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Clearing 500k feral cats from New York’s streets

nytimes.com

91–100 of 244 posts

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

#91
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are willing to throw poor people in prison over kittens, you can't really effectively enforce pet ownership laws, because the judgement-proof will keep pets. I suppose you could have roving cat detector vans that would spay and neuter any cat they could get their hands on unless it had approved breeding chips embedded inside. I've heard a documentary on such a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOonOty…

Poor people aren't the problem here, it's the relatively wealthy who feel that responsible pet ownership laws don't apply to them.

So we'll solve it with more laws. Brilliant! Just outlaw murder while you are at it too!

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

#93

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

Cats on the streets suffer. Badly. Cats on the streets are a disaster for the bird population. And contrary to what cartoons have taught us, cats are not an effective way at keeping rats at bay (in fact, the threat of dead cats makes rat poisoning efforts far more difficult to implement).

> Cats on the streets are a disaster for the bird population

and still pale in comparison to the effect us and our cities have on their populations. cats are not the big problem, we are, people just don't like to admit it and would rather blame them. As is likely us destroying the insect populations many species depend on.

> threat of dead cats makes rat poisoning efforts far more difficult to implement

the reality of dead owls and other small natural predators is a more real issue here, and why rat poison should not be used and be banned. It just was in my city Vancouver because it was doing more damage to owl populations then cats were.

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

#95
post #81
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because there's a real danger of losing some of these bird species, and absolutely zero danger of losing domestic cats as a species?

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

#97
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that. I cracked up

Opportunity for a new children's book: The Pied Pssp Psst Pssper of New York.

But would the logo for that company have a tiny penis tucked behind its ear?

for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3RwX06wcBs&t=107s

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

#99
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because there's a real danger of losing some of these bird species, and absolutely zero danger of losing domestic cats as a species?

Let's do this. And when we're done killing all the cats and the rat problem becomes worse and somehow the birds don't seem to return to the filthy and noisy concrete jungle with no trees we can just pretend it never happened.

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

#100
post #8

Given that the article is also kind of a PSA for New Yorkers, I'm surprised that it didn't mention ear clipping. If a feral cat has already been spayed or neutered, its left ear is clipped so that people know to leave it alone and not trap it again.

here, they now give neutered cats a tattoo on the belly (~1cm green line) instead of clipping. this is a bit more humane and becoming more the standard nowadays i believe.

Not sure if it's changed here, but in Australia it's a tattoo on the inner ear (a circle with a line through it).
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