the first poems I memorized..by Ogden Nash.
“The trouble with a kitten’s that:
Eventually it becomes a cat.”
Is there any decent macro scale research on the ‘natural history’ of feral cat colonies, eg., do we know how long the colony persists? What happens if you spey the queens? How often do abandoned or runaways form new colonies? In what environments/conditions do feral colonies form? To what extent does the existence of a colony increase the reproductive rates of ferals?
That’s why memes are so powerful–they elicit strong reactions.
Anti-abortion ads for cats.
I wonder if Nathan Winograd is pro-life for human fetuses too.
This discussion of feral cats also relates to the discussion on wolfs. In the wolf eats elfhound blog Dave says
”No. Don’t think people are that clever or manipulative. What is occurring here is cultural memory. These people are the offspring of two or three generations of living without wolves. Their grandfathers no longer remember what it is like to live with wolves. To them, living with wolves is ancient history and the mountain-men have civilized the frontier. In that context, the wolves are the invaders.
So the ranchers don’t see any reason why they should change their lifestyle because they were there before the reintroduction projects began. To them,, the reintroduced wolf wasn’t native to the area.
Until wolfaboos understand this mentality, the anti-wolf propgandists and wolf-supporters will never get along with each others.”
This applies to feral/domestic cats in a similar way e;g people don’t see why they should change their behavior or policies because as far as they are concerned the cats have as much right to exist as the birds. You won’t change that.easily or at all!
What I find interesting is my cats in their younger days were pretty much killing machines! They were well fed at home but just hunted for sport ect. I’ve never noticed a substantial decline in the prey species in the immediate area (their territory) just cause cats kill a tonne of wildlife doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the species. Prey species evolved to cope with predation and as the article says alot of native predators are gone. I expect in the states if you brought back the native predators they would provide natural control on feral cat populations. Though their would be some issues with domestic cats in wild areas. A recent discussion on here highlighted this. A man shot what he believed was a bobcat (was in fact leopard) that had been blamed for killing pets. He had no hesitation about killing a wild animal in favor of his own pets.
Incidentally this ” Winograd says to hell with biodiversity” is just as manipulative.
Adam
Cats are a scourge of native species. People don’t want to admit it.
But that’s a fact.
I would like to see massive cat taxes and a zero tolerance for free roaming cats. If your cat gets picked up, you should be fined for it, and if you don’t pick it up within a week, it gets the blue potion treatment.
There is a disgusting and misguided double standard between dogs and cats. Cats are given free reign, and they can commit crimes against ecology. A well-behaved dog that has been trained to leave wildlife alone if seen roaming is deemed a nuisance, just because it’s roaming.
Cat people are like Hindus, worshiping not the sacred cattle, but the sacred cat.
PS. If you don’t like what I write, you can take a hike.
I think Woodsman has the right idea on free-roaming cats.
Wasn’t it your blog that featured a photo of one of your golden retrievers with a dead baby bunny in its mouth? That being said, I agree heartily with your points in this article.
She kills two bunnies a year. A cat kills a lot more stuff than that!
The difference would be attrition. Over time, people will gradually accept wolves as part of their everyday lives. It will take two or three generations for people to accept new factors in their environment.
Cats? Not so much. North Americans has been managing cats as a pest and invasive species for over 100-years now and people still don’t understand the importance of conservation.
I agree about the double standard between dogs and cats. My dogs are always off leash.
Dave’s point is excellent
” people still don’t understand the importance of conservation”
and they never will if it involves killing animals they like!
This attitude will also destroy support for conservation.
”I would like to see massive cat taxes and a zero tolerance for free roaming cats. If your cat gets picked up, you should be fined for it, and if you don’t pick it up within a week, it gets the blue potion treatment”
You can just imagine the response.
”Conservationists killed by cat to save a bird, screw the birds!”
I’m interested in and supportive of conservation. But I’m also aware of the general public’s attitude. Much like the wolf thing or indeed the badger thing there needs to be a middle ground else wildlife will lose.
