hunting /killing feral cats

[Raven]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science....ap/index.html

i love nice cats...and like making them purr and turn circles and all that....
but these are not the same..... case in Point: a guy i work with recently decided to give in to his wife's request to adopt a wild cat and her kitten that was living at their church. Since he owned a farm they "thought" it was a nice thing to do. Well ,his wife and friend cornered the cat in their house and tried to grab it and the cat turned around and bit her girlfriend on her hand which quickly got infected (cats have nasty bacteria in their mouth) and required surgery to keep from loosing her hand altogether. It might resemble a domesticated friendly cat.....but they are anything but that and are WILD!

i say open the feral cat season year round and get rid of them before
they multiply. what say you?

[afterhours]

peta, cat lovers, and many single women will be very upset. wonder if they'll issue non-resident cat stamps

[fishweewee]

Poor Fluffy.

[fishsmith]

This is great .. I can see the sunday morning shows on ESPN

Todays Tip - "Its alot like a duck call or banging deer racks together, but for the feral cats, you can't beat lightly tapping a can of friskies on the top with a spoon to bring them out of the dumpster"

[Notaro]

How can you seperate fferal cats from other cats? It seems to me that they look the same to me.

[Bassman18]

Notaro,

"The proposal would allow licensed hunters to kill free-roaming cats, including any domestic cat that isn't under the owner's direct control or any cat without a collar"

If a cat's outside without any ID, it goes bye bye

[Raven]

Originally Posted by afterhours

peta, cat lovers, and many single women will be very upset.

Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, according to state officials. Despite the astounding numbers, the proposal has been met with fierce opposition from cat lovers such as Ted O'Donnell. >>>> screw ted!!!!<<<<

will the p.e.t.a. people be just as concerned for the ethical treatment of the wild bird population thats being completely decimated??? after all they are animals too.... and have just as much right or more so....to live as cats gone wild.... those cats will scratch your eyes out and bite your lip in half.....

and if they were wild dogs running in packs killing young children then it would be a completely different attitude....

[tynan19]

Originally Posted by Bassman18

Notaro,

If a cat's outside without any ID, it goes bye bye

I would be pissed if someone shot my cat, just cause it was outside across the street.

[Notaro]

oic, i dont like cats anyway. sometimes they are mean...

[Gotofish]

I grew up on a farm so barn cats were always part of the place. Through the years, some established a home on the farm and they stayed-we have two now-Hot Stuff and Tigger. Nicest cats you'll ever meet although they're tough as nails (both are missing chunks of ear from skirmishes with racoons and such). A lot of people feel dropping off their unwanted cats on the farm is the nice and humane thing to do.....but they get shot.

Big difference between feral cats and housecats, even those that are allowed to roam. Ferals are more similar to bobcats in their habits and disposition. I say open season if they're that much of a problem up there.....

[MakoMike]

Originally Posted by tynan19

I would be pissed if someone shot my cat, just cause it was outside across the street.

Then keep it inside or under your control. No reason the bird population has to suffer because you choose to own a cat
.

[MAC]

Feral cats There is a big difference between a house cat and a feral cat. Most people in these parts have never seen a feral cat. Definately not "fluffy" or "whiskers". The bobcat correlation above is about right behaviorwise.

[Mike P]

I've got some feral cats around my place. Don't bother me as I have no pets. They do a good job on the field mice, but a freakin' squirrel will sit nibbling on an acorn 3' away and the cats will just sit there watching it with their tails flipping

If I could legally import a couple of bobcats, I'd do it to get rid of all the effin' racooons.

The birds? Sorry, that's nature at work.

I'm thinking, you allow people to shoot cats with no ownership signs, how long before someone decides he's sick of the neighbor's tabby, shoots it and throws the collar in the garbage?

[Karl F]

feral cats are just plain vile, I think your right MAC, if you've never seen one, you just might not believe how nasty they are... looks can be decieving.... had a nut job lady, thought she was a witch... who lived out inthe woods near me a few years ago, had about 40 cats... in the basement... she finally burned the damn house down one night from some incantation thing, but the cats... they were jumping on the firemen.. a few of them escaped... took a while to rid the neighborhood of 'em.... tylenol and tuna fish (TNT) left out side... just make sure the good cats are locked up... cats liver can't process acetemetaphine.... fatal liver failure.....

