The scourge of the earth......CATS!

Based on what my four housecats bring home (and yes, they bring EVERYTHING home!) I kill more songbirds with my car than my four cats kill each year.

My biggest problem when someone gets on the "cats=bad" track is they then seem to think they have the responsiblity to shoot any and all cats they see the next time they are out hunting. I lived in WI for four years, and I think hunters should leave the killing of feral cats to the residents who KNOW which ones are feral, and which are someone's pets. The ares of WI we lived in did have a feral cat problem, but they were quite careful, and you didn't see them often while hiking the woods. So typically the cat the hunter saw perched up on a fence post is someone's pet.

Too many cat haters use the excuse of the feral cat problem to shoot any feline they see.

I now live in SD, in prime pheasant hunting land. I'm sure some hunter will say that the pheasant population is down due to cats, and say they'll shoot any they see. Truth is it's down due a lot of rain during nesting season.

Cathy

And this is the real danger. If a cat is killed (especially if it's the ninth time), the evil held within along with all the pain and suffering of stolen babies' breaths and souls ripped from unwitting owners are set free. Usually the the hunter is an easy target. The ringing in the ears provides a ready portal through which the hunter's body can be taken over my the will of the cat.

Then you have six feet or so of walking evil with a gun. Not a good combination.

I think if you check you'd find out that there are several studies showing how much harm outside cats do to wildlife.

I had ONE 'barn' cat and she would routinely bring up rabbits, frogs, snakes as well as the standard pile of bird feathers and guts. Cats are the sharks of the land, very efficient killing machines and a lot of them will kill 'for sport', i.e. kill much more than they could ever eat.

FYI, when I was living in another state the unwriten rule was to shoot any cat seen while hunting. The rule at my house was to shoot any cat seen, if possible.

Most of my cats (7 of them) are too stupid to hunt. They just sit around and yeowl for food. I cured them of wanting to kill chickens at an early age. Being beat severly by a dead (and/or live.....) chicken tends to deter them.....

I guess if people really care about a cat as a pet, they keep them home. I like cats and have one - she stays inside. But, I do find the practice of allowing cats to roam, at the very least, inconsiderate.

I seem to remember a lighthouse keeper's cat killing the last and very endangered species of Finch or sparrow?

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Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

I always forget to mention that my nearest neighbor is over a mile away in any direction. I also let my dog out when I am home, and she "roams" about as far as the cats.

My chickens don't usually go as far. The horses don't get to "roam" but they probably cover the most area of all the animals.

I thought it was kind of inconsiderate of my one nieghbors to let his five bulls roam through my front yard, but sometimes that stuff happens. I helped fix the problem by providing a chain for the gate.

It's those that are ditch hunting and want to shoot my animals while they are sitting on my fenceposts that I have an issue with. Not because they see the animal doing damage, but just because they don't like that particular species.

Cathy

I wonder how many of the cat-haters will be glad that the bird population is down when bird flu lands on our shores. I noticed none of you have commented on the enlightening post made by Jim S.

Red-ShootMyCatsAndYou'reNext-Tartan

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Your lucky if a cat will catch a mouse a day compared to a barn owl that will take 15-20 every night. Cats tend to prefer birds and do a lot of damage .
they are worthless on what we call rats which are often as big as a cat .
how many squirrels have you seen taken by cats ? Ive never seen a single squirrel killed by a cat but Ive seen many cats that will run like the wind away from a squirrel .
when the cat population jumps around here the rasbbit population disappears as do ground dwelling birds and birds that visit feeders.
We have cats neither of which are hunters .
I do however think they should open a season on feral cats and allow fur to be harvested

Two words...SPAY and NEUTER.

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You are right - it is humans. And in addition to all the other human-created ilks, humans are also responsible for the cats:

Studies have proven cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year and over a billion small mammals.

And it falls right back on us...for not spaying/neutering cats and allowing them to roam and become feral. These cats are not part of the "natural" cycle of life.

Raven, love your avatar!

At one time I had a contract with the Corp of Engrs. to collect, by whatever means available, the cats located on the land surrounding a large lake. During the summer they would live mostly on the fish and fish remains left by fishermen. During the winter they destroyed all types of birds and small mammals.

I agree but there are a lot of people who do not feel that way. It is a topic that goes round and round. Difference of opinion.

donsgal
mom to two inside-only furbabies

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I like cats - especially with ketchup.....

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Cashew cat, sweet and sour, general cat, meow gypan, cat kabobs

My cats used to hunt and eat songbirds. I'd find piles of pretty feathers. I switched them from Iams cat food over to a natural diet. Not even a raw meat diet, but oatmeal with cooked chicken and some other stuff. They stopped hunting. No more pretty feathers, no more mad leaps at a sparrow getting lost in the greenhouse. More singing in the trees.

MSNBC.com
Open season on c ats in Wisconsin?
Proposal would allow hunters to shoot feral felines
Reuters
Updated: 2:02 p.m. ET March 18, 2005

A proposal that would allow hunters in Wisconsin to shoot and kill feral cats is causing, well, a hissy fit.

“It’s entirely cruel behavior to have an open season on cats. Just because a cat doesn’t have a collar doesn’t mean a cat has no owners,” said Jessica Frohman, community outreach and policy coordinator for Alley Cat Allies, a group which espouses no-kill methods of controlling wild felines.

Opposition is coming in “from all over the country ... surprise, shock, horror,” added Adam Bauknecht who along with others has put up a Wisconsin-based Web site calling attention to the issue.

The site — http://www.dontshootthecat.com/ — drew 35,000 hits on Monday alone and has received more than 800 e-mails since it was activated three days ago, Bauknecht told Reuters on Tuesday.

At issue is an advisory question that is among dozens to be aired in public debate next month at wildlife-related meetings in all of Wisconsin’s counties.
The Wisconsin Conservation Congress which conducts the sessions uses them to give advice to state regulators on such weighty matters as changing the date for applying for a bear hunting license to banning electronic decoys in turkey hunting.

An 'unprotected species'
The cat proposal, simply put, would reclassify free roaming, domestic feral cats as an “unprotected species” that could then be shot by anyone with a license to hunt small game. The rationale is that wild cats prey on songbirds in disproportionate numbers.

Not so, says Frohman of the Maryland-based Alley Cat group. Man is a far worse predator, she said, with skyscrapers and other man-made structures killing countless migrating wild birds in collisions each year.

The true solution to the country’s millions of feral city and country cats, she said, is to trap them, have them spayed or neutered and then released back into the wild. Killing them, she said, only causes colonies of existing cats to expand in size to take up the territory of those that have been eliminated.
Bauknecht, who works at MadCat Pet Supplies in Madison, Wis., said the chances are very slim that the cat proposal would ever be adopted by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, even if it gets backing from citizens attending the meetings in April.

“But we’re not taking any chances,” he said.” When this is resolved we’re going to pursue trying to build a statewide network for cat spaying trap-and-releases. We want to use this as a jumping off point.

The cat hunting proposal had its origin with Mark Smith of La Crosse, Wis., who could not be reached for comment. He said in an interview published in the La Crosse Tribune recently that he was not anti-feline but “If you open the door and kick your cat out at night you’ve changed its status.”
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7130397/

Well - if I ever see a stray cat on my place, it comes down with a severe case of lead poisoning..*wink* *wink*. I'd expect my neighbors to do the same if they see one of my cats on their place.

Thanks.

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