Catseroles and kitten mittens.

[urbpan]

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?

Comments

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I mean indoors all the time. I grew up with indoor/outdoor cats (didn't everybody?) and they always died young--hit by a car, or in one grisly circumstance, drowned in the neighbor's pool. I don't really see much difference between a cat that goes out sometimes and a cat that's out all the time.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

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.)