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Catseroles and kitten mittens.

Domestic cats are some of the worst invasive species when allowed to roam free and breed. They kill native prey species and compete with native predators. (They also spread diseases like rabies and toxoplasmosis.) In Australia, a place free of placental mammalian predators for millions of years, they are especially bad. That's why they can get away with a feral cat recipe contest while in America we couldn't get a simple hunting season going, on the grounds that it was "cruel and inhumane" (As if somehow hunting feral cats is more cruel than hunting feral pigs, or for that matter, any animal.) Unfortunately for those who would eat cats to extinction in Australia, it turns out they aren't especially good eatin'. Their fur could be a good product to motivate a cat hunt, but you couldn't import it into Europe. Fur, useful as it may be, has fallen out of favor in recent decades, anyway.

What do you think? Any good way to control feral cats that you can think of? Capture/Sterilize/Release is one solution, but still puts cats out in the wild, to kill birds and spread disease. Part of my new job is dealing with feral cats, and not all of them are saved. It seems like a waste to toss a carcass in the trash, or incinerate it, when it's made of useful meat and fur. Or is pragmatism uncalled for with the sensitive issues surrounding beloved species? Do all cats (and horses) deserve decent burials? What to do with the glut of unwanted and pest animals?

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Farms deal with most of their animal deaths by engineering them. It's only when they're unplanned that they have to rent a backhoe.

As you guessed, the zoo has to pay to have the dead hauled off. They pick them apart, to see what made them tick (and to see what pathology was inside) and sometimes they save pieces (especially from endangered species) for educational purposes, but they incinerate the rest (which has to fit into smallish bags) Fun times out back with big handsaws.

Bodies are burnt, but poop is mostly saved for the compost (most municipalities seem to have compost heaps these days).

I understand the corpses are cremated. My point is that it's not the only option, even if burying them at the Zoo won't work due to an overconcentration of decay in such a small area.

As far as hunting feral cats... There's going to be lots of problems posed. Many of them live in cities, and hunting in cities presents a lot of opportunities for collateral damage. Even if you're bowhunting. And while I respect the ability of the Chinese palate to handle just about anything that won't poison a human outright, I find that most predators taste like ass. I haven't ever eaten a cat, but I suspect they won't be much better than bear or coyote. (On the other hand, alligator tastes pretty good, so I could be wrong. But cats are a lot closer to coyotes than gators.)

And hunting them in the wild... Man. That would be quite a challenging experience. They're very small, very nocturnal, and very fast. Not to mention that fact that they're senses are a lot better than most people's. Finding them and drawing a bead before they run off would be even harder than hunting rabbits, I'm guessing. At least rabbit hunting happens during the day!

Humane traps would probably be a more effective option, but it would be important to focus on the "humane" aspect of it.

I don't think I've ever seen tanned cat hide, so I don't know if the fur can survive the process. Some animals' skins don't fare too well in that regard. And, as you mention, there isn't much of a fur market anymore. My uncle used to work as a trapper, and he said it wasn't worth the effort of tanning most things, for what you'd get for them. It's a fairly labor intensive process. Well, at least by hand it is. I guess the big fur farms have a better method. Or they just use cheap labor, like everything else these days.

"Not all" are saved? I'd be surprised if you could save 1% of them. Ferals don't cooperate well with being saved.

Unwanted pest animals? You mean, like, those humans who greedily destroy their own environment despite having the superior-to- lesser-forms-of-life intelligence to make different choices rather than just reacting to survival instincts in the moment?

Once an animal is dead it IS a waste to not find a use for the remains, whether in clothing or food (or even fertilizer). The problem is that if a use is acceptable after death, it leads to the wanton and greedy and often cruelly painful extermination of the animal in order to supply the use/demand. Thus the prohibitions. Not that it helps totally, there's always a black market.

I support a number of TNR feral groups, because stopping the explosion of more litters exponentially is a critical first step, until we come up with something better. But they get me impatiently annoyed when they go to ridiculous and expensive lengths to keep an ailing or injured feral alive rather than euthanize it. Death isn't the worst thing: a hard life fraught with disease and accidents (and cruel humans) is.

Beloved pets vs. pragmatism: Once you've bonded with an individual animal, it isn't a hard next step to envision any other animal as being an individual creature one could become a bonded companion to/vice versa. But, like individuals humans, there's individuals one can and individuals one can't get close to. Is the criteria to be "If I can love this individual ______ (cat, pig, horse, monkey, rat, chicken) therefore it deserves to live, and live well, and everyone else should respect it as I do -- and all it's brethren"? That seems as reasonable (pragmatic?) a criteria as any other.

I don't think there will ever be a definitive, totally pragmatic answer to this question/problem as long as humans find themselves having emotional attachments to ANY non-human creature. Just as dog lovers won't get why cat lovers prefer cats and vice versa. :-)

I've had cats all my life. I let one out for the day -- well, he WANTED to -- and came home to find him lying across my doorstep, still alive, with smashed hips from being hit by a car. I have NEVER EVER let a cat outside again, I don't care how much they beg.

