I’m with Cyndar on this. I worked at an animal hospital for 7 years, and I saw plenty of cats come through that had been hit by cars, mauled by other neighborhood cats or other critters, or had caught a fatal disease from other strays. I also own five cats, and two of them were strays that people had brought in. One of them was 6 weeks old and had been hit by a car. His back legs were broken and it took a couple of months for him to heal, but he is a happy, healthy little guy now. My cats do not go outside. They are quite content to sit at the window and watch the birds and bask in the sun and whatnot. I sometimes let them out in our backyard, but only if I am out there with them. I don’t think it’s cruel to keep cats inside. I’d rather have a healthy, uninjured cat, than one who contracted Feline Leukemia from a stray, or got beat up by another cat, or that got hit by a car.
Originally posted by obfusciatrist
Please read my first post in this thread. I think you will find we agree on the overreaction aspect.
I think it a lousy comparison still because there are other means by which to control the child (police, courts, language).
As for squirrels, they may poop in the flowerbed, but I have never found a noticeable mess from a squirrel. Many or most of you obviously have not experienced the outcome of friendly neighborhood cat becoming infatuated with using your flowerbed for a litter box. If it were only the occasional dropping or even once a week, who cares. It is the day in and day out mess (dirt scattered, flowers dug up, excrement, and smell of cat urine) that is annoying. If you don’t clean it up, they just move to a fresh area in the garden, furthering the damage.
I don’t condone killing the cat in this instance unless every reasonable means of dissuading it have been exhausted.
In my case, after months of trying every home remedy you could imagine, ultimately a paintball gun did the trick. Relatively harmless and sent a message home with the cat as well.
dont get me wrong, i love cats and all sorts of animals, but darn i hate not being able to open a window without one of those darn cats crawling in with their dirty feet and making a mess in my appartment!!!
once a cat had kittens in my appartment…although cute and cuddly i really couldnt be but annoyed…
so, keep your darn cats inside!
bj0rn - …
Oh no Bjorn. You don’t love cats if you get annoyed! Just ask Ass
[/quote]
I don’t condone killing the cat in this instance unless every reasonable means of dissuading it have been exhausted.**
And rest assured Hibbins that every reasonable means up to and including spreading lion urine in my carport had been exhausted.
Because irresponsible arseholes like you are destroying my property, my health, my sleep, my lifstyle, my pets, my environment and forcing me to perform any number of unpleasant tasks, including killing animals that I like, for the sole reason that they want to own a cat but don’t have the balls or the brains to take responsibilty for it. I think that anyone with their head screwed on could see how that might get me a little annoyed. Pull your head out of your arse for a second Kabbes and look at what your refusal to accept responsibility for your decisions is doing to others. Then maybe you’ll understand why I’m angry, though you’re so self-centred I doubt it.
I’m not sure how to reply to this.
Do I point out the fact that Kabbes is employing the straw-man that I am using anger to justify destroying his livestock, when in fact it is apparent to all that I am destroying his livestock because it is destroying my livestock and my property? Logic should probably go over well.
Or do I point out the hypocrisy in crying about performing the unpleasant task of comforting his child when his irresponsibility has forced me to perform the unpleasant task of killing an animal?
Should I try my own sob-story about having to calm down my shaken faltmate, who suffers panic attacks, because her bird was nearly eaten?
Or should I point out the sociopathy inherent in any statement that I should be compelled to risk my happiness and my child’s life in exchange for his child’s happiness, particularly in light of the fact that the simple act of not purchasing a cat he didn’t want to care for would have absolved all of us for our responsibilities?
In the end I think I’ll settle by explaining to Kabbes that this is The Pit, and if I wan’t to rant here I bloddy well will. If he’s offended by my vitriole he should be a little less hasty in slinging insults in the first place.
Kabbes if you are the type of person who expects others to take responsibility for the emotional and physical well-being of your family because you are too lazy, stupid or amoral to do so, I can only say that I am happy that you wouldn’t consider me a desirable part of your community. I want no part of a community where the responsible carry the irresponsible, the industrious carry the lazy.
