A letter in a local paper;
I too will trap them
To the person who wrote “War on Cats”, I write in support of the reader on the issue of nuisance cats.
We too have had years of neighbouring cats in our small cul-de-sac annoying us. I have been to the X shire to no avail. They don’t provide traps because people were taking cats to them to dispose of. And as the council won’t take them, we will take our own action.
Our local pet shop hire traps our at a $50 deposit and $3 per day hire fee.
I too will be trapping them.
Whenever we are looking to support an initiative we need to look at whether we’re empowering the ‘I too will trap them’ segment of the community, or encouraging cat lovers and community compassion towards animals.
Both trappers and cat lovers have an opinion and both will weigh in on cat management, but the one you choose bring onto your team will have a huge effect of where you end up.
‘I too will trap them’
You are opening a Pandora’s box in encouraging people to take vigilante action against free-roaming cats. If people realise 90% of cats entering shelters are euthanased, but choose to help you trap them anyway, they clearly feel no affinity or desire to protect these animals from harm.
In the worst case, you’ve actively encouraged the ‘unhinged’ to see these animals as fair game.
Cat groups have been working hard on rolling out the ‘Who’s for Cats program’ in Victoria. Without a doubt it looks to empower the ‘I will trap them too’ section of the community.
If the stray cat/s are not easily caught or handled, they will need to be trapped. You may be able to hire traps from your council, who should also provide you with guidelines on trapping cats
Who’s for Cats – impounding cats
By painting cats as vermin that need to be ‘removed’, they’ve diminished the worth of cats and helped make them targets for abuse.
This campaign ran throughout 2008/09 in Victoria. And this is the situation for Victorian cats today;
Police probe cat decapitation
ABC – Thu Nov 12, 2009Warrnambool police in south-west Victoria are investigating the death of a domestic cat found on a nature strip on Tuesday morning with its head and tail cut off.
The tortoiseshell cat was not microchipped and its owners have not been found.
The attack, in Couch Street, comes less than two months after a pet cat in Maryborough was shot 13 times in the head with a slug gun.
The Victorian president of the RSPCA, Dr Hugh Wirth, says violence against cats is increasing.
“Well it’s an example of an outbreak of animal cruelty that is going on all too frequently in recent months,” he said.
“There are animals being mutilated, animals being put to death in very nasty, nasty circumstances.”
Dr Wirth says the acts are probably being carried out my males who view cats as pests.
“To males, cats are regarded as being not a legitimate animal and they believe that because they’re a pest sort of species in their opinion, although it’s not helped by conservationists, they believe that a pest animal can be mutilated or killed in any way, shape or form.”
The same cat welfare groups who encouraged people to think of a wandering cat as a ‘pest’ and to trap it, so it can be killed, are now faced with the problem that the public see the cat as… well, being a pest that can be trapped killed.
How did we not see this coming?
The cat lovers
Empowering cat lovers is a different story with a dramatically different result. From NSW:
The Campus Cat Coalition is a non-profit organisation dedicated to caring for the homeless cats living on The University of NSW property.
The Coalition comprises UNSW staff, students, residents and community volunteers. Our mission is to carry out a maintenance program, which will allow managing and reducing the stray cat population on campus in the most humane way.
The Campus Cat Coalition provides a viable alternative to euthanasia by spay/neuter, vaccination, release, feeding and adoption of tame cats and kittens.
Cats and kittens are humanely trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated and either rehomed wherever possible or released back into their Campus territory where they are fed and monitored by UNSWCCC volunteers.
Unclaimed tame strays and any kittens are boarded or fostered until homes are found. No cats are euthanised, except as warranted by a veterinarian to relieve suffering.
We endeavour to promote community awareness of the responsible care and treatment of animals.
And this, also from NSW
Sydney dentist Daina Silins leaves $3 million to stray cats
November 14, 2009 12:01amIt was stray cats and dogs she loved, so in the end Daina Silins gave them her $3 million estate.
