When I was growing up, my grandfather ‘Pop’ had a small farm. It was only five minutes from my family home, so we would visit pretty much daily. He was the original dumpster diver – he’d visit the local country tip and collect building wood, fencing wire and an assortment of precious junk that he’d stack around the property ‘until’.
He had a dozen sheds full of crap. As a kid, this was a treasure trove. Assembling go-carts, building a tree house – whatever we needed, he had it.
He also had a cycling population of cats. My grandmother kept a small number of pet cats who lived around the house, while others would drift in and live on the perimeter, in the wood piles and sheds. And of course they would have kittens.
Pop would get the feeling there were kittens about, and he’d say to us kids – go find them.
We were country kids, so could happily move around a farm. Looking for these kittens was a challenge. Mumma cat wasn’t going to give up her brood easily, so we’d have to sit in wait until she either left or returned. I imagine it kept us out of our own Mum’s hair for yonks.
When we found them, we’d tell Pop, and he’d carefully lift the planks of wood. Move the machinery and tyres, and there they’d be. A litter of multicoloured babies.
Sometimes Pop would have let them get old enough to go to homes. I remember a young family friend choosing a long-haired grey kitten. He hissed and spittled, a tiny and somewhat hilarious protest. Wrapping him in a towel she clutched him to her chest and gave him kisses on the head. His name would be Smokey.
Us kids were then distracted somehow – Nanna’s cake and sweet tea in the house probably – and then the rest of the kittens would be dealt with. Pop is a kind man with a deep love of animals, but the truth of it is he’d put the kittens in a sack and drown them. It seems brutal now.
But removing these kittens and killing was how the cat population was managed. And I’ve no doubt Pop felt heartbroken doing it, but that was how it went, year after year.
Today we gasp and tut at the idea of the farmer who drowns kittens.
Because, we believe we have evolved beyond such brutal treatment of pets.
But the only thing that has actually changed, is the method of killing. Like the old maids who congratulated themselves of phasing out the ‘public drowning’ of dogs and cats in suburbia, only to replace it with poisoning pets with a leathal chamber – we fool ourselves into thinking we have made great leaps forward, only to continue to give validation to killing.
My grandfather drowned kittens. The ‘dog catchers’ used to drown dogs and cats. The first animal welfare groups used a lethal chamber. While modern animal welfare groups use poisoning with anaesthetic.
Animal management in Australia has existed for about 100 years. And in that time, we’ve basically been doing the same thing over and over. The mode has changed, but the action has remained the same.
The major criticism of the first council sponsored ‘dog catchers’ was that they were collecting people’s pets and killing them unnecessarily. Millions of dogs and cats who had owners, have been killed in the name of ‘animal welfare’. A policy of ‘containment’ has led to the belief that any pet who isn’t in it’s yard is unwanted and could and should be killed.
Today, we have the same ‘dog catchers’ vans, patrolling and collecting clearly owned cats. We’re continue to execute a strategy dreamed up 100 years ago, and we’re not questioning whether these are the actions of a modern and humane, pet-loving society.
We’re not drowning them in sacks anymore, but we are still committing the ultimate act of violence, death, against them.
If a cat is healthy and happy, then it clearly has an owner. Killing cats who have owners is never humane. Killing cats who have strayed is never humane. Killing cats simply for being undesexed is never humane. If we love pets, we should be doing every single thing we can to keep from killing them.
Killing is the opposite to modern cat population management. It has been used for 100 years. It is no more humane now, than it was then.
The question is no longer – can we bring the kill rate down?
It is now – what do we have to do, as modern animal welfare organsations, to eliminate killing as a tool entirely?
We cannot in good conscience continue to use my lovely old Pop’s good intentioned, but brutal and outdated, method to continue to manage our country’s pets.
The killing must end.