Now, the feral who lives in my yard has managed to survive for going on 14 years. And she still can get a bird. Which I hate, but who am I to redesign Mother Nature?

Life in the wild is short, nasty and brutish. Once in a while we humans can intervene to lessen pain. That seems to be about it. But it's worth doing because, frankly, I think it makes us "better" people when we are compassionate to everything. (Though I often have trouble being compassionate toward too many humans.)

Whoee. Look what you started. I think the problem is a non issue out here, because the weather precludes cats and dogs from staying feral long. It's also mostly a set of walled suburbs, so I think the idea of letting your animals roam loose just isn't practical. The few loose animals I see in our neighborhood are rare enough that we know them all and everyone knows the house they actually live at. The only thing close to a feral cat I see out here is an old female with a missing tail, who I've taken to calling Ahab, but I think she has a home. She hunts the pigeons in my back yard and on one memorable occasion, a rat. We watched that hunt from out kitchen window.

I suspect we'll come around to the idea of keeping pets inside, or at least in our yards fairly soon, just like we came around to using seat belts. There's going to be some growing pains during the transition, though.

As for the animals at the zoo, how come you don't feed the dead to your big predators?

Zoo animals aren't fed the remains of their fallen brothers in the collection for a few reasons:

1. Dead zoo animals are necropsied under non-sterile conditions, (meaning that you are left with a dismembered carcass that could harbor disease) and there is nothing like a butcher's freezer to store a rack of zebra, say.

2. Zoo diets are pretty strictly codified in husbandry manuals, and deviating from them is frowned upon.

3. Zoos that have experimented with feeding off one part of the collection to another have found themselves facing negative publicity. This, I suspect, is the main reason--zoo guests become attached to individual animals, and if word got out that Fluffy was consumed by Leo, revenue-affecting publicity would result.

Plus, as you can see from discussions above, sentiment trumps logic, always.

the answer is more coyotes...

That might make more of a problem for our Australian friends, especially once those coy-dingoes start roaming the outback!

I think the poshos here would consider racoon lovely and exotic. But I've noticed fur trim (Chinese, rabbit) on clothes in literally the cheapest shop in town so maybe it's something that become more accessible for the common man. Well, woman. The young lads around here like copying rappers as much as they do anywhere but I still think it will be a few years before you'd get an Irish fella into a fur coat.

I'm sorry that people are getting upset by this topic. You always stay so calm and rational.

I say we capture and sterilize all cat owners with un-neutered cats and summarily kill any cat breeders.

For that matter, do the same with dog owners of the same description.

Actually, it's not completely far-fetched. Both of our cats were rescued feral cats who were domesticated by a woman dedicated to that cause. They are strictly indoor, neutered, and have never given us a day's trouble (aside from the usual cat bulimia and drinking from human water glasses and glaring at us).

wow, i am too us-centric, aren't i? the solution in australia must be more dingoes.

though i would like to see a coyote-dingo hybrid.

anyway, i read this awesome book called stiff (i think the subtitle was "the secret life of cadavers") and the last chapter discusses the human composting movement (not yet a legal method of corpse disposal, but give it time) . sentiment be damned...i think we ought to compost everyone and everything. environmentally sound, free fertilizer. cremation can't be good for the enviroment.

I just had to deal with this very issue on Friday. A feral cat had a litter of kittens in our yard sometime in the last few weeks. I have started trying to trap the kittens. InitiallyI had grand designs of saving them, but upon taking the first kitten to the humane society, I was told that he was really sick (his eyes were all goopy so I kind of suspected that) and they said that I could pay to take him to my own vet or they would have to put him down. I just wasn't willing to risk my own cats health for that of a feral. I felt awful about it, but the poor kitten was obviously very ill anyway, if I had left him outside he would have just died a slow death. I am still trying to catch the rest of the kittens and the mother cat, who most likely passed disease onto the kittens.

The only solution to the problem is to stop it at the source. Ban the sale of ANY pet that has not been neutered/spayed. Severely restrict or highly tax ANY animal breeder (dogs, cats, exotics) and have the money go into programs to shelter all the unwanted results of thier idiocy. Also, chip ALL pets before they are sold/adopted. If the animal is found in the wild, the owner is tracked and fined in a massive way. (Again, not just cats, but dogs and exotics -- there are huge problems in FL with people buying exotic snakes, lizards, etc and releasing them when they get bored. )

Sorry to ramble, this issue hits close to home today, I'm still really sad and angry about the poor kitten.

IAWTC.

What about feeding them the feral cats? I suppose that would fall under #3 as well(and probably 1 & 2). And I suppose the parasites and other possible bugs might be too dangerous to risk exposing expensive zoo residents to?

One of the wildlife centers I used to volunteer at would recycle what they could (mostly small prey species that died before they'd been medicated). We'd try to save them for the coopers hawks and other picky eaters.

I feel for you. That's a sucky situation.

