You mean other than unlimited breeding, damage to the bird population and unchecked disease? No problem.
One, they can harm the balance of the local ecosystem.
Two, they are an annoyance and possibly a health risk (various zoonoses spread from cats to humans, the most well-known of which is rabies.)
Those are just two reasons why I think that is not a good idea.
Possibly. Feral cats are arguably somewhat disruptive to NA ecology ( songbird and other small native animal predation ), spread diseases to pets ( and in the case of rabies potentially people ) by acting as wild reservoirs and in a related fashion spread parasites to pets and people as well. After never being much of an issue before my backyard is now suddenly a flea-pit thanks to the previously mentioned momcat and her litter - previous to that it wasn’t a big problem, as two big ( flea medicated ) dogs kept other critters out. But she found a nice hidey-hole via a dry-rot opening in an out building and quietly dodged them.
Generally as a soft-hearted type I favor trap-neuter-release to stabilize feral population as preferable to default euthanasia. But at the very least the little bastards need to be trapped and fixed. And every tamed, fixed, adopted kitten is one more beloved pet and one less misplaced feral animal suffering the ravages of disease, blood-sucking parasites and an often short and hard-scrabble wild life.
Sick fuck. Especially the fact that he did it in front of children. Fire his ass. People who are cruel to animals like that are usually unstable. hugs her kitties
I almost dropped the laptop! 
(bolding mine)
‘humane euthanization’? :dubious:
The most common method of ‘euthanasia’ is the use of an air tight chamber. The animals are placed inside and the air is rapidly evacuated, which quickly suffocates the animal. That seems like a pretty gruesome way to die, IMHO.
That’s how the City of Houston’s Animal Control does it, if I’m not mistaken.
Still not buying it. Yes, obviously feral cats carry fleas and diseases. But isn’t that true of any wild mammal? Do most people want to kill every squirrel, skunk and raccoon living in a populated area too? And the ecological disruption argument is a very hypocritical one. 20,000 years ago, humans would have been considered an invasive species in America that was bad for the native wildlife. I guess we should all pack up and leave.
Feral cats are extremely disruptive to the environment and are responsible for destroying the local populations of squirrels, skunks, raccoons, and other small animals.
These particular cats’ dwelling was 10 feet from a home with multiple children. “The homeowner advised that the feral cats were causing flea problems within the residence, a foul odor, and leaving deceased wildlife in her yard”, per the article above.
Nature is nice and all, until it’s a threat to your children and your quality of life.
It wasn’t done in front of children:
Shooting an animal, while it was poor judgement in this case, is no more cruel than euthanizing it via suffocation or lethal injection.
And even if it had been, would that automatically be wrong? Death, and the need to kill animals at times, is a part of life on this planet. Just how much should we shield children from this particular aspect of life?
Had they witnessed the event, would the children’s trauma be so much worse than if they’d seen a coyote carry off the kittens, or a hawk swoop down and snatch a bird from the birdfeeder and carry it down to the ground to be plucked and eaten while still alive and struggling?
I think a lot of people forget that not so long ago kids routinely saw animal death. Somehow farm kids survived the horrible trauma just fine.
(For that matter, they saw human death up close as well. People used to die at home, not in hospitals, and be laid out in the front parlor.)
Agreed. If the fellow is disciplined or fired, it should be for poor judgment about when to use a firearm (a ricochet could have hurt someone) and for not following the expected procedure of trapping the cats and taking them back to the shelter for triage and (if necessary) killing. It shouldn’t be for animal cruelty.
Decimate: To reduce by 10%.
I suspect that eliminating the fertile females would reduce the numbers far more than that.
Ok, I’m going to do something I rarely do and bash my home state of Texas.
Your stereotypical Texan will often make a joke of taking a pet, past his prime, out back and shooting him. (To put him out of his misery)
But the thing is, even with us Texans, we know that’s just a joke. We don’t actually DO that shit.
So yeah, way to go officer.
Not automatically, no, but that decision should be up to the homeowner/mother, not the officer. From the article, it seems that she thought the animals would be removed and euthanized, rather than euthanized in her yard.
Again, (seemingly) not a case of malice or cruelty, just bad judgement and/or thoughtlessness. Firing seems excessive, unless the local department did have clear guidelines for this sort of situation that were clearly violated.
I fully agree.
It certainly doesn’t appear to be animal cruelty under Ohio law:
Bolding mine.
The killing wasn’t needless, and the animals were to be euthanized in any event by mutual agreement between the department and the homeowner.
Doesn’t mature = fertile?
That was my assumption. So a program designed to weed out the mature/fertile females would do far, far more than merely decimate (reduce by 10%) a population.
Agree.
I live in a very rural area, and routinely shoot cats. A .22LR works well.
I understand why she was upset. But I get greatly annoyed with the folks in our society (some of whom have been posting her in this thread) who seem to think that children should of course be shielded from all the nastiness in life. Pretending that death will just go away if you refuse to look at it is a terrible lesson to teach youngsters.
Oh, I didn’t know decimate meant only reduce by 10%. I usually see it meaning reduce drastically.
A few years ago a deer was hit by a car on the road my business is on. It collapsed in the parking lot and was laying there in agony, but alive. I called the non-emergency police number for our area (no local police force) and a state cop arrived in minutes.
He explained that he could not discharge his weapon in this situation. He was very nice, explained the rules under which he worked, and hoped we could find a way to kill the deer. He suggested calling the state game commission.
I called the PA game commission. If the deer was dead, they could give me a number for a subcontractor that hauls away dead animals. Since it was alive, they could send a game warden but he couldn’t make it for three days.
I went home and got my handgun, returned and shot the deer. I used rope to drag the deer to the edge of the property and ruled the remains down into a ravine. The game commission called the next day to see if the deer had died yet. When they were told that I had shot it, they mentioned that I could be fined for killing a deer out of season.
I’m not sure everyone here has read the official statement in the link. The homeowners weren’t surprised that the cats were euthanized, they agreed to it. Heck , they asked for it. They were a little surprised at the way it was done.
I had to read this quote twice: “The cats were located within the wood pile and euthanized. The cats were removed from the wood pile and taken from the residence.”
So the guy shot them in the woodpile, just like he would have shot a rat or a opossum. I can see someone being surprised when an officer whips out his sidearm and kills an animal on their property without warning. I don’t see the difference between family of cute little kitty-cats in the woodpile and a family of rats.