Feral cats. Ok. I really don’t understand...

z31maniac said:

In reply to Snowdoggie :

Dogs are freaking lazy(atleast ours are). We have 3, saw a mouse in the house, they didn't bother with it. Our worthless cat, he killed it and presented it to me in less than an hour. 

They're not lazy, just very accepting.  I was sitting on the couch watching TV when a mouse ran out from under the love seat and in to the kitchen.  Both dogs just watched it scurry past and one of them looked at me as if to say "oh. We've got one of those now, huh?"

Snowdoggie said:

Actually if you take away their food supply they will move on. I had a neighbor who fed feral cats. Soon there were cats everywhere. Shortly after she moved out and the feeding stopped, the cats disappeared. If you shoot them but keep feeding them, more will come to replace the ones who died. 

 

this

My dogs are very intolerant of small critters, cat size on down to mouse.

In reply to Toebra :

My Alaskan Malamute doesn't even like other dogs except for the ones in my household who all consider him the alpha dog. I can't take him to the dog park. 

The huskies bring the mice they kill to him. 

I absolutely love cats, have two that Tim and I dote on, and all of my kitties stretching back 4 decades have been rescued strays. That said, I also understand that feral cats are horrendously destructive to native wildlife, carry diseases that can spread to pets, live miserable lives, and should be reported to animal control, trapped and then most often destroyed, since feral cats don't usually adapt to domesticated life. Sadly, the TNR fallacy is just a cock block-- as others have observed here, you have to be insanely thorough for TNR to work, and people who leave open cans of food out for "the kitties" are not generally equipped to do that on any level--because those who vigorously advocate for it have blocked many animal control departments from doing anything more than just telling you they're "aware of the colony." I'm afraid that handling it yourself, though, no matter how humanely you approach it, could leave  you open to charges of cruelty to animals.

Education would help solve the issue, as it would so many others. But it's too hard to deliver tough messages, so we just stumble onward.

Sorry, kinda ranty there. Rant over.

Margie

Unpopular opinion time?

Cats taste great with curry.  Use lime zest to cut through the game-y flavor

I've always maintained that the most delicious cat is any one that's not mine.

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I'm glad you chimed in. Thanks for the perspective. 

shoot them with an exploding bullet (i.e. shrapnel inside). on second thoughts don't. multiple of them could get small wounds... get a board and put lead based paint on it... is that considered humane?

for the record i also like cats.

You're all a bunch of cat-eaters!

My family is a bunch of cat lovers. Our 11 year old cat is awesome. 

I am, for the most part, an animal lover. 

I like dogs too, but my wife does not. This is partially because for every well trained, chill dog she meets, she meets a half dozen untrained, wandering idiots. She can't "read" dogs, because she's never really been around them that much. I've been around many dogs most of my life so I can "read them" so I usually have to interpret their behaviors to her. Alternatively, I know people who think every cat will bite/scratch them, they can't "read" cats either. 

When the neighbors starting complaining about cats, and someone says "it's a cat, you can't keep them inside, they always want out, cats will be cats"  - I always respond with "imagine if we were that way with dogs? Imagine how many people would get bit by dogs annually if they just wandered around at night?"

Likewise, whenever someone says "I'll shoot any wandering cat on my property." I respond with "would you shoot a wandering dog?" 

TNR is crap. It's intention is: we don't know who's cat this is, so we don't want to take it to a shelter, so we'll neuter it and put it back into the community for it to go home." To me, it just screams - I don't know my neighbors. 

When I move into a new community, I make an effort to meet my neighbors and their animals. If I see a dog wandering around, I'll take a picture, throw it up on our Community Facebook, and see who identifies it. 9/10 every animal has a home, and the threat of "we've got traps on our property for any wandering animals" usually starts to convince people to keep them inside. I once heard of a gal who despite running a local no-kill cat sanctuary, she'd post pictures of local cats in traps to her orgs facebook with a message like "keep cats inside your house, not my traps" and lecture their owners when the cats were inevitably claimed. I thought it was a good idea. 

If it were me? I'd capture the cats and send them to a no-kill sanctuary. 

Oh, in New Zealand they use Connovation PredaStop which is para-aminopropiophenone (PAPP).

