urbpan | 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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Australia is a bit unique. It has been so long cut off from other continents that when settlers finally started arriving there, they found a land full of hostile animals/insects/other strange things.

Some of the early settlers had the brilliant solution of introducing rabbits Australia. Talk about invasive species.... then once the rabbits got out of control, guess what? They tried introducing other species to get the rabbits under control. Really, one of the most damaging and invasive species is man.

So now Australia is choked with rabbits, apparently feral cats, and oh yes, let's not forget a native species there, kangaroos. We regard kangaroos as "cute", but the Aussies consider them an annoyance, and it's pretty much open season on kangas. Incidentally, kangaroo is good eating. Excellent eating, in fact - they have no fat content in the meat, so if properly prepared, kangaroo meat is tender and succulent. How do I know? I had some when I was in Australia. It was delicious.

I've also eaten snake, possum, squirrel, rabbit, venison, bear, pigeon, emu, shark, jellyfish, alligator, ostrich, and other interesting species. I will never knowingly consume dog or cat, however, because they are "companion" species and in our society, there is a taboo around their consumption. (Other societies, obviously no such taboo exists; you can still find areas such as parts of China where dogs and cats are considered quite a delicacy.)

Cats and dogs have both been domesticated by man for so long that we cannot imagine living without them, whether or not we regard them as "pets". Cats are useful because they hunt out rodents and other truly disgusting species ("disgusting" from the viewpoint of "capable of spreading disease") who would otherwise breed and multiply (ie. rats) and potentially overwhelm us. Dogs are useful because they can help guard us, or hunt with/for us.

Dogs carry disease too. The whole 'carry disease' argument is a bit weak, because every mammalian species is capable of carrying *something* into a "virgin soil" environment. The Conquistadors, for example - they brought pigs with them. Pigs are capable of carrying the same diseases as humans, so, had the humans had the "quarantine" of a month or more at sea to allow viruses to die out, perhaps European infections such as smallpox and influenza would not have wiped out much of the native American population. Instead, man and beast kept the viruses alive between them - the explorers, of course, being very tolerant of the disease, having grown up with them - and active, live viruses were carried into the virgin soil environment of North America. Yay, explorers; wtg.

I'm not saying that Australia doesn't have a feral cat population, but it's also not their only animal issue. So much of their land is just too wide open to possibly even begin to put some of their "pest" species in check.

Catch-and-release has been shown to be effective in cities. That's an important first step, because when feral colonies get too full, they of course split off and form new colonies.

Education is also incredibly important; there are way too many people out there who are ignorant - or refuse to accept - about the importance of neutering one's pet - they're more docile, easier to control, more compliant, and live longer, healthier lives. Neither cats nor dogs have the memory facilities to know that they're missing anything once they are neutered.

Here in Chicago, we have an organization called PAWS Chicago. Their goal is to eliminate euthanasia in the Chicago area through a combination of education, outreach, working with other no-kill shelters, and other initiatives. In the ten years the program has been operating, they have helped the euthanasia rate in Chicago go from over 42,500 to 19,700 last year. They're extremely visible in Chicago, and they have a clinic available in one of the poorest areas of the city that offers low-cost neuter/spaying, not to mention educational outreach into schools all around the city.

I will never knowingly consume dog or cat, however, because they are "companion" species and in our society, there is a taboo around their consumption.

Are you saying that you obey taboos, always? There are taboos against eating a lot of the other animals you list--our relatively recent taboo against eating pigeons, and the ancient taboo against reptiles. I don't mean to be confrontational (I'd hate to lose another reader over this post), but we all pick and choose what taboos to obey. Why do you happen to obey this one (against eating dogs and cats)?

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).

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.

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. ;)

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.

Catseroles and kitten mittens.

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