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Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

nytimes.com

41–50 of 244 posts

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#41

Didn't New York just create a "Rat Tsar"? Surely you solve both problems by stopping feeding the cats.

From the article:

> Do feline predatory instincts have an upside? While New York’s feral cats kill lots of mice, they are no match for the city’s rats, which greatly outnumber them. Popular notions aside, cats rarely attack rats, though rodents do avoid nesting near often-pungent cat colonies.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#42
> the Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology oppose [trap, neuter, release], holding that cats are a highly destructive invasive species that should not be allowed to live outdoors at all

The only option that leaves, really, is extermination.

But nobody is going to do that (not on a scale to have an impact, anyway) because (1) it costs money and (2) people would flip out because they love cats.

Is the the Audubon Society society going to step up to pay the bill and take the blame? Will local government agencies? I don't see it happening.

Meanwhile, TNR runs on very lean budgets because it's all cat-loving volunteers.

Of course, I'm not sure it's actually effective. But, so far, no one is proposing an alternative that could actually be tried. The Audubon Society's position is effectively identical to ignoring the issue entirely.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#43

how about they start earning their keep and start hunting the 5M rats out there.

I'm gonna guess the main problem is the rats are smart and will stay in sewers and other places cats can't get to them.

Well the obvious solution is bigger sewers that cats can get into, and meaner cats.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that expressing a sense of humor was not allowed on this site. Can someone clarify :)

I’ve noticed it depends on your karma score and reputation

I don’t think people check karma scores. (I never do.) More likely it’s a factor of being on the site long enough to learn what jokes you can slip in without getting downvoted. That would correlate strongly with karma and good reputation.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is also something I can just not comprehend as a pet owner (cat / dog). I already feel bad leaving my dog alone for a few hours a week lol. (With a cat, less so. They are less dramatic about being left alone.. :) ) EDIT: forgot to close a parenthesis and the LISPer in me panicked.

I’m not alone in rereading for mismatched parens!

I need a plugin for the browser that adds closing parens when you type an opening one like many code editors do.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#47

The article is paywalled - but why would you ever want to do that?

1. Create a bookmark, name it anything, and put this code in its URL field:

  javascript:location.href = '//archive.ph/newest/' + location.href.split('?')[0];
2. When you encounter a paywalled page, click the bookmark.

3. Read article.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#48
post #36

Bring in a cat and you get a burger! After a while the hamburger's will taste different. That's the point when you will surely know the program became self sufficient... lol

That’s how you get more kitty mills.

Could you really induce a cobra problem if the only reward were a burger? Raising a few hundred kittens every year just to eat a steady diet of burgers doesn't seem very efficient.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#49

> Rattling off statistics that she has internalized as a volunteer, Ms. Adams points out that eight out of 10 street kittens die within their first six months. Those that survive are often disease-ridden. Winters here can be deadly for a species that originated in the Mediterranean climate of North Africa. And traffic takes a big toll. I wonder if those kitties show genetical adaptions specific to their challenging e…

When I lived in a, erm, more eventful part of Philadelphia, three kittens popped out of my neighbor's shed. We kept one, brought another into the office, and the third one was too wild for us to manage. We've since moved, but when we lived there, we did trap and release for dozens of cats.

The one kitten we kept has distinctive fear reactions to sirens and gunshot type sounds (we live next to 95 and deliberately backfiring your exhaust is, for some reason, a popular choice) in ways that our other cats don't. It's noticeable enough that we've joked about it being epigenetic.

Re: Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

#50

Didn't New York just create a "Rat Tsar"? Surely you solve both problems by stopping feeding the cats.

Dogs are a lot better at hunting rats. The city should breed and release thousands of rat terriers if they mean to get serious about their rat problem.
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