Destiny Calling?
Environmentalist and cat lovers have locked horns over a study that shows roaming cats are the second biggest threat to dwindling bird populations. Swelling numbers of stray, abandoned kittens, such as above, don't have much choice in Life but to aggressively become a hunter.
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By Dan Bodine
Center against Social Minimalism
Drowning a cat by throwing it in water with a dumbbell tied to its poor neck has to be one of those creative low-balls only folks in California could come up with. In Texas, where we’re more humane, our creativeness is a bit higher than that. Say rooftop-high at least. Hee, hee. Don’t we all just love cats!??!
In California, no foolin’, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a story last Thursday about a cat having been found in a Redwood Shores lagoon tagged with a 5-pound dumbbell tied to its neck. Investigators were on it right away.
A preliminary examination found no obvious signs of broken bones or trauma, the story’s author wrote, “proving that five pounds [once again] trumps nine lives.” He then quoted a local humane department spokesman as saying “The cat must have drowned” as a cause of death.
Perhaps surprisingly, rewards totaling $2,250 have been put up in the cat’s demise, whether by some in jest or not, who knows. One was by a pub owner though. Sounds like a cat eating a canary type of a situation to me. Get more women into his bar, maybe?
But killing cats by itself ain’t something that’s just in West Coast waters, folks. Nor is it just a bad week for them. (Poisoning case, below) No, cats are mysteriously aloof and independent animals (whichever side of the coin you‘re on, on this); and have always stirred the whole nine yards of emotions, from hate and anger [mostly in men?], to uppity pretentiousness in dainty young girls and women--those I got mine; you ain’t got yours so ha, ha airs.
As a boy, girls squealing delights about their “beautiful, super-intelligent” cats use to drive me batty. I couldn’t figure out what it was about the dumb-looking, impassive animals that struck such a chord. Especially among young girls or women who looked so beautiful and rich you’d thought God had used up all his favorite recipes in making ‘em.
I started conducting researches on the cat mystery once, I remember. It’s when we were living out on the Godley Highway there just a few miles outside of Cleburne, TX. The roof to our one-story frame farmhouse had a very steep gable in the front. Don’t know how high it was but it was high enough for experimenting with cats. Why do they always land on their feet? Nine lives?
Yup, I’d haul ‘em up there and flip ‘em out into the wild blue yonder. Head over heels; sideways. Just to see what would happen. Damn things would ALWAYS land on their feet. No way no how could I get another outcome with my experiments. I was 7 or 8. Finally Mom caught on and busted my bottom good. The cat, a stray, scatted finally for a better mouse pad.
And it’s been that way for cats over the years--you love ‘em, you despise ‘em, or you‘re clearly clueless about ‘em. Now there’s a 3rd voice getting involved--environmentalist. (Hip, hip, hooray, I say!)
You’re hearing complaints about not just feral cats--the stray cats who build colonies and make all these hideous noises at night making more cats!--but also domestic cats, the ones who stay out all night and then show up on your doorstep the next morning with the remains of a dead mouse it’s been playing with, or the smelly remains of a half-eaten bird. The rats it can have, but environmentalists have drawn a line on birds finally.
A March 22 story this year entitled “Roaming Cats Pose Big Threat to Bird Population…” posted on ABC-TV’s website, for instance, cites a lengthy study recently published in the Journal of Ornithology. Electronic tracking of birds was conducted; the statistics are grim.
In many locales it’s domestic cats themselves doing most of the carnage; but overall up to an estimated one billion birds each year are being killed, the American Bird Conservancy says--most notably some of the “finer” species. Ouch! And cats don’t have good tastes, Jethro!?
Habitat loss remains the number one factor in dwindling bird populations, but with the cats the huge number two now is predator. And ill-will is soaring, needless to say. The website Mother Jones Nov. 3 in “Court Finds Biologist Guilty of Poisoning Cat” describes a growing confrontation now between bird people and cat people.
A wildlife biologist, apparently stoked by these crazy cat advocates who hiss! at every criticism that says roaming cats are bad for the environment, went after his neighbor’s cat by repeatedly leaving drops of poison outside his back door. Until…Bingo! Dead cat.
Uh, doesn’t speak well for conservation efforts, dude, but point well taken. Start feeding your damn cat. And find it a playmate at night. In your own confined pad.
Poisoning more cats, or even drowning ‘em with a dumbbell tied to the neck, is an awful way to send a critter off to the happy hunting grounds. But what kind of more creative ways do you want ‘til people get the message? Huh?
Or, in another vein, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right?
Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far, away…dooly-do-do-dodah…
Ya’ll hum along here…
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