Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

[thalassa]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

And here lies the problem with your argument: Individual actions never amount to lasting change, but collective actions do.

I never said these things should be individual actions. But collective action has a tipping point before it works.

And collective action starts with individual actors.



None of which has anything to do with the data.

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Or, you know, the proper way - tranquilizing them and relocating them. Or are people really too lazy for that?

Where are we gonna relocate them to? This is an honest question, feral cats are too plentiful to all have a single place they could go, and moving them a mile away off of your property only moves the problem to someone else. Relocation only works if there is a decent destination otherwise it's shifting a problem around. I'm not sure you've thought this answer through. Feral cats are a massive issue in my state there are too many of them and wild bird populations suffer for it, but they are a problem throughout the whole state, where do we move them to? Another state? Are we building a kitty island somewhere? Whose going to keep them fed and from inbreeding where we move them to? Where do we get the money to transport thousands of cats and their offspring which multiply exponentially? Seriously consider this before you accuse anyone of doing surgery on cats because they are lazy... That's a poor argument without much reality behind it. The solution isn't that simple because feral cats don't really have a natural habitat. In most places they are extremely invasive and are ruining existing populations of birds and small mammals. I just wish you would consider that this problem outweighs the scope of the idea of moving a few animals around.

[Rae'ya]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

1. I am referring to any felines that are not domesticated or enslaved in any way.
2.Did I say anything about knowing where it is right this moment, I myself am currently doing some research on the subject.
3. It depends on how skilled one is at it, unfortunately in America, few people know how to do it, so it is a bit more costly, but funds should not come before someone else's welfare.
4.A few days.

Both of the cats I share my home with are neutered and spayed(I didn't have a say in it) and both are suffering health problems, mostly for the male who has been getting urinary problems such as crystal formation and bladder stones, if you've seen a feline with this condition, you'll know that it is very painful for them.

1. This displays a lack of understanding about the terms 'wild', 'domestic', 'feral', 'tame', 'invasive', 'native/endemic' and 'naturalised'. There's a reason we have eight different commonly used terms for non-owned animals... because they are actually very important distinctions which become particularly relevant when discussing ecological balances.

2. I hope you're using reliable sources.

3. It's not actually that difficult, but it's very fiddly, takes longer than neutering a male cat, requires a longer anaesthetic in male cats and the results are unreliable. A male cat can also have viable sperm for 4-8 weeks following the vasectomy, so is not sterile straight away. As it doesn't remove the testosterone, it has no effect on fighting behaviours during breeding season. 'Welfare' is a relative term when you look at the big picture. And where would these funds come from?

4. Yes, a few days. Which is actually faster than a surgical cat castrate in many cases.

The biggest risk factors for FLUTD or FUS are age, weight, lifestyle and diet. We see it primarily in middle aged cats who spend the majority of their time indoors and who are fed unbalanced or cheap diets. I've seen entire male cats with FLUTD. I've seen hundreds of cats with FLUTD, idiopathic cystitis and bladder crystals. The reason it's so serious in males is not because of being neutered, but because their urethra is long and narrow and even a small concentration of crystals will cause a life threatening obstruction. I hope you have your cat on a therapeutic diet designed for controlling urinary crystals, are managing his weight and have closely examined his stress factors and whether or not he actually enjoys living in your house with another cat. Because his urinary issues are highly unlikely to be directly related to his neutered status.

Now I have a few questions for you. Have you ever seen a cat in heat? Have you ever seen cats have sex? Have you ever seen toms fight over a queen? Have you ever had to deal with a stray/feral population with a high incidence of FIV? Have you ever lanced an abcess or done extensive multiple surgeries on a necrotising abcess with resistant bacteria? Have you ever seen pyometron? Have you ever met a dog or cat who's given birth every single season of her life since she before she was fully grown? Have you ever hand reared kittens who were abandoned by their mother because it was too hot and she couldn't feed them? Have you ever seen a cat with a fractured pelvis from being hit by a car? Or a cat who's in shock and dying from a ruptured bladder because of the fractured pelvis and nerve damage? Have you ever seen a cat literally starving to death? Have you ever seen a cat with snake envenomation (of any type) or paralysis tick envenomation? Do you actually know the average life expectancy of a feral cat and what they are liable to die from?

