In the cities that makes sense because it’s dangerous to have people shooting at cats. In rural areas it makes sense to just let folks with hunting permits do it. You know in my neck of the woods we don’t even have animal control. If a dog gets hit by a car it just sits on the side of the road for weeks or months at a time. On the bright side I did get to see the natural process of decomosition on a daily basis last year.
The fact that some might torture the cat isn’t a good enough reason to forbid everyone from shooting them.
Has it helped their feral cat population? How effective is enforcement?
That’s unfortunate but people need to be responsible for their pets.
Well, that’s a regional thing, since in most parts of TN, even the rural areas, they scoop dead animals off the road.
Wait until it starts hitting the papers.
Don’t have specifics, but I know that if you take your cat to the vet and it’s not tagged, they’ll turn you into the state.
Again, wait till it starts hitting the papers. Enough angry pet owners read/see stories about pets getting killed because someone thought they were feral, and when folks find out that you can’t sue for damages, then there’s going to be a royal ruckus. Why wait until it goes that far to do something? Isn’t that kind of how Wisconsin ended up overran with feral cats? Nobody wanted to do anything until it was too late? Better they come up with a more effective solution, now than have the courts and legislature tied up because of a bunch of angry pet owners who’ve lost their “fur babies.”
Nothing. As I mentioned in another thread, I used a Have-a-Heart[sup]TM[/sup] trap at our previous home to capture stray cats. Afterwards I’d take them over to my uncle’s house and drown them in his creek. It certainly wasn’t an enjoyable experience, but it did decrease the cat population in our small section of the neighborhood…
Nothing, unless you have a burning hatred of hunting or guns or a passionate hatred or total apathy for native wildlife. Of course there is aslo the run of the mill, animal rights whackjob. Usually it’s a combination of all of the above.
The question was defeated in Dane County (a shock, I know).
Another snippet:
I thought of this, too - this vote brought out a lot of people who would normally never go to a DNR meeting. The local pet food store, MadCat, was selling Don’t Shoot the Cat t-shirts, and there were fliers advertising the meeting at all the coffee shops and local restaurants. I wonder what kind of effect bringing this question to a vote will have on other questions.
I’m just waiting for the Daily Show to do a piece on this: the last time they were here was for the students that were suing the downtown bars for collusion; of course they managed to find the doofiest students possible and included footage of people chugging boots over at the Essen Haus.
Damn the white man, you got me! It’s really not that I was concerned that should my (VERY strictly indoors and spayed) kitty-cat get outside, she could be shot; it’s really that I just don’t care about native wildlife.
During the week, I enjoy running over squirrels. In my SUV. While talking on my cell phone. My record is four in a row.
I try to make an effort to destroy at least one badger den per week, though it’s hard to do with my busy schedule.
I have several hundred songbirds currently penned up and am force-feeding them, so that I may make a songbird pâté.
I regularly put out tiny bowls of rat poison for whatever animal may come around.
I make special high-fiber loaves of bread that I feed to the local mallard population, in the hopes of giving them terrible gas.
And, yes, I am working on a vest made of puppies, to go along with my mourning-dove hat.
I think the feeling against cats is not entirely rational or conscious. No, of course ferals, pissing, bird-killing, etc., are not good things. But I suspect the legislation here came about for a not entirely conscious reason: people who have guns and people who hate cats tend to have certain assumptions in common that resonate with each other.
Gun owners basically believe in chaos; the gun is there to impose order on those who won’t play by the rules. Cats never play by the rules. They recognize no authority and have no work ethic, so they’re not only lawless but worthless (if you take it to the logical conclusion).
The statewide results are in and the cats lost 6,830-5,201.
All of which may be irrelevant anyway, as the Department of natural Resources does not back the notion of cat hunting and the chair of the state house’s ways and means committee opposes the idea too.
It doesn’t sound likely that anything will actually come of this. There are a few people in the way that don’t agree and they have the power to stop it.
Getting back to the feral cat problem, I just don’t know where the hell this problem is supposed to be. I talked to a friend and coworker who is an avid hunter (sometimes several times a week) and has been for many years. He has seen a grand total of one cat in the woods. Some of his hunting is in the LaCrosse area.
I personally have never seen a cat in the woods that didn’t belong to a local farmer. Even that has been rare and it’s usually a barn cat from my dad’s farm in my dad’s woods. My dad isn’t a big cat fan, but he knows their usefulness around the farm. His cats have never had collars. I will guarantee that his barn cats ending up shot in the woods will just end up making one more posted (no trespassing) farm in Wisconsin. The would-be cat hunters are just going to end up shooting themselves in the foot so to speak.
I own a farm in Wisconsin (we have one cat, collared, neutered, shots all up to date, 17 years old). Our area is overrun with feral cats outside. They get run over on the local roads, they intimidate my own cat and dog, and I’ve seen the feral cats feasting on birds in the middle of the road before.
One of our neighbors (a nice guy otherwise) puts out food for them year-round, and a warm shelter in the winter. Of course, he doesn’t take them to the vet or spay or neuter them, but he sure enables them to breed like mad.
I’ve lived here all my life and can verify the songbirds are not here anymore. Cat related? The experts say so.
I don’t hunt, and I don’t hate cats. But I’m not happy with their presence here. I consider them a worse nuisance than the local raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. I would not object to someone ‘thinning’ the community by any means possible. And if our cat would happen to get offed in the process, I could only blame myself for not supervising said cat.
Let me modify that to “any reasonable means possible”. I’m not in favor of nuclear weapons, have concerns about poisoned bait, etc. But I’d consider letting some of our local farmers (whom I know and trust) onto my land to thin out our local feral population.
