In the Agora: Cat Hating

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March 09, 2005

Cat Hating

What could have brought us to this?

The 48-year-old [hunter Mark Smith] from La Crosse has proposed that hunters in Wisconsin make free-roaming domestic cats an "unprotected species" that could be shot at will by anyone with a small-game license.

The simple answer is conservation.

Domestic cats (Felis catus), either feral or free-ranging pets, are the Number One killer of wildlife in the United States. Normally, we think this is a good thing; cats compensate for their arrogance with usefulness by gobbling up rodents. But not all rodents are pests, and not all prey are rodents. Cats will basically eat anything smaller than themselves, which includes small furry critters important to conservationists, birds important to birdwatchers, and juveniles of game (hence the proposal by a hunter above). Unfortunately, cat-lovers outnumber all of these people, and will continue to do stupid things like feed outdoor cats or refuse to keep their cats indoors or have them spayed.

And so I doubt Wisconsin will declare open-season on cats, even though they have a major predation problem. I also suspect that however gratifying it would be for hunters to blow away these killing machines, it would not be an effective policy for reducing the population (pushing a pest population down to exponential growth levels can be futile). "Trap-Neuter-Release" programs show more promise, but these are generally low-priority budget items.

As far as environmentalism goes, the public have already had thirty years of advocates telling them what to do. Some of it has been good advice, some of it annoying. Encouraging cat owners to spay their cats and keep them indoors are a good ideas. Telling hunters to shoot cats seems less palatable. Even daffier would be to suggest replacing cats with native predators for pest control. There is a self-sustaining population of cats at my sister's barn who keep the rodents away. I doubt very much that she, or most Americans, would embrace the alternative adopted by the Ancient Romans (who hated cats and just about anything else associated with Ægypt): a household snake.

Posted by Zach Wendling at March 9, 2005 08:34 AM

Comments

Hard to imagine a snake curling up on your lap and purring contentedly. Nor would I especially like to find one curled up sleeping at my feet.

Posted by: Lee Anne Millinger at March 9, 2005 10:25 AM | permalink

I thought the cute fuzzy aminals were supposed to go on the main page.

Posted by: Balta at March 9, 2005 12:04 PM | permalink

Spaying and neutering free-roaming cats is a much better idea than blowing them away, IMHO. That is, as long as they don't do the spaying in a high school cafeteria, which just happened here in DC.

Posted by: dave d at March 9, 2005 12:11 PM | permalink

Spaying and neutering free-roaming cats is a much better idea than blowing them away, IMHO.

Sure, if you have a lot of free time on your hands and don't mind spending money to get traps.

I had a nasty feral cat population in my backyard, and lemmee tell you, killing them is far, far easier.

Posted by: jpe at March 9, 2005 12:55 PM | permalink

Help me out here, even with most small game hunters tend to cook up what they hunt. Would this suggestion in fact cause a boom in Chinese food in Wisconsin?

Posted by: Foltz at March 9, 2005 02:01 PM | permalink

Cat season!

Posted by: Alan K. Henderson at March 11, 2005 12:07 AM | permalink