The relevance of cars to this discussion is that they are another type of highly-valued property which may plausibly end up on someone else’s land. I’m using them as an analogy to show that, even absent animal cruelty laws, it’s illegal to destroy other folks’ property simply because it ends up in your yard.
It’d probably be easier to take this discussion point to the linked great debates thread, though; I’ll continue the discussion over there, since it’s not the original point of this one and is probably a hijack at this point.
They were, apparently, mine since they were inhabiting one of the posts in my deck. I saw fit to destroy them since they were pest animals damaging my property. A cat digging and shitting in one of my flower beds is doing the same and will be treated the same. Likewise, a dog that pisses on my shrubs. If an animal means that much to its owner, it would behoove the owner to keep it confined or on a lead. After all, you love your pet, I don’t. I have a home and grounds on which I expend a lot of energy and money. No animal, whether it is a cat, dog, ant, possum, or black bear is permitted to act as a pest by damaging it.
Monday, I liquidated a groundhog for unauthorized excavation and destruction of garden plants. (The .17 HMR is a marvelous cartridge.) Why on Urth would I accept a cat doing the same thing when that cat apparently isn’t valued enough by its owner for said owner to keep it at home?
Gosh, your neighbor’s cat is now your property since it’s on your property? Or your neighbor’s cat is your property, but because it’s on your property, laws regarding the destruction of another person’s property no longer apply?
Do explain your legal theory to me, please.
Because the cat is someone’s property, and it ain’t yours, and it ain’t for you to decide what indicates the value the owner places on said property.
In short, you don’t have to accept it, but you do have to respect other folks’ property, even when they don’t respect yours. That’s the law.
There are laws that protect cats from fuckheads, this is just an example. Just because you have property rights doesn’t mean you can do whatever the fuck you want. I can’t wait for the mailman to come to my door and blow him away for no apparent reason or because he damaged my grass by stepping on it. Get fucken real assholes.
Hmmm. I wonder if the cat killer woman would think it was ok if her neighbors filled their own back yard with bird feeders and poisoned all the neighborhood songbirds because they found them too noisy.
Well, I don’t have a cat, but I have a small dog. He would REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALY like it if I let him out of the house to roam around free, sniffing every shrub and bush, as his wolf ancestors did and do.
However, I don’t let him about because a) I don’t want him to get squished by a car, b) I don’t want him to crap in other people’s yards, c) I don’t want him eating other dog’s turds, and d) it’s against the law around these parts, among other reasons, too numerous to list.
That being said, I would be really upset if he did somehow sneak out (which would involve repelling down the side of my building, from the balcony), I would be really, really pissed if someone poisoned him. So much so, that I might actually slap that person, really, really hard, if given the opportunity.
Maybe so but killing is killing. If she thinks it’s ok for her to kill cats she should think it’s ok for her neighbors to kill birds. Or did you mean you don’t think she would have killed the cats if they had no owners?
I also wonder how she would have felt if a small child or a hungry homeless person found the cat food and ate it before the cats did. If you leave food outside (even cat food) you never know for sure who or what will find and eat it first.
There is just no reasoning with a redneck and his concept of property rights. I have a story about just such a redneck. Where I live, the roads are owned by the property holders adjacent to them. This one redneck decided to build speed bumps which were about 3 feet high. This damaged my car when I went over them the first time and just about everyone else that did as well. I called the CHP (California Highway Patrol) and they gave me the same spiel. I asked them “could I spread tacks outside MY road to pop people’s tires as they go by?”. The women who answered my call was dumbfounded and did not expect me to respond after her diatribe about his fuckhead’s property rights. I hung up the phone after a nice “fuck this right-wing bullshit”.
Well guess what? If you own land that needs to access the public highway system, you have a right to reasonable access. I should have called the fire department about it. They don’t fuck around and will come out and bulldoze whatever is in the way and bill the fuckwit who put up the obstruction. In the case of my story, the police politely asked him to take it down.
Let this be a lesson to those who think they can whip out their gun and start shooting shit. There are laws against it. You cannot do whatever you want on your property. Trust me on this. Jeffery Dahmer thought like you too I’m sure. But we live in a society. All of our rights have to agree with other people’s rights. See they have rights too I’m afraid. Before you get up in a tizzy about not being able to blow away criminals in your home, you do have that right regardless of whatever redneck lore informs you.
I’m hijacking a post by the Highwayman. Hee hee hee!
