I’m in Bali at the moment, and spent a few hours last night watching the little resort beach cats do their thing.
In Australia we kill cats for being ownerless. I wondered what the Bali cats would think of our ‘welfare’ ideal that a stray cats’ life is a burden, that the risk they face in simply being alive is too great – and that in our country this ideal would be used to justify their deaths.
What’s more, we Aussies largely believe they themselves would RATHER be killed in prevention of injury (some kind of ‘humane’ death) than be left alone to live out their lives.
Earlier this year, the Cat Haven in WA loudly announced they would be ‘rescuing’ a colony of cats from a car park. Every single cat they ‘saved’, was taken to the facility and killed. A 100% kill rate.
The ironically named Cat Protection Society of Victoria was called out for killing more than 90% of intakes. Minus the handful cats who are reclaimed by their owners, and they too have a near perfect record for killing unowned cats.
The strange reality of Australian animal welfare is that the animal charities collecting on behalf of cats, are often the ones doing the most trapping & killing of them.
I wonder if these little beach cats, who all seemed relatively heathy – if untame – would be grateful for our Aussie style of lethal, life ending help?
Of course their lives are imperfect – cats do get hit by cars, eat poison, get injured, or suffer from disease that ranges from irritating to life threatening. Such is the cost of life.
But it does seem strange to me that a dirt poor country is more likely to let a cat live, than one who pumps literally millions each year into dog & cat ‘welfare’ initiatives and organisations which seem primarily focussed on ending life.
Hundreds of thousands of alive cats, made dead ‘for their own good’ every year have the Australian animal welfare stamp of approval.
Those little Bali beach cats seem to have it pretty bloody good by comparison.