If you want to defend a feral cat's right to die at 4years of age from an infected and necrotic cat fight wound then go for it. But be prepared for me to question your ideas on 'welfare' and ethics. Because until you've seen what I've seen, I'm going to have a hard time believing that you truly understand what life for these animals is really like.

[anunitu]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

People have a hard time understanding about animals in pain or other reasons to "Put them out of their misery". I once was volunteering at a food kitchen,and they used sticky traps for mice and rats. I dislike those types of traps because people tend to throw them in the trash allowing the still living animal to starve to death. I took one of those traps with a mouse stuck to it,and killed it with my knife(they can not be freed,there skin will come off before you could break them free) and I was chastised by supposed animal lovers for putting the mouse out of its misery,but they would toss said mouse in the trash to starve.

[Gleb]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

So umm.. Maybe catch, cure and put into special shelters especially for these animals where they can be fed and taken care of?

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I mean why kill? Humans have killed a lot of species already!!

[thalassa]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

So umm.. Maybe catch, cure and put into special shelters especially for these animals where they can be fed and taken care of?

Because money.

Who is going to pay for this?

I mean why kill? Humans have killed a lot of species already!

Because the domestic cat, as a species, is not native to any ecosystem except the human one. Killing every single feral cat that can't be adopted out (possible, though it would take a while...it would need to be like the guinea work eradication program, but global) would not eliminate the species.

[Gleb]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Donations.

Killing them is the easy thing. But not necessary the right one.

[ThePaganMafia]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

I support the third, more tasty option, cat stew.

[NeoPlatonic]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Because money.

Who is going to pay for this?

The government. Which is why money is not an obstacle.

[ThePaganMafia]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

I hope the government has more important things to do with my tax money then house cats.

[thalassa]

I hope the government has more important things to do with my tax money then house cats.

Like pay for roads, schools, people that need food, medical coverage, scientific research...


Yeah, me too.

Donations.

Killing them is the easy thing. But not necessary the right one.

From whom? There already isn't enough money for the animal welfare programs we already have.

[Gleb]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Citizens. Slowly, as the time goes, there will be enough one day.

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I'm not saying they should donate huge amounts of money, just saying.

[ThePaganMafia]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Its not a realistic option though.

[Gleb]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Because people think it will take a long time.

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Moscow wasn't built in one day, you know.

[Bjorn]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

I hope the government has more important things to do with my tax money then house cats.

Like pay for roads, schools, people that need food, medical coverage, scientific research...

Looks like what we're experiencing here is another classic case of 'everyone should feel the same way about my favorite animal as I do.' People seem to think that they're protecting life when they allow for one species to be treated specially at the expense of other life. After all, if all life is sacred then that means trees and plants and mice and bacteria and so on.

People only want to save the warm-and-fuzzy, adorable animals. I call this 'vegetarian disease,' but that's intentionally rude and I don't feel like starting a war about someone's friggin diet right now.

I'll share a story about bear, my most beloved creature (and extremely less populous and invasive as feral cats). I lived in CO on a farm out in the Bijou Basin, where the ridges were high and lined with Ponderosa pine: primo bear country. Now, of course, WE were in the bear's land. Humans have been invading wildlands like this for century so it's natural that the boundaries and territories would overlap. It did. We had a bear in the basin who ruined fences, killed dozens of chickens, wounded large livestock so that they had to be put down.

I was in the height of my paganism, and couldn't bear (see what I did there) the conversations that the neighbors were all having about how, if the bear came back, they were going to shoot it. How could they kill such a magnificent creature?! All he did was eat and wreck some stuff, not even dangerous! But I was naive. As soon as the bear knew where the food was, more death and destruction followed. At the time, I did a spell at all the corners of the property to tell the bear that the neighbors were going to kill it and he HAD to leave. The bear never came back. I know this is probably because he wandered into other territory to find other tasty chickens, but it made me realize that NO CREATURE is immune from death. No creature, when becoming a problem, is ever 'not a pest.'

Nature is red in tooth and claw. To think otherwise spits in the face of the natural order.