Here’s my experience in the UK, on the moors in spring there are signs up asking people to keep dogs on leash due to ground nesting birds and lambing sheep. No one does it! In fact it annoys people and they will deliberately allow the dog to run through areas of cover were birds would nest or flocks of sheep.
The attitude just annoys people so they do the opposite.
in other areas the signs say ”keep dogs away from areas of heavy cover and under control around livestock” this works!
I will leave the cat chat here, I like your blog especially the K9 domestication stuff and general behavior stuff. But I think this topic loses you readers and I don’t want to contribute to that lose. SO no more cat chat from me!
Adam
”Conservationists killed MY cat to save a bird, screw the birds”
I really can’t proof read!
If you don’t let cats roam, then you wouldn’t have that problem.
If you let bear hounds run where there are wolves, don’t be surprised if wolves kill the hounds.
That’s a risk that is taken.
Trap, spay, release should work. Why isn’t it? Between cars, dogs, owls, and coyotes a sterile colony should collapse within a few years. I can’t imagine the average lifespan of a feral cat is much more than 5 years.
In less sensitive areas (cities perhaps) this should be as good as euthanasia over a decade, but its not. Are we not catching enough cats? Are that many cats becoming feral from pets?
The cat policy here in Australia is that if you own a cat that has not been registered with the council – and that cat is caught, then it is given a few days before being euthanised. However, each Council also has laws that you must confine the cat to being indoors at night. Anyway, it appears to be working, ‘most’ people tend to try to contain their cats inside at night.
Kirk: “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”
Spock: “There are precisely 19 ways to skin a cat.”
I like cats, a lot, but I don’t like seeing them loose in the environment here in the states. Uncontrolled, they are a nuisance, a health hazard and biological threat. We do have county licensing, vaccination and leash laws for them here in MD, but most cat owners don’t pay any attention to that last bit. I make my feelings on this issue politely known, but it has no impact that I can perceive.
I also like cats, but I don’t always like cat owners. In fact, the only reason I won’t have a cat again is that I couldn’t keep one safely and contentedly contained on my own property. Well, that and the bearcoat would maul it to death unless I got a bobcat.
At the risk of wasted energy in beating a dead-cat … :-)
Where I live any non-native cat that is allowed to hunt then in turn gets hunted. No delays, no excuses, NO EXCEPTIONS.
I’ve seen only ONE cat in the last 4 years since I implemented that policy. Just recently, on Friday the 13th to be exact. I was standing next to my door after sundown, trying to figure out what that new bird species was on the distant picnic table, the light too dim to even make out identifying features in binoculars. Three of them had been making a most unusual sound I had never heard on my lands before, what drew me to their attention to see what was what. Just then a black cat wandered up to the critters’ watering-trough I have for wildlife during lulls in rain. I was standing right next to my rifle by the door. From the time I spotted the cat until the time it was dead couldn’t have been more than 5 seconds. (I give cats one high-five, they have turned me into an expert marksman. :-) A skill I didn’t even know I had until I found out that shooting cats was the only effective way to keep them under control.)
Friday the 13ths have always been lucky for me. What are the odds, after 4 years of not seeing any cats at all (after my lands were one time invaded by hundreds of them), to get to shoot a black cat on Friday the 13th!! Whoo hoo! Astronomical odds!
Note: Friday the 13ths are VERY unlucky for cats. :-)
ZERO TOLERANCE ON *ANY* OUTDOOR DOMESTICATED CATS.
Works where I live!
(doberman, sent your Kirk/Spock comment to a friend of mine, too too funny. :-) )
Woodsman, I find your comment absolutely revolting. I cannot understand the mentality of shooting cats when there are other more humane methods in dealing with the problem. My family are all avid hunters with the policy of only killing animals that are to be eaten.
You want to talk about what is humane? Okay, let’s talk about what is and is not humane for animals.