Yeah, and the evereglades really needed a population of Burmese pythons.

One of my fantasy jobs is animal control in a place like florida, catching wayward monitors and stuff.

I guess it depends on the strength of the taboo. Dog and cat... very strong in our culture. Not so much in others.

I didn't know there was a taboo around pigeons. I think more recently people have come to regard them as the "rats of the skies", so /shrug. And I had no idea there was taboos about reptiles... I first tried it when I was oh, 14?

And no, I most certainly don't always pay attention to taboos. ;) But there's three kinds of taboos, imho: intelligent taboos based on reasons that you would have to be stupid to ignore; taboos based on things like religion, which may or may not apply to you; and taboos that once made sense but no longer do and which comes across as odd to most modern people.

I will say, however, that if I am traveling abroad, I do try to respect local taboos, laws, etc. But I also have a hard time looking at a culture, for example, where its people starve and yet "sacred" animals walk the streets unfettered.

So there's a question for you: what if the annoying local pest of an animal is protected by religious reasons and/or laws based on those reasons? For example, cows in India. (They come to mind first although I'm sure they're not the only sacred animal).

Surplus chicks and mice are fair game.

Hmm. I suppose #3 is the same reason you don't sell the bones for art or decorative purposes. I imagine the skulls in particular would bring a lot of revenue to the zoo.

puhlease... Human development is evolution in action, and as evolution goes, you adapt or die out.

Plenty of species eke out an existence alongside us, and others die off, unfortunate as it is. Now that we're more aware of our environmental impact, humanity generally tries harder to not mess things up too much. Regardless, there's no way for humans to kill of all life on this planet excepting major, and I mean MAJOR climate change, sometime akin to the surface of Venus.

Humans are natural creatures, and it is a fallacy to suggest otherwise. There have been mass extinctions throughout the history of this planet, and whether it's caused by a meteorite, massive amounts of oxygen in the air, climate change, or human development, it doesn't change the fact that these things happen and by natural causes.

If fixing the environment is something we should do as self-appointed stewards of nature, then that includes getting rid of feral cats, and if they have to die, so be it.

TNVR and colony management is, in my opinion, one half of the vital job of dealing with feral cats, with the other half being enforced cat leash laws.

TNVR is Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release, which, along with colony management, sets up a situation where you have a small group of non-breeding, non-fighting, non-diseased cats that you feed, which then prevent other groups of breeding/fighting/eating other animals cats from moving into the area.

http://www.straypetadvocacy.org/html/predation_studies_reviewed.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16603400&dopt=Citation
http://www.feralcatfocus.com/Eradication_/eradication_.html -- this is the most straight forward one.

As was pointed out in the first link, the predation style of cats is far better for small mammals than it is for birds.

The pigeon taboo is informal, but strong. They were originally associated with humans as food animals, but ask your average person if they'd eat one. I saw some at my local Asian grocer and was sorely tempted.

The reptile taboo is in Leviticus 11:29-31.

In India there are the cows (which are at least milked, so they're not entirely freeloading) not to mention the rats and monkeys. (Out of respect for Ganesh and Hanuman)

I can't think of any other example off the top of my head, though I am amazed that pigeons and Canada geese are not eaten in the cities of the world. In North America all native songbirds are protected by the migratory bird act treaty, so control of pest geese and other pest birds is complicated (but doable).

Then there's the case of locust plagues in the southwest--the settlers were starving when the locusts ate their crops, while the Indians simply ate the locusts. Likewise, in Jered Diamond's Collapse, he tells the story of the collapse of European colonies in Greenland, since they refused to live on fish and seals, as the native Greenlanders had.

We regard kangaroos as "cute", but the Aussies consider them an annoyance, and it's pretty much open season on kangas.

Not the case. Kangaroo populations have blown out of proportion due to agriculture here. Clearing of land to create pasture and sticking water troughs everywhere suits the roos to a tea. And it's not open season - roos are very carefully managed. All shooters must have a permit and only a certain number are to be taken to maintain a sustainable population.

And I haven't yet met one person from America yet who truly understands the feral cat problem in Australia. I adore cats too, but in Australia we're talking animals that were possibly here BEFORE white settlement (some research has shown, and they have no idea how they got here). These are animals that live in the middle of the desert and have done so for at least a century now - miles away from any humans. They're like small tigers, they cannot be redomesticated, they're huge and they're nasty.

In W.A. foxes have been brought under control using 1080 baits, but cats are a bit more of a challenge because they don't take baits as easily. There's also a phenomonen called 'mesopredator release'. Pretty much, once you get rid of foxes, cat numbers explode, so a solution to this issue also needs to be sorted out.

Sure, all of these problems were initially caused by humans. But if you take away just the humans, the problems will still remain because foxes and cats get along quite happily without us. As long as there are small, native animals to eat.

I honestly never heard of the reptile taboo. :) And if it's Biblical, well, I've never had my pastor talk about it. But we're Lutheran, so there ya go. ;)

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