2 comments to “Pet cats under fire from the ABC”

  1. Anne Greenaway | November 2, 2014 | Permalink

    Good on you Shel. You have done more research in this blog than the lazy CAT HATING journalists at the ABC. Have you seen the latest rubbish on Landline? This time it is what a farmer “thinks” that is the basis for the story. No facts. No stats. Just what a farmer “thinks”. Appalling journalism.

    I suspect many of those feral cats are descendants from farm cats bought in for a purpose (ie to kill mice and rats) The farmer is now trying to keep cats or of his granary and haysheds.

    How many farmers with farm cats desex their cats btw? Not any that I know of.

    The farmer buddying up with the Landcare guy pretending to care about native wildlife was laughable.

  2. zoidberg | November 6, 2014 | Permalink

    Good on you for calling them out on their bull!

    The situation at the ABC is totally mystifying! I’m not sure that they are ‘unwitting’ mouthpieces of the AWC (and friends). That much media coverage doesn’t happen by accident, but I’m not sure what the motive actually is?

    I notice none of the these stories actually appear through the ABC Science portion of their web presence.
    I suspect no self-respecting science journalist would be seen dead presenting such unsubstantiated nonsense.

    Sad that the stories they are putting out dumbs down science to such a degree. Photos of dismembered cats and hysterical slogans are REALLY presenting a fascinating analysis of the facts! Even if it were true that 75 million animals were killed by cats, that is just a meaningless statistic with no context to make even the simple of conclusions from it.
    How many animals did cars run over? How many were eaten by wedgetails? How many fell in a dam and drowned? How many died of disease? How many of those eaten by cats were old, diseased, already dead?
    The complex interactions of predators and prey with each other, other animals and their environment goes so far beyond these considerations!

    Your info on how they arrived at this ’75 million’ is also VERY enlightening (but doesn’t surprise me in the least)

    I notice that the AWC fundraising blurb you quoted talks about ‘fencing and shooting’ in relation to feral cats, but seems to fail to mention poisoning, and ‘research’ which involves trapping and dispatching (by shooting?). I wonder if anyone might be slightly less inclined to provide them with funds if they knew the full grisly details of what these cats are subjected to.
    One of the ABC articles mentioned that the trapped cat had injuries on its nose, but seemed to be blissfully unaware that of course they had been incurred in the trap.

    I see one of the articles headlined is about how Greg Hunt is apparently a ‘hero’ for ‘addressing’ feral cats. Well if Mr Walmsley thinks of our Minister for the Environment as a ‘hero’ than it’s pretty clear that his agenda is totally focussed on killing all cats and that he doesn’t give two hoots for our natural environment.
    Given Mr Hunt’s decisions relating to other areas, eg our Great Barrier Reef, I can’t think of him as anything other than an environmental vandal.

    Hmm it seems there are mixed messages on the ‘success’ of cat laws – firstly cat owners are irresponsible environmental terrorists, but then new laws bringing them into line caused a ‘minimum of fuss to cat owners’.

    Wow 25% fall in cats coming in? That’s got to be hard to believe for anyone looking at the rescue groups saying they are flooded with cats? Your explanation makes sense, so why the heck was that not in the story? OK I shouldn’t be surprised given the other news stories, but that is VERY sloppy reporting.