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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

#231

Post by romwell »

throwaway_99999 wrote: post #118
MrOwnPut wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats don't need help breeding. GP even said "feral cat". I don't know of any "cat breeders". They are just a resilient species. I suppose we could make some sort of "equity" system for species based on an arbitrary metric, but that's closer to playing God.

Domestic cats as a species had been introduced to America by humans, and still are explicitly kept and feed by humans. I'd call that breeding. This also sets an easy and natural metric of how many cats should be there: 0.

>Domestic cats as a species had been introduced to America by humans, and still are explicitly kept and feed by humans. I'd call that breeding. This also sets an easy and natural metric of how many cats should be there: 0.

Same applies to humans of non-native descent, I presume?

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

#232

Post by romwell »

arp242 wrote: post #133
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.…

> NYT made Google kill all cats on Google campus. NYT didn't "make" Google do anything. They published an article which may or not be correct and then the Google people made their own choices.

Yes, my bad here. Google didn't have to do that.

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

#233

Post by romwell »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #86
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.…

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

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

Because Google is very PR-sensitive.

NYT articles had a big impact on what Google was doing.

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

#235

Post by Dylan16807 »

basil-rash wrote: post #228
Dylan16807 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know how traumatic spaying is How traumatic is it? The surgery and recovery doesn't look that hard. And heat's not exactly pleasant. > how absolutely trivial it is to not get your dog knocked up unintentionally I wouldn't say it's trivial to guarantee your dog never gets out or has a visitor to the yard. (And your own track record here is just an anecdote.) > Until you snip all your own tubes and those of al…

Eugenics, I should have said. The point remains. Have you ever even had a dog? You speak as if you’re pretending to be an expert in canine physiology but everything you say is just plain wrong. For one, my dog can control herself just fine around studs while she’s in heat. And her being in heat is a minor, annual, occurrence. Contrast that to humans, whose heat is painful and monthly. Would you advocate for forced sn…

A period isn't heat, snipping tubes doesn't stop a period, and humans are able to decide for themselves. And keeping your dog from breeding without spaying is exactly as "eugenics" as spaying.

> I assume you didn’t notice the months-years-lifetime of depression following?

If there are any long-term effects I will easily bet they're because of hormones, not trauma from the surgery, and if you actually did get the tubes tied then you would avoid hormonal changes.

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

#236

Post by kaikai »

badpun wrote: post #181
throwaway675309 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that the cats may be responsible for control of mice population, but apparently attacks on the New York rats are relatively rare being far larger and more aggressive.

Apparently rodents avoid places that have a scent of a cat. So, cats don't even have to hunt them to have an effect on the population.

Unless the rats have toxoplasmosis

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

#238

Post by neuronic »

misnome wrote: post #193
neuronic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely untrue. Most studies on cat impact on bird species are ridden with incomplete and bad data. In Germany, estimates are around 200 million birds killed by cats every year. But since the total population of birds is estimated at 400 million that would be every second bird! That's insane and grounds for immediate skepticism. Well, it turns out that extrapolating local results to global scenarios does n…

You can come clear up the weekly dead birds in our garden throughout nesting season, killed by the local cats, then.

You apparently haven't read my comment then. I already included your concern about birds being killed in and around human settlement. That says nothing about total populations since birds dont exclusively live in your garden. Conversely, cats DO live mostly in and around human settlements.

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

#239

Post by nerdchum »

ithkuil wrote: post #196
nerdchum wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the rodents will genetically drift to being larger as well and at some point in the future will have cats and rats as large as cars.

This will put pressure on having bigger cars and at some point in the future we'll have cars as big as the american ones

this is the origin story of mechs

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

#240

Post by adsfgiodsnrio »

romwell wrote: post #230
adsfgiodsnrio wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are badly misrepresenting the content of your sources. [1] says: >The owls are endangered from many sides. One of the biggest threats uses the Shoreline golf course. A bleak Mountain View report three months ago noted there have been deaths “due to direct contact between golf balls and burrowing owls.” They do not blame only cats. They discuss cats in particular but do mention there are other threats. I will gran…

>You are badly misrepresenting the content of your sources. If that's the case, so do you. >[1] do not blame only cats. [1] is a direct attack piece on Google's TNR program. The entire article is centered on that. To say that they "do not blame only cats" is laughable. Who they actually blame is Google's employees who ran the TNR program. >They also do not call for the killing of all cats Ah, but isn't it neat? They…

>[2] lists the following threats:

Oops, you forgot one:

- Predation by nonnative and/or nuisance species

>And yes, after all of the above, cats may also present a threat.

You seem to think it's very important this bullet point is last, but there is nothing in the source that suggests items are listed in order of importance. Even if there were the order is not consistent in all parts of the report.

Why are you reading tea leaves when the authors say, explicitly and repeatedly, that cats are a serious threat?

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