In short Kabbes if you can’t take responsibilty for your family you shouldn’t have a family. If you can’t take responsibilty for your pet you shouldn’t have a pet. Don’t expect the other members of society to bear the consequences of your decisions, and don’t try to lay guilt on other citizens when they refuse to accept responsibilty for your decisions.
Well, Gaspode, two can be as self-centered and cruel as one. Say goodbye to your wonderful lovebird. Its tweeting is ruining the quality of my life. Its shit is stinking up the neighborhood and driving property values down. I hate that fucking bird. I think I’ll poison that fuck the next time it starts that infernal racket.
Call me Ass#2. Rationalize all you want, you holier-than-thou jerk, you’re still just a pet murdering asshole.
P.S. My cat was an inside cat. She ran away once, but only into the basement of our apartment building. Stupid cat. I miss her.
Biggirl,
Take a deep breath and think for a second before you start calling names.
If my bird is making too much noise you can phone the council Environamental Health Officer and he will come around with a little machine and see if it exceed allowable limits. If it does I will be required to find a way of silencing it or be fined. If I still fail to comply the bird will be seized. If it had been this simple with the cat then killing would have been unnecessary.
My birds faeces is not causing a stink. It dris rapidly and is disposed of daily {I}on my own property*. Now if I disposed of it in your carport and garden and refused to stop and you had no other recourse I could fully understand your killing my bird.
The bird is contained entirely on my property. It is no way causing hundreds of dollars damage to your property, killing your pets, killing wildlife or posing any risk to your health so long as you do not enter my propery. If my bird were doing all of those things and you had no other way to stop it I could understand killing it. City councils all over the world kill pigeons, sparrows and stray dogs and cats in their millions for exactly those reasons and no-one, including yourself, blinks an eyelid. Your ire appears to be raised not at the act of killing an animal because of the reasons you stated, but becase such a killing forces you to accept that your actions have consequences. You are in short a hypocritical bitch.
Yours is possibly the most flawed and irrational comparison I have seen to date on thes boards.
You killed your neigbor’s cat. Rationalize it any way you see fit.
You are nreathing, rationalise it however you like.
Uhh yeah, that works Biggirl.
The good thing is I don’t need to rationalise it. It’s legal.
You on the other hand are responsible for the deaths of thousands of rats and mice, yet quiblle over one cat.
I think maybe you be examining how you rationalise that.
(Bolding mine)
Gaspode - that means you’re leaving, right?
Bye!
See Ya! …
We’re waiting …
Not while I’ve got the tree huggers quetsioning and defending their motivation and morality I’m not.
I really can’t think of a better way to fight ignorance.
Gaspode, my friend has some adorable little bunny rabbits. Can they play in your yard?
::r&d::Gaspode
Give it up. You’re never going to win this argument. It’s rather like the parents of a bully who are angry because you’re “picking” on their son when he’s being punished for beating up on the other kids or destroying property. It’s never their fault, either.
I have many cats. They are all strays. I love them all.
However, I understand your feelings and frustrations.
I do have one suggestion for you. Screw the feelings of the owner who doesn’t take responsiblity for their pet’s behavior, do it for the cat (who, unfortunately, is just being a cat). If you catch the cat a second time and you really want to avoid killing it, take it to a shelter out of your area. The owner will not look for it there and cannot return it to the “wild.”
It’s really very simple to me. I think people who senselessly kill animals, or are cruel to animals, should die. I would be happy to be in charge of taking their lives. I could do it with a smile on my face.
But that would be too easy. I hope that people like some that have responded to this thread – those that are needlessly cruel – die in a slow, horrible way.
I hope that they catch a disfiguring, debilitating, disgusting, dehumanizing disease with no cure. I hope the smell of their own putrid, rotting flesh makes them gnash their teeth into dust.