[tynan19]

Originally Posted by MakoMike

Then keep it inside or under your control. No reason the bird population has to suffer because you choose to own a cat
.

Are you serious? My cat is not a feral cat. They are meant to be outside. I never liked cats either but when a tigger kitten showed up in our shed one day in late summer and made it through a tough winter on its own It grew on me. I fed it trout and such and now it is half house cat and the rest of the time it doesn't mind staying outside. Of course we live in the country and have about a 1,000 acres of woods so it doesn't matter what the cat does. It is also a great defense on field mice.

[Raven]

what you have is called a "BARN" cat which principly lives outside and thats not considered a feral CAT...a feral cat has never lived with HUMANS or been fed by them and has reverted back to its wild state from being born in the WILD... having never even seen people and is very fearful of them.

[Mike P]

Originally Posted by afterhours

peta, cat lovers, and many single women will be very upset.

Yup, they sure will. So will a bunch of other people who are normally neutral towards hunting, or even in favor of it.

It will be a public relations disaster for hunters. Especially when the papers start interviewing teary-eyed, fresh faced, gingham dress wearing little girls whose free-roaming, no-collar pets got wasted by the "gun nut" who lives three houses down.

I mean, this thing is just in the talking stage right now, and they've already got 17,000 signatures on petitions against it.

Hunting has enough enemies as it is--we don't need to create more by this kind of stupidity.

[outfished]

A few years back an old girlfriend suggested we catch a ferrel kitten and try to spare its life before the town sent over its animal control officer to get rid of the pack, there was about 7-9 adults and 5 kittens. I wasn't crazy about the idea and with a pair of thick leather gloves I managed to catch one. After a few short days in the house the cat ended up being one of the best cats we ever had. Grew to about 20lbs and lived to be about 15. Still though, not a good idea to try this. They are nasty and carry wicked infections.

[Iwannakeeper]

I love cats - tastes just like chicken.

I am going to head up to Wisconsin and try and bag some trophies


For the PETA people, or anyone without a sense of humor - I am kidding

[Christian]

should see our yaught club over in east boston. theres gotta be 50 cats within 1 block. poopin all over the boats and in the yard. yuck. someone keeps feeding them, but they still are not nice, the second you come close they hiss and run. only thing that bothers me is the poo, the skunks attracted by the cat food are nicer than the cats

[Nebe]

i hope they open the season up quick... cat guts make mean eelskins

[Raven]

some friends and i were walking around the river area and came apon a man in a small boat still tied up to the dock.....he was in the process of feeding what appeared to be his cat and we thought...oh how nice......as the cat was eating he slowly slipped a rope around its neck without it noticing and waited a bit for it to almost finish its meal.....then casually he grabs the concrete block the rope was tied to...and drops it silently over the side....narating that he's been trying to catch this breeder cat for several years....suddenly that cat ran out of rope and was hauled over the side screaming violently much to our amazement and shock as it went down bloop, bloop, bloop and drown.
afterwards......he told us that one cat had given birth to way to many cats and that the place was totally over run with them.

[Gotofish]

Jeez Raven, that was morbid!

[Saltheart]

I'll save my breath. Anyone who would kill someone's cat cause it was outside or didn't have collar is too stupid for me to even waste words on.

[Iwannakeeper]

I would imagine that ground cat would make good shark bait as well.

[fishweewee]

I understand that feral cats are not the same as domesticated ones.

I understand that feral cats wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

I understand that feral cats carry disease.

I understand that feral cats make messes of people's garbage cans.

It just burns my biscuits that people are so irresponsible - that they would let unspayed/unneutered cats into the wild ... so that you have a problem like this pop up.

(Guess you can tell I'm a cat person.)

[capesams]

I know what you mean Ben...these a-hole's come over the bridge for a few days and leave THEIR pet's here....we're nothing but a dumping ground to them.

