QtM, it sounds like the SE corner then. There is a lot more urban sprawl there than in my area (not to say that it’s not happening here too). I wonder if that has something to do with what you see versus what I see here? There are just a lot more pet owners to get tired of Tabby over there.
I’d say it’s not the cats who are the real nuisance, it’s your irresponsible neighbor.
If the cats have a reliable food source year-round, why would they hunt down the songbirds?
And as for blaming yourself for not supervising your cat, has the cat never slipped out the door when you’re, say, bringing in the groceries? Mine have, but I live in a second-floor security building and they’re both cowards so I’m not too worried about them getting all the way outside. But if they somehow did manage to get all the way down the stairs and out the door and were killed by some dipshit with a gun, or a sociopath with a humane trap and a trip to the creek, or whatever, I’d put the blame where it belongs, on the dipshit who took it upon himself to decide that a cat that could be someone’s beloved pet was a nuisance and it was his job to get rid of it.
I’m not sure what county you’re in, but a number of counties in Wisconsin have trap/neuter/release programs. I hope you’ll call your county humane society and see if they can help thin your feral cat population.
Growing up our cats were fed on a daily basis and yet they’d still go out of theri way to kill birds, mice, lizards, and whatever insect they could get their little paws on.
Marc
Heck, no!
I’m rural.
My county’s humane society is pretty overwhelmed just caring for the animals that are brought to them. And they have no money to trap and spay animals. Mrs. Mercotan used to volunteer there, so we have firsthand info.
If you keep your cat indoors like a responsible pet owner, then you have nothing to worry about or bitch about unless you meet one or more of the criteria that I listed. You sound like someone who would be mad if their dog was ran over while at the same time not stopping it from chasing cars. Illogical and irrational.
I do think it’s possible for a responsible cat owner to accidentally lose control of their cat. Like another poster said, sometimes the door is left open while bringing in groceries or when Chinese is delivered. So while it’s true that pet owners are responsible for their animals just because an animal gets free doesn’t necessarily mean a pet owner is irresponsible.
I’m all in favor of shooting feral cats but I can understand the concerns pet owners have.
Marc
You’re really going out of your way to present yourself as a real inflamed cock-carbunkle, aren’t ya?
I am a responsible pet owner. My cats are indoor cats. Yet every so often, when I have the door to my apartment open, one or the other of them zips out past me and I have no opportunity to prevent it. I suppose I could crouch down in front of my door with a catcher’s mitt, or replace my opaque door with a clear plexiglass one so I can see if the beasts are lurking on the other side. “Responsible” doesn’t mean that nothing unexpected can ever happen, and if you weren’t so busy being an inflammatory asshole you might figure that out.
Sorry.
In the 70’s, I lived in Waukesha, out near the airport, on River Lane.
I know a devoted cat rescue worker who is active in rural and suburban areas in a midwestern state that is not Wisconsin. Her experience, hard-won over the course of many years, is that removing a population of feral cats results in a new population of breeding cats moving in every time. If however, the ferals are spayed/neutered and returned to their original territory, they’ll prevent other - presumably fertile - cats from moving in. Those spayed/neutered cats are generally less problematic for local residents because they’re not spraying, fighting, or raising kittens.
Assuming there is really a widespread “cat problem” in Wisconsin - which is a new one by me, and I live near the state and have friends in the state - I don’t think shooting ferals will do all that much good.
Numbnuts. Keep the Goddamn thing in your fucking house and nothing will happen to it. It’s simple even for a simpleton like yourself who obviously has absolutely no sense about cat behaviour. If it gets out, you have nothing to fucking whine if it gets killed.
Are you purposely ignoring what you’re quoting or are you really as goddamn fucking stone cold brain-dead stupid as you present yourself to be?
I ask merely for my own edification, because if you really are as completely devoid of the ability to read and comprehend as you present yourself to be, there’s no reason for me to continue to waste my time on a fucking moron whose skull is clearly filled to capacity with the sort of thing I routinely scoop out of my cats’ litter boxes.
Sorry hun, you ain’t Roland Barthes. You don’t get to define completely subjective criteria and then pretend as if you had just achieved some sort of meta-truth.
You sound like someone who would prefer to reduce the world to binarisms, and reject all those who see differently as, oh, ‘illogical and irrational’. Yeah, god forbid we be irrational - like having a connection to the people and animals around us. (Which is why I take care of my cat, and why she’s currently purring right next to me…not sure I’d want to imagine what would be willing to get that close to you.)
My cat slipping out the door does not make me an irresponsible cat owner - and I challenge you to explain otherwise (who wants in on this? I bet a Sapphire and tonic he uses a permutation of at least one of the following: fetish(istic); gun-hating; animal rights whackjob; irrational; tree-hugging dirt worshipper; damned whiny/ pansy-assed liberal.)