The tall Latvian-born woman with long dark brown hair never married and never owned any animals, but animals were always on her mind.
Her cluttered Barrenjoey Rd home had dozens of books on different species of dogs and cats, and a collection of old notes and coins believed to be worth $60,000.
Most importantly among her belongings was a will Ms Silins, 80, had drawn up with plans to give her $3.27 million estate including her home, properties in Fiji and Bensville on the Central Coast to animal welfare groups.
“At her dental surgery she would feed every stray cat that came along, no one would go hungry,” former client Keith Clissold said yesterday. “She didn’t have any family but everybody knew her.
These people are cat lovers, empowered to take action and bring about huge change.
But the Whos for Cats program paints both of these groups as ‘part of the problem’ and that they’re ‘not for cats’ stating that if they want to help they…;
…. must either take ownership of a cat,
or call your local council.
Now these cat lovers are working with cats on a grand scale, so it’s unrealistic to demand they adopt all of the group of animals they care for.
Nor would the cats benefit, given they’re untamable adults living perfectly acceptable semi-self-sufficient lives.
These cat lovers will not help you with ‘catch and kill’, because they are driven to care for and protect these cats.
But they could certainly desex them all with the right support. They would continue to work with your help to remove the friendliest animals for adoption and continue to feed and care for the ones who’d never leave the shelter alive.
So who should rescue groups be looking to engage and empower? Someone who’d happily trap a cat and have it killed (or kill it themselves?) Or cat lovers?
Seems like a no brainer to me.
It is a tragic state of affairs that in Victoria they have the means to approach this problem in an educated fashion and they have chosen not to. Since the killing has gone on year after year one would expect that some kind of progress would have been made by now yet by their own admission they say it has not.
To encourage the general public to go out and trap cats is asking for trouble. Do they need a licence? Do they have skills in trapping? Do they understand how to do this in a humane way? Do they realize that female cats might be feeding kittens and this will condemn them to a slow death? Or in a lot of cases do they care?
I met some people in the supermarket one day and they proudly told me the story of the cat they trapped and took to the pound. The cat was a male and had been attacking and bullying cats in the area but when I looked unhappy about the incident they assured me that the cat was ‘really feral’.
One of the main reasons cats ‘bully’ and attack domestic owned cats is that they are following the food source and fighting for their share. Then there is the other part of the equation which is sex.
It isn’t right to give people the power to trap an unfortunate animal and do with it what they will. Those that end up at the pound might be the lucky ones. It is dangerous and irresponsible to empower people with this kind of activity. As well as this there is always the risk that it might be an owned cat which is trapped and taken away. Just imagine if the person doing the trapping were not bothered to take it to the pound and dumped it in the bush instead. Do they really think this scenario is unlikely?
In N.S.W. if you ring the council like I did and ask them what to do they tell you to hire a trap and take the cat to the pound. When I asked what happened then I was told ‘they put them out of their misery’. Oh really? Then when I enquired by letter at a later time if council were willing to contribute funds for desexing colony cats if we got a team of volunteers together and did some TNR I was told it was illegal to ‘put wild animals out there’ but that if I could get the team of volunteers to catch the cats then they would help with transport to the pound! Since I had already stated that we could not in all conscience be responsible for their deaths what kind of reply is that?
How many cats have to lose their lives year after year when a simple solution is at hand to at least try!
Trap Desex and Return is the only effective, sustainable and compassionate way to control the population of free-living cats.
The consequence of Trap and Kill is the “Vacuum Effect”, a phenomenon observed by British biologist Dr Roger Tabor in his studies of free-living cats. If cats are eradicated from an area, more cats come in to occupy the area. The outcome of Trap and Kill is an endless cycle of killing, population recovery and then more killing. Villifying free-living cats as an “invasive species”, and villifying the compassionate people who care for them, will do nothing to reduce the population.
More information can be found in this excellent report by Dr Joan Carr:
http://backend.ewock.com/animalactive/images/cats.doc