Shooting one cat means saving thousands of defenseless native animals and all their offspring being tortured to death or starved-to-death by that one cat. It’s a simple “animal cruelty” equation. How many animals do you want to have suffer to death? One or thousands? Even if shooting a cat would mean it suffers, that’s only one animal life that suffers to death compared to the countless thousands of animals that actually do suffer to death from just that one cat during its lifetime. No domesticated cat ever kills any other animal humanely. It is far more cruel to all animal life on earth to let one cat roam free than to humanely destroy any one cat. That’s reality.
I can be drawn to animals screeching in my woods every other day for OVER 15 YEARS, to find those screaming animals writhing and twitching on the ground with their skins ripped off their bodies and their guts spilled out. To then have to stomp a poor suffering animal to death with my own boot to stop it from screaming in agony, to hush its misery and torment caused by a cat that just attacked it. OR I can humanely shoot a cat to stop that from ever happening again.
I often wonder which of those ONLY two options that cat-lickers JUST LIKE YOU want all others to do on behalf of them and their “cute” kitties?
There are no other options. That’s it. Just those two.
Do you want me to have to stomp animals to death that were just attacked by your cats to stop their torment and suffering? Or shoot your cats to stop it?
Which is it?
That’s the ONLY two choices you get. As those are the ONLY two options that you have given to me and others.
If only I could suspend a a gutted-alive or skinned-alive animal’s suffering until a cat-licker like you opened a package containing an animal tortured by your cats, so that you yourself would have to deal with an animal’s torment and suffering caused by your cats, first-hand and personal, like I had to do every other day for 15 years.
My driveways used to be lined with senseless carnage of writhing-in-torment animals’ bodies every morning from cats having used them for toys during the night.
Maybe then you’d “get it”. Maybe you need to hear and feel a small SCREECHING IN TORMENT animal’s skull pop under the weight of your OWN foot (a sound and sensation that I still remember well) every day FOR FIFTEEN YEARS before you start to realize the suffering and animal torture that you cause with your cats.
Would that solve it? Would you then start to comprehend what is meant by “humane”?
Want to talk some more about what is and is not humane? Bring it on.
Far as I’m concerned today, after seeing how cat-lickers like you don’t care one bit how their cats cruelly torture animals to death, I now see no reason on earth why ANY cat on earth deserves any kind of a humane death today — not even a humane death for their owners. They just don’t deserve it.
Complete balderdash. You have just said so much in this comment to deserve such utter disrespect, all you have done is to confirm your ignorance. So as usual the only way to do anything is to ‘shoot them’ and anything else you don’t agree with or like, bugger any other ways of humanely euthanising a creature – just confirms your silly gun law mentality over there. Your comment ‘not even a humane death for their owners’ speaks volumes. Have a lovely day !!
Hah! You’re one to talk about “respect”. You respect NO LIFE ON EARTH. You deserve NO RESPECT IN RETURN. You’ve proved that!
Actually one could look at it from the cat’s perspective and say it’s a GOOD thing to shoot them, euthanize them, whatever you want to do so long as it’s quick.
Cats that are on the street, in the woods, aren’t living the life of riley even if they kill surplus prey and are fed canned food or kibble by kitty-loving do-gooders. They get attacked by dogs, other cats, raccoons, skunks, viruses, bacteria, hit by cars, and really just rarely live a long, happy life. They get all the hardships of any other wild animal, except maybe for the occasional handout. If they give birth and there are compilcations, who is going to find the Queen and assist at the vet’s office? No one. There is just suffering.
This is a good life? No, this is a life for life’s sake attitude, similar to the pro-life lobby. And it stinks!
Just be a damned good shot please if you decide to shoot! And if teenagers see you do it, explain why it’s not your idea of fun, but rather a way of doing the right thing.
An excerpt from one of my oft-posted prepared replies to criminally negligent and criminally irresponsible cat-lickers (like Marg above):
“Besides, what difference does it make if the cat gets shot or ran over by a car, attacked by another cat or animal, drowned, or poisoned by plants animals or chemicals. (Inexpensive 1-adult-strength generic acetaminophen (paracetamol, overseas) pain-relievers gaining in popularity, for being so species specific. Far far safer for everything else than the antifreeze and rat-poisons that cat-lickers have forced everyone else into using lately — and even condoned by Audubon, National Geographic, & Smithsonian.)
