Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

This definitely isn't new. I had an apartment in Bushwick through the 2000s, and due to construction in the surrounding area, the rats on our block and occasionally in our building were huge and relentless.

Then my neighbor moved in. She was a pet photographer by trade, but also cared for all the neighborhood cats as well as all the area bodega cats - making sure they all had their shots and were spayed / neutered. She also traps around the city when needed. We had 4 street cats that just hung out on our block because she would leave food for them. I would occasionally feed her own three cats and whatever stray she had locked in the bathroom when she had to go out of town.

That's how I got my cantankerous orange tabby. He was abandoned on the streets of Bushwick and was fortunate for my neighbor. He hates everyone but my wife and I, and tolerates our young son. But he sleeps with us every night and rubs on our feet when he needs attention. There's no way he would have made it this far (13 years and counting) without my neighbor bringing him in as a kitten.

I was hoping to see her show up in the article.

NYT seems to be running an anti-cat agenda.

This article calls trap-neuter-release (TNR) a "controversial" practice, whereas it's well established and proven to be effective (something even this article says).

A few years back, they ran a full-blown frontal assault[1] on Google's volunteer-ran TNR program, gCat, blaming the TNR program (and only the TNR program) for the decline of the local burrowing owl population.

This led to Google forcing the shut-down of the employee-ran TNR program, and extermination of the remaining neutered cats that couldn't be immediately adopted.

To say that this was devastating to people involved is an understatement.

Of course, this was utter nonsense. The decline of the burrowing owl population is well-studied, and in all cases I know of has been attributed to destruction of habitat - both in the Mountain View area and beyond it [2][3][4][5].

Preservation plans - when they even mention cats - put them dead last on the list of reasons.

The cause for extinction is simple. Burrowing owls need two things for their habitat:

(1) soft ground for the holes;

(2) other animals, like squirrels or prairie dogs, to dig holes for owls to burrow in.

I have a hunch that a certain Mountain View company rapidly expanding its campus circa 2018 wasn't conducive to preservation of the said habitat, and "kill all cats" was a simpler solution to the problem than halting construction[6] (also see: [7]).

But having an indignant NYT article as a justification for felicide has sealed the fate of the cats who got used to coming to the same place for food.

In the aftermath of the shutdown, the local feral cat population predictably exploded[8], and the burrowing owl population at Shoreline Park went down to zero[9].

The report says:

>Habitat loss and direct human disturbance have been the main observable factors for the population decline at this site.

Cats - feral or TNR'd - are not mentioned in the report.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/technology/google-cats-ow...

[2]http://www.elkhornsloughctp.org/uploads/files/1408724962Moun...

[3] https://mv-voice.com/news/2016/11/15/worries-over-dwindling-...

[4]https://mv-voice.com/news/2012/04/06/new-hope-for-citys-burr...

[5]https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb52268...

[6]https://www.whiskersproject.org/latest-news

[7]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36235779

[8]https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2021/11/16/feral-cats-in-mount...

[9]Page 11, https://www.scv-habitatagency.org/DocumentCenter/View/1387/S...

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TL;DR: NYT made Google kill all cats on Google campus.

I'm sorry, but you seem to be ignorant of the facts.

I have provided extensive references for everything I said. Please read them before typing out your gut response.

While cats, in general, are a threat to birds, these particular cats were not a threat to these particular birds.

Generally correct, especially if it's too subtle for the varied age groupings and interests - everyone's hair-triggered to get butthurt about some triviality. Eventually the adults will show up in most threads and will occasionally be bothered to correct the karma injustice.

It is not, the appropriate response to this post is to downvote and reply with a terse comment on the misuse of the apostrophe.