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Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

nytimes.com

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

#81

Post by stefan_ »

rcpt wrote: post #54
romwell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm sorry but you're dreaming of you think that feral cats aren't destroying local bird populations.

Why do I care about the bird population over the cat population? Who's playing god?

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

bluedino wrote: post #29

Pet ownership needs more regulation. And it needs to be enforced. Our neighborhood social media pages are full of stray animals roaming the streets, piles of newborn kittens in crawlspaces and dumpsters, emaciated dogs found everywhere... And then at the same time you have people trying to give away or even sell puppy after puppy and kitten after kitten. If you own an animal, it needs to be spayed or neutered.

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by basil-rash »

bluedino wrote: post #29

Pet ownership needs more regulation. And it needs to be enforced. Our neighborhood social media pages are full of stray animals roaming the streets, piles of newborn kittens in crawlspaces and dumpsters, emaciated dogs found everywhere... And then at the same time you have people trying to give away or even sell puppy after puppy and kitten after kitten. If you own an animal, it needs to be spayed or neutered.

Do you know how traumatic spaying is, and how absolutely trivial it is to not get your dog knocked up unintentionally?

Until you snip all your own tubes and those of all your children, keep your euthanasia propaganda to yourself.

Every human causes far more environmental harm than any animal.

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

#86

Post by TechBro8615 »

romwell wrote: post #53
morley wrote: post #20

The article is making it seem like trap-neuter-release is a completely new strategy, but groups in NYC and elsewhere have been employing it for a long time. What's new is that Flatbush Cats is building a new vet clinic to provide more spaying / neutering capacity.

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.…

Can you fill the missing gap in this story? Why does the NYT have any authority over internal policies of Google?

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

#89

Post by Animats »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #33
shermozle wrote: post #6

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

As the article points out, cats are not very good rat predators. They will find other food far more easily.

Sort of. You have to feed them about half what they need to get them to hunt. That was the official policy of the General Post Office in the UK at one time.

Stanford once had something known as the Stanford Cat Network, now called the Feral Friends Network, which sounds like something from the Camp Wedontwantcha comic. This group caught feral cats left on campus and tried to find them homes. Some of the cats that were too feral to become cats ended up at the Stanford horse barn.

Some of the barn cats would hunt. I've been presented with a dead mouse. Others managed to get people to overfeed them, and they'd get fat and lazy. Once I saw a mouse, found a cat, and put the cat down near the mouse. The cat did nothing. Useless cats accustomed to free food were sometimes placed as house cats and replaced with new hunters. About four good hunting cats could clear the entire property of vermin.

You have to manage the cats to get results.

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

#90

Post by lambdasquirrel »

ajaimk wrote: post #88

Don’t we have a rat problem too? I live in Manhattan, send us some of these cats!

Having had (pet) rats as well as a cat (briefly), I don’t think that cats are generally sufficient for rats. Fully grown adult rats are too big for cats to handle and they only take 10 weeks to reach a size that will make them troublesome for average cat.

Remember that a feral cat does not have access to health services. If they are injured trying to take down prey, they will probably be dead shortly after.

That having been said, if NYC has a rat problem, then it should also have a mouse problem. The problem here though is that trying to use feral cats to tame mice in the places where they’d be stubborn would be either troublesome, inhumane, or just disgusting (e.g. subway tracks).

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