The result is the same. The cause is the same — the fault of the criminally irresponsible pet-owner that let their invasive species pet roam free. They’ve already proved their animal is 100% expendable. You can either destroy their cat humanely, or let their lack of care cause it to inevitably die inhumanely. They don’t care one bit how their cat might cruelly suffer to death if they let it roam free. Humanely destroy their cat for them before that happens. A well aimed bullet is the MOST humane death that ANY stray or feral cat can ever look forward to. Any other death that they WILL eventually face is all inhumanely downhill from there.”
Cats are, without a doubt, the very worst poison to all life that humans have ever spread upon the lands. I even tried feeding a shot-dead cat to a few surviving predators that cats had also almost starved to death, to give them a much-needed protein boost. (2 adults and 3 offspring they had while under my care.) They died from some disease in that cat-meat. Cats truly are complete wastes of flesh. They can’t even be used to feed wild animals safely. Leaving ANY cat out in nature, alive OR dead, is no better than intentionally poisoning your wildlife to death. (Why I advise that people use methods where they can safely retrieve of and dispose of that cat carcass as hygienically as possible.)
Letting a cat roam free is a complete and total disrespect and disregard for ALL life on earth, even for the life of the cat.
re: If teens see you do it? ALL rural kids use to learn a valuable lesson in how to be a good steward of the land while also learning valuable survival skills and firearms safety. With one simple statement from their parents: “If you see a cat more’n 100 yards from any building — shoot it — it’s up to no good.” It shouldn’t be “if they see you do it”, it needs to be “they SHOULD see you do it”. Thanks for bringing up the point of this lack and loss of valuable education that has caused this problem. (An education that bambi-cartoon-educated morons like Marg sorely need today.)
“If teens see you do it? ALL rural kids use to learn a valuable lesson in how to be a good steward of the land while also learning valuable survival skills and firearms safety. ”
Okay but today, 80% of people or more live in urban areas, so speaking about the problem overall, I wouldn’t start putting guns in all kids’ hands. No matter how good the parenting, there’s that point in life where whatever peers they run into have an overpowering influence. And the hot thing lately is gangsta!
Used to be a 14 year old boy could be left to run the farm too. In very few places in the USA, does this happen anymore. If I had a teen with a gun I’d be locking up that gun tight!
And yes, I do own a firearm and support gun rights, in case you were wondering. And my Opa taugth me to shoot a .22 when i was six.
Quite frankly, I have often suggested that inner-city youth and the downtrodden be employed for any urban community’s much needed cat-eradication endeavors. It is also far less costly to any community than conventional cat-control methods. A $5 bounty on each cat could give anyone a much needed financial boost and save each community about $135 per euthanized cat at the very same time.
This would also be a great project to employ all those displaced gang-members with no socially-important goals in life. They all already have guns and are shooting willy-nilly already, they just need their energies redirected to do something worthwhile for the planet and all of humanity, as well as taught how to use their guns responsibly. They also have a more intimate knowledge of all the more run-down and abandoned places in their communities that are high-density breeding-grounds for feral-cats, as well as having no qualms about entering those areas (“home turf” to them) — places where no animal-control employee would ever dare to tread. And they’ll get their need to shoot something out of their systems too.
I wouldn’t go as high as $5 per pelt though. Their cost for ammo could be minimal, and you can shoot about 20 (or more) an hour in high density areas. Maybe $0.50-$1.00 per pelt. They’re not worth more than that (they’re not even worth $0.003 apiece on my lands, the price I got for .22s on a close-out sale, only cost me 3 cats per penny to get rid of them all). But do instruct them to not handle the cats without gloves after shooting so they don’t contract any of the deadly diseases that cats now spread everywhere.
Just redirect their wasted energies, that’s all. Have gangs have a new kind of dick-waving contest — see who gets the most cat-pelts. :-)