[Raven]

as i very much enjoy cats and consider myself a cat person but do not presently have any as pets because we have dogs and birds...... i re-told that story to illustrate that cats are so successful at breeding that going unchecked in the wild they will quickly over populate.

personally i was horrified and considered saving it...but the water there is very deep , black as coffee without creamer and the air bubbles that surfaced indicated it was already in cat heaven.... we were all in shock!
yes it was quite morbid and something i'll never forget.

Just like the introduction of a foreign species into an ecosystem they can completely wipe out the native animals if they are their food....Feral cats have to be looked at in that light and cat owners need not feel that their personal pet cats are being threatoned with extermination.

Those are completely justified feelings and very natural but animal rights activists cannot just ignore the problem, vote no and sweep it under the rug saying "not in my backyard" until the wild feral cats population gets more and MORE out of control like the coyotes have. Cats are a favorite food of coyotes and i have lost my last two real nice cats to them in a matter of weeks down at the cape. But what we're talking about here is a population of 2 MILLION cats breeding out of control and the population will double and then quadruple in a matter of years....so the problem has to be addressed.

[fishweewee]

Raven, I totally understand what you're saying.

I'm a hunter. I enjoy hunting. I don't hunt for subsistence, but I only kill what I eat. I don't hunt for fur. That's just me. Same ethic goes for fishing, but now I mostly limit my kills to tasty bottom fish.

I understand the need to bring populations in balance when things are outta whack.

If a few million feral cats need to be culled - FINE.

I'm splitting hairs now, but I don't think it should be called hunting - it's really pest control. Don't know anyone who would go out of his way to eat cat meat, and displaying cat (or dog) fur would horrify most people.

Do it humanely - bullet in the head and off to kitty heaven.

I'd much rather snipe a cat quickly than drown it or poison it.

It bothers me that a lot of hunters (I would venture to say the majority of them) HATE cats.

Call me a fool, but when I see a neighborhood cat in the yard, I scoop it up and scold its owner about the dangers of coyotes and unwanted kittens. Far from me to shoot a stray cat, I'm the neighborhood sucker who puts out a bowl of milk and a can of tuna for it.

When we domesticate an animal we have a responsibility to take care of it. Pisses me off.

[Raven]

i totally agree with you fish wee wee that its a pest management problem!

unfortunately, Hunters are the only group of people large enough to do the culling when the population is in the millions.....

poison is not the answer either as other animals eat the poisoned animal
and they die as a result too....

i was once paid to poison gophers and squirels at a golf corse in San Diego,
cal. and would watch them eat the strychinine laced green grain and die....why?,because they had cases of bubonic plague in the fleas they had on their bodies and had to be culled so i was VERY familiar with the effects of the poison on animals.
then many years later..................

i was working in milford, Ma. smashing up an old cast iron tub in a basement
making a huge racket....my dog a dingo named Sadie was with me as usual
and left the imediate area because of the intensity of the smashing. she wasnt out of my sight for more than maybe 5 minutes. It was then 5 oclock FRIDAY (quitting time) and we both hopped in the van and headed for home....all happy with everything being fine and dandy. Quite suddenly, my dog instantly went into TOTAL rigormortis (sp?) as rigid as an oak table and she quit breathing ,eyes rolling back....and had no heart beat....
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i locked em up right in the middle of the road and performed CPR on my dog
with everyone beeping their friggan horns at me....as i was blocking traffic in both directions and didnt really give a damn... i was pounding on her chest and blowing air up her nose.....and got her jump started again and then hauled a$$ doing 80 mph to the nearest vet.....and had to repeat the proceedure again before i arrived, as i watched her dying....i knew instantly that she was poisoned with strychinine rat poison.....
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i went BURSTING into the vets office freaking everyone in there out completely carrying that dog in my arms and ORDERED them to instantly inject her with seconal (a downer drug also known as reds) to seperate her body from the brain.....and when i'm extremely pissed off there is no such thing as taking "NO for an answer" and people realize that in a very big hurry.

the vet imediately complied with my demands and she snapped right out of it like a MIRACLE in several minutes much to their amazement...asking me
how the hell did you know that......???? and i explained....how...
so poison is definately not an alternative for culling.........