How do you defend cats against a cat-demonising campaign, like the one being seen in New Zealand at the moment?
Unlike the cat ‘welfare’ groups in Australia – you don’t just agree with them and issue a warning to cat owners that they’ll be to blame when the lunatics come for the cats on our shores…. you actually dismiss it for what it is – unscientific, 15-mins-of-fame seeking crapola.
Interview – Bob Kerridge replies to Gareth Morgan
Excerpts;
Does the SPCA release cats into the wild?
This is another Morgan Myth, in his attempt to demonise cats. Of course the SPCA does not release cats into the wild. There is no question that we never have and we never will.
We do have what we call our TNR program, which looks after stray cats. Stray cats are cats that are domestic who have been released, or left to fend on their own, and they often form into colonies. They certainly aren’t ‘feral’ cats and these colonies are definitely aren’t in the ‘wild’ at all. But what we do, because obviously we care for ALL animals – including cats – we care for them by desexing them so they won’t reproduce, we put them back in their colonies where they live, we feed them, we care for them, and eventually, the TNR program is a very successful program, in that these colonies eventually go.
Where are the colonies?
They’re all over the place. And when you get a cat who has basically been ‘let go’, it will do one of two things; they’ll knock on a door and say ‘hey, I’m here, would you like to take me in?’ and a very large number of people do. Others don’t find homes, so they congregate together. And what we do is we feed them and care for them, and their habits are almost exactly the same as domestic cats – in other words they have no need to hunt.
We have a wonderful group of over 120 volunteers who of their own volition go out and care for these colonies because they care for cats.
How many of them are desexed in terms of a colony?
Virtually all of them, within a very short time frame. Any new cats that might enter the colony is immediately noticed and is desexed usually within days.
You wrote that birds are well down on the food chain, with native birds making up less than 1% of the total kill.
Now we’re talking domestic cats here. And 50% of domestic cats do not hunt at all. Don’t forget Mr Morgan has attacked domestic cats, and he has referred to native birds. That’s where his attack first started.
So if we take both. Fewer than 50% of domestic cats have any need to hunt at all, and those that do, the pecking order for their prey is generally rats, mice, lizards, cicadas (in season) and birds are way down their list and native birds are less than 1%.
The SPCA cares for all animals. You know what worries me most about this? This sort of doctrine of hatred, we have enough problems out there with people persecuting cats, simply because they don’t like them, and I could recite to you a large number of situations where cats have been injured and certainly abused, simply because people don’t like them.
What is happening here, is that he is building that degree of hatred for cats, and what I fear most, is that we are going to get more animals abused because of what he is doing.
What about feral cats?
The feral ones we have nothing to do with. There are three categories of cats, we have pet cats – which are domestic, we have stray cats – which are domestic that have been let go, and then we have the feral. Now the feral is never seen. They live in the bush. They are born there, they have no dependancy on people for food or anything like that. But because they’re feral, they’re declared a pest, and the SPCA has nothing to do with pests.
Does all that poisoning that goes on in the bush, does that take out cats as well?
Yes it does – and it also takes out birds. Really, I don’t know what the answer to feral cats is, because if one got rid of all the feral cats out of the bush tomorrow, you would have an absolute infestation of rats, mice and that sort of thing, which actually does much more damage to native species and ALL species of bird, than cats do.
So you would say there is a tender balance out there in the bush?
Absolutely. I have equal concern for all animals – cats, birds – I happen to love them all. And I think most people in the country do. And yes, there are dangers there. We have to look at what we want to do – do we change the balance of nature? Do we help it along? Or are we doing more damage than good? That’s one of things that we have to ask ourselves, and we have to care for all living things and I’m into that.
My favourite quote;
What would you like Gareth Morgan to do?
Go away. Live somewhere else. Take his peculiar views to another nation.
Hopefully that new nation isn’t Australia, where cats are seemingly without a friend in our major animal welfare groups.
Kudos to the SPCA New Zealand for standing up for ALL animals, not just the profitable ones.