I hope that all those they hold dear desert them in their time of need, and they die homeless and alone with no one to care. I hope their bodies are so decomposed when someone finally stumbles upon what’s left of them that it takes a lab years to find out who the nameless, faceless, rotting bodies actually were.
And then no one cares.
Oh for fuck’s sake!
Gaspode and I are in Australia. In Australia we have an incredible feral cat problem. The statistics for the kill rate of your average domestic moggy would make any sane person weep. It’s even worse in NZ where the native wildlife are flightless and not evolved to deal with cats at all.
I’d rather have native birds and frogs and koalas around here. That’s why I keep my cats indoors at night. If they were catching birdlife by day they’d be indoors permanently. I won’t say I greatly admire Gaspode’s methods of disposal (I’m pretty damned sure it’s illegal in any case 
)but I can totally understand why he did it.
Personally I support a cat curfew leading to a total ban on the domestic cat in Australia/NZ. I doubt it will ever happen but I think it is the right thing to do. Cats don’t belong on this continent and if we persist in having them, then we should do the right thing by the native animals.
I understand that feral cats are pests and I’ve read how much the people down under hate them.
This is not a feral cat. This is someone’s pet. Gaspode has an issue with his unthinking neighbor who should pay for the damages her pet caused. The cat pisses him off, he kills it and then tries to explain why the cat deserves to die.
Big cultural divide here, I see. We frown down upon people killing other people’s pets. Even if the pet is a cat.
I’m not defending Gaspode’s disposal of the cat. I probably wouldn’t do that myself however it’s possible that if I lived where he lived and I had a frog pond, the frogs are gonna take precedence over a cat. We need a law change dealing with cat curfews urgently.
I don’t differentiate hugely between domestic wandering cats and feral cats. The domestic wandering cats have potential to turn feral and their kill rate is heartbreaking. If you’re working with native animals and watching them die, then yeah I doubt you are going to hold little Tibbles’s life in the kind of respect that people who don’t give a shit about native wildlife are. Endangered native wildlife vs domesticated common moggie is a nobrainer for me at least. Keep the damned cat indoors and take the consequences if you don’t.
Ahh, so many fans, so many people being forced to justify their outrage at such a common act as detroying vermin.
coffeecat I assume your’e attempting a strawman here, but you obviously don’t know me very well. Rabbits are a major environmental and economic problem here. I’ve killed hundreds of fluffy bunnies in my time. If I find two anywhere on my property and the owner proves he can’t restrain them rest assured they’ll have a life expectancy of about 5 seconds. Another two fluffy bunny carcasses won’t make any difference to my tally.
Shocked that someone would kill fluffy bunnies?
Of course if you’re ever caught bringing rabbits into Queesland you’ll first face a hefty fine, then the rabbits will be destroyed, so I really don’t have to worry.
cleosa, thanks for the encouragement and for renewing my faith in humanity. You can rest assured that if there were any humane alternative to killing I would have tried it. Taking cats to pounds outside of your own shire/city is a crime, designed to prevent excatly this happening. The councils seee it as a drain on the funds of their ratepayers which is fair enough. Granted the risk of being caught is small, but it’s a criminal offense and I’m damned if I’ll face court over someone else’s irresponsibility. At least your idea is actually practical, unlike most of the Sesame Street stuff suggested so far.
PinkBikini, I agree with you wholeheartdly. Well actually I don’t. I think people who “who senselessly kill animals, or are cruel to animals” should face severe jail terms. I can’t abide the unecessary suffering of animals. I can’t however accept the morality that would trade a human life for an animal life. Of course I assume neither of us believe that people who kill animals to protect their property and health deserve to be punished. If we do there are going to be a few billion peole who kill rats and mice in court come the revolution.
Primaflora, and you too I thank for attempting to educate the few selfish hippies on this board about the facts of the real world. My method is legal. I checked with my solicitor. So long as the animal poses a clear risk to property or livestock and is on my land then I’m clear so long as the method of disposal isn’t cruel or inhumane. Carbon monoxide is specifically allowed.