Since I’m so full of contempt for folks in a related thread when those folk make idiotic analogies between PETA and murderous dictators, I figure it’s only fair for me to point out what a weak-ass analogy this is. Crazy property rights nuts != serial killers, and there’s no legitimate comparison.
Jeffery Dahmer is just an exaggeration. I hope it wasn’t too much of a hijack.
The main argument of these people who endorse the cat poisoning is property rights. I gave my own illustration of property rights not justifying actions that are against the law. Poisoning a cat is against the law. PERIOD.
Fair enough. I just figured if I didn’t register my disagreement with it, some tweakers would never let me hear the end of it. FWIW, even if I dislike the Dahmer bit, I agree with the thrust of your point.
This thread has prompted some interesting philosophical trains of thought, and now that the gears have been turning in my small orange brain for some time, I have come to the following conclusions:
[ul]
[li]I find it morally reprehensible to destroy or harm another’s pet for any reason.[/li][li]I find it impolite to permit one’s pet to annoy a neighbour, provided that neighbour has politely informed one of the annoyance, and especially if the form of the annoyance is that of concern for the well-being of (quasi-)wildlife threatened by the pet.[/li][li]I find that the loon who set out rat poison to kill cats whom she inferred were killing songbirds on her property is, by my standards at least, a crazy old bat and dishonourable to boot.[/li][li]I find that in the situation of the crazy old bat I would not have taken any action against the cats.[/li]I find that in the situation of the pet owners, I would have found a way to keep my cats the mighty cheesecake off the crazy old bat’s property, from a concern for their well-being at the least and a sense of neighbourly politeness at the most.[/ul]
[QUOTE=Pythian Habenero]
[li]I find that in the situation of the crazy old bat I would not have taken any action against the cats.[/li][/QUOTE]
Interesting list! The above quote is the only thing that I might disagree with. Were it me, I probably wouldn’t take the cats to the shelter (I’m too much of a softy toward cats), but I certainly wouldn’t condemn another person who did. I would, however, take some measures to make my yard inhospitable for cats. For example, some of my friends have an extremely yappy little dog who would just love to visit for a few days and chase cats…
My reasoning on that is that I like cats, and as much as I like songbirds, there will always be more songbirds; unlike UrsulaVernon, I do not name and/or write involved anecdotes about the wildlife that visits outside my window.
Now, this may be taken with a grain of salt (as may my entire position on this thread), as I have never owned a pet or set out a birdfeeder in my life.
I’m was following you, until you brought this line out. It is accepted English Common Law, and therefore, I belive it is also part and parcel of the laws of the US. But in what way does allowing your cat access to one’s neighbor’s property after said neighbor has complained about their actions on her property have anything to do with reasonable access?
I am not attacking you, or your position towards killing pets. I’m just saying your defense of reasonable access is based, AFAICT, on a flawed comparison.
Well, unfortunately, this article is bascially shite - the ‘science’ is handwaving, rather than actual science, which is typical of anything where JS Temple is involved, alas:
‘Can’ kill…? This observation a) dates from 1949, b) is published in a non peer-reviewed, conservation bulletin, with the inherent biases associated with that, and no methodology is given.
Again, the quality of this data is consistent with the source in which it is published. The first problem is the incredibly poor accuracy of the estimate: 8 to 217 million birds. Quite a difference between these two numbers…
The second problem is the simple plausibility of these numbers - how many birds are there in Wisconsin anyway?
The third problem:
There’s another critique of the temple study here . The source is biased - they are cat advocates - but the critiques are valid. In relation to the huge estimates of songbird deaths, from the 'orses mouth:
“Those figures were from our proposal. They aren’t actual data; that was just our projection to show how bad it might be.”
Ho ho ho, cornflake packet science.
There’s a far larger critique here. Again, the source is potentially biased. However, they provide a very thorough analysis of the terrible state of the Temple study, and the criticisms provided are essentially sound.
The ‘most reasonable’ - by whose reckoning? Plus, the estimate is uncited.
The authors carefully avoid saying that cats actually endanger the populations of such birds - because there is no good-quality evidence that they do! Cats do cause risk of extinction in very specific circumstances, such as various types island habitats. Island does not have to be an literal island, but also includes habitats which are otherwise distinct and not widely available within a region.
And is there any evidence that any such reduction actually impacts hawk / weasel populations? Again, the authors are very good at implications, but no so good at making evidence-based statements. Very unethical behaviour, in scientific terms.
What, the fact that cats kill stuff?
Anyway, a cite is not a cite unless it actually has (scientific) value.
