At the Carnival of Cordite, Technogypsy had a mention of Gretchen Ross taking off on a proposal in an area to declare it legal to shoot stray cats. And it has really set her off. In her response to one comment, there's this:
""Shooting them when sighted while hunting other species is a safe and cost effective way of controlling feral populations."
Safe and cost effective for YOU maybe, what about the cats? Oh yeah, I forgot, God put animals on the Earth for us to kill them...
There are other, more humane ways to control the cat population. People who want to shoot cats are pathetic. Having no real control over their own lives, they take a sick egotistical pleasure over controlling/ending the lives of others. It has nothing to do with saving the birds or farm animals from cats. If it were, there are other less sick ways to do it.
Write back when you grow a fucking soul."
Other people have written about the damage done by feral animals. And yeah, shooting them is a safe & cost-effective way to control them. It's not necessarily a nice thought, but it takes care of a problem.
As far as controlling a cat population, when you're dealing with a feral population in a suburb/rural area, it's about the only real way to handle it; trying to catch them and fix them doesn't work real well. Often it doesn't work too well in urban areas, either. In the city where my parents live there's been a terrible problem with strays/ferals. One group started a program where you could trap ferals and they would sterilize them for free, and turn the back loose! Yeah, they can't reproduce, but they're still running around, killing other animals and spreading disease and dying in nasty ways. Most of the problem has had to be dealt with by trapping and killing them.
I've got to say, her description of people who "want to shoot cats" is straight out of a PETA press release, and I'm not going to waste time on it.
Gretchen, I don't want to shoot cats. But if I lived in an area with feral cat problems, I would.
Oh, and I already have a soul.
1 comment:
Acidman is Rob, over at www.gutrumbles.com.
The cat is currently snoozing, having taken over my chair as soon as I stood up. Being a cat, she doesn't seem to give a rat's butt about the issue.
I didn't say anything about 'rights', only about pest control. You find a way to deal with feral cats efficiently and kindly, that's great. Until you do, a bullet or trap is going to be what's used, and the trap is usually followed by euthanasia. And this is nothing new: in the farm country where I grew up, you were expected to shoot wild cats or dogs that you spotted, so as to protect the wildlife and the farmer's livestock.
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