Biggirl, Still trying to justify your outrage at my protecting my property eh? I notice that after your last attempt at a strawman was flattened by a stiff breeze you’re now trying for logic. Sorry but you’re as pathetic at that as you are at analogies.
Care to explain how exactly I am expected to extract payment from the owner of the cat when I can’t contact him, hmmm? If I could contact him I would scarcely think killing would be required would it?
Then you try for another strawman. The cat pisses me off and I have no alternative that’s why it deserves to die. I don’t need to explain any further, exactly the same way that you are neither outraged by, nor fell the need to explain killing of any number of rats, mice, lice, cockroaches, mosquitoes because they piss you off.
You obviously don’t understand anything about feral cats or you wouldn’t be making stupid staements such as you did. Would you care to explain the difference between the reasons why I should hate a feral cat that is destroying my property and wildlife, and not a semi-feral? You clearly don’t know that there is no difference between a feral and a stray. None, nada, not one iota. Strays just get fed more often and are therefore able to cause more damage. Or is it beacuse strays have owners whose irresponsibility I am supposed to pay for? Hang on, I think you answered your own question.
This quote is particularly telling isn’t it folks? :
We don’t frown on the killing of nuisance animals, because we all do that every day. No we frown on the killing of nuisance animals that belong to someone. So the issue obviously isn’t to do with the animal. It’s to do with the owners.
Now why I wonder?
We’re not killing or physically harming the owner so that’s not it.
Is it because I’m expected to let him deprive me of my property so he won’t be deprived of his? Can’t be, because no rational human being would accept that as fair or logical.
Is it because I’m expected to let him deprive me of my happiness so that he won’t be deprived of his, as kabbes suggested? Can’t be, because no rational human being would accept that as fair or logical.
Is it because the despair he fells at my killing his cat is greater than the despair I will feel when his cat kills my bird or my neice? Can’t be, because no rational human being would accept that as fair or logical.
Exactly what is the reason “we” frown upon killing other people’s pets Biggirl?
I’m afraid that I’m forced to agree with cleosa. Those of you attempting to justify the actions which made this necessary really are like people defending a brat. Refuse to accept the necessity of anothers actions because that would also force you to accept the wrongness of your own actions. There’s no logic or sense of justice involved, just raw, bleeding-heart emotion and appeals to ignorance. I’m just sorry that I’ve seen it on this board.
Ok, I was unaware of the ecological difference in Australia (and further unaware that Gaspode is in Australia). So, I’m willing to admit that in that situation I am probably wrong.
In most places I’ve lived, however, I don’t think the situation warrants, at all, Gaspode’s response.
thanks Gaspode for clarifying the legality. I know in NZ we could get traps from the council but we had to take the cats to the SPCA for disposal.
Not a problem Primaflora. We have some interesting laws in Queensland concerning protecting livestock from strays and wildlife. Well since your calm rational self seems to have taken all the fun out of this being a pit rant…
obfusciatrist, a question. I would be interested in knowing just how much property damage a cat would have to cause before you would justify killing it. I mean, would you let it scratch your lounge? your priceless van Gogh? Your electrical wiring knowing it would burn your house down? How about if it were going to destroy a national treasure? Bear in mind here we’re talking about a situation where the only other alternative is to let it go before it commits the act, with the full knowledge that it will come back and continue the acts tommorrow, and that given sufficient time you won’t be able to trap it agin, so it will complete its task eventually.
You seem to be implying that destruction of property isn’t sufficient grounds for killing the cat, or is there some monetary value on the price of a pet cat, above which killling it is justified? How about disease? Given the same scenario, would you let a cat with ringworm into a house with your neice? A rat carrying bubonic plague? How about a monkey carrying AIDS? ebola? hepatitus? smallpox? An armadillo with leprosy? A mouse with typhus? I’m wondering what level of risk to a childs health justifies the killing a pet animal?
Others should feel free to answer as well.