Apparently the animal falls asleep from exhaustion, its heart rate/respiration decreases as oxygen is deprived and they asphexiate while unconsience. 

pheller said:

 

When the neighbors starting complaining about cats, and someone says "it's a cat, you can't keep them inside, they always want out, cats will be cats"  

I hear that from every single person in my neighborhood who has a cat killed by a coyote. Then they go on a rant about why  the city can't send the police out to shoot all the coyotes, stray dogs, mountain lions, sadistic children with mental problems, neighbors who are tired of seeing cat E36 M3 on the tops of their Miatas and anything or anybody else that might possibly kill or threaten the safety of their cat. 

RIght?

Like the poor Racoon that got murdered in our neighborhood because he was fighting with some of the locals indoor/outdoor cats. 

I like seeing Racoons. I like seeing Wildlife. We're good at replacing nature with our own wildlife, which is often far less pleasant to have around (looking at you Mr. Barksalot.)

I just have to laugh when these people come to neighborhood meetings and demand that the police take time off from hunting murderers and rapists and car thieves to go on a coyote hunt when they just cut the police budget again and we can't recruit officers because the higher end suburbs pay police more and give them better benefits so the department is already shorthanded. 

Not going to happen. 

Are you guys actually talking about cats, or is this all just a euphemism for the current state of our country?

In reply to D2W :

Our city actually held a meeting about dealing with urban coyotes a few years ago with a naturist, animal control and the police department. Angry people who lost their cats to coyotes showed up to rant. The police had to remind one person that shooting firearms in the city, even at coyotes, was still against the law. This stuff does get political. 

Cat lives matter. 

It's a car dealership, right? Hasn't a sloppy tech spilled a gallon of coolant out back yet or forgotten to put the lid on that bucket sweet smelling and tasting liquid?

RevRico said:

It's a car dealership, right? Hasn't a sloppy tech spilled a gallon of coolant out back yet or forgotten to put the lid on that bucket sweet smelling and tasting liquid?

 

Please don't. It's a miserable death.

Besides, cats don't have any receptors for sweet, but lots of other animals do.

All joking aside, I am an animal lover.  I never condone the termination of an animal's life unless it is of the utmost divine reason.

Heck, I had to rationalize cutting down two maple trees, but they were fixing to kill either me or my neighbor.

longer term solution ,  is there a cat food that has birth control "pills" in it ?

or something like that .....

This is a problem with no good solution in the short term , but maybe something in the longer term , 

 

If it were me? I'd capture the cats and send them to a no-kill sanctuary. 
 

In South Georgia??  
 

Yeah, that's NOT a thing!

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

RevRico said:

It's a car dealership, right? Hasn't a sloppy tech spilled a gallon of coolant out back yet or forgotten to put the lid on that bucket sweet smelling and tasting liquid?

 

Please don't. It's a miserable death.

Besides, cats don't have any receptors for sweet, but lots of other animals do.

Cats don't? I did not know that. I've had to chase my dogs away from spills, and I'll do anything to kill mice, but never had a problem with feral cats, the bear, bobcats, and coyote must keep them in check locally.

Snowdoggie said:

I just have to laugh when these people come to neighborhood meetings and demand that the police take time off from hunting murderers and rapists and car thieves to go on a coyote hunt when they just cut the police budget again and we can't recruit officers because the higher end suburbs pay police more and give them better benefits so the department is already shorthanded. 

Not going to happen. 

You bring up a valid point. We have an animal control officer. It's an entry point position cheap to hire and gives young officers experience  dealing with citizens.  The top management gets to see what kind of officer he'll turn out to be before given a gun with life and death consequences. 

In reply to frenchyd :

In South Dallas we have packs of feral pit bulls who sometimes kill children and elderly people and scare just about everybody. Some of the residents down there even let their pets out at night to run with the packs because dogs will be dogs and so on. The coyotes at White Rock Lake will run from humans and sneak back to the residential areas at night to kill a cat or small dog every now and then. Guess where Animal Control spends most of its time and effort? There won't be any coyote hunts. And they really don't have the time or people to supervise what feral cat groups are doing.

In reply to Snowdoggie :

South Carolina is encouraging hunters to hunt coyote rather than trying to do it themselves. They have tagged 5 coyote in the state. Anyone that shoots a tagged coyote is given a lifetime hunting license for free. They also have a bounty for 2020. $75 for every adult coyote killed and delivered to a SCDNR office.

I don't know about other areas around me, but the town I live in doesn't really have much in the way of feral cats. Or dogs for that matter. There are quite a few armed rednecks around though. I suspect they take care of them, which is honestly probably the smartest way to deal with the problem. Much like the coyote.