11–20 of 45 posts
Life is important. OK, cats kill many animals during the week to live, many per night even. We obviously have a moral obligation to save them from cats.
It's not true there are so many feral cats.... ok so we have to kill far less, which is better for everyone.
TL;DL I like cats (because humans have breed them to be likeable) and I don't like making hard choices.
Who here remembers John Wamsley? Is he still on a crusade to reduce the feral cat population in Australia? I remember this guy from way back, he made a lot of people mad. http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/wamsleys-war/clip1/?n... Also, this article reads hilariously close to an essay from a climate change "skeptic".
Cats are totally out of control here and there needs to be more action both on fully feral animals and those left to roam freely by their "owners". I can't move around my yard at any time of day or night without disturbing a cat. They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. I got a hefty fine for…
>>> They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. In Western Australia it's now illegal to let your cat out the house unless it's chipped, tagged, tattooed and de-sexed. Other states will probably follow soon.
Requiring chips and desexing seems like an easy, smart option to me - the cost is minimal in the lifetime of feeding and caring for a cat.
Cats are totally out of control here and there needs to be more action both on fully feral animals and those left to roam freely by their "owners". I can't move around my yard at any time of day or night without disturbing a cat. They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. I got a hefty fine for…
>>> They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. In Western Australia it's now illegal to let your cat out the house unless it's chipped, tagged, tattooed and de-sexed. Other states will probably follow soon.
They have a $4000 fine for an unauthorised person killing a cat within 1km of a dwelling but nothing to penalise owners at all except for threat of destruction of unidentified animals.
It's not really constructive to try and argue that Dingoes and Tasmanian Devils are excluding cats from the food chain. Dingoes are absent from much of southern Australia - and so they aren't competing with cats in the first place. Devils are stricken by a disease epidemic and are more scavengers than hunters - they aren't outcompeting cats. Native marsupials that cats might be competing with would probably more or less include quolls - and guess what? Quolls don't seem to be able to outcompete cats.
Then when it comes to cat numbers, the argument seems to be that unless we're certain about numbers no feral cat culling is worthwhile. That's a strange argument, given that the link to the ABC's Fact Check on cat numbers seems to conclude that numbers are estimated at anything from 5 to 20+ million but aren't verifiable. While we can't verify numbers (nobody has the time to conduct a survey of every cat in Australia, like we do for humans), I think it's fair to conclude feral cats outnumber domestic cats at least 2 to 1.
Thinking too much about the ethics of conservation is as dangerous as not thinking about it enough - humans caused the cat problem, so we should fix it. And also fix the cane toad problem, the fox problem, etc.
I'm not really sure what the point of these sorts of article is - do they want to let feral cats roam free throughout Australia unrestricted? Do they want feral cats to be taken into captivity? It's not really constructive to try and argue that Dingoes and Tasmanian Devils are excluding cats from the food chain. Dingoes are absent from much of southern Australia - and so they aren't competing with cats in the first p…
Cats are totally out of control here and there needs to be more action both on fully feral animals and those left to roam freely by their "owners". I can't move around my yard at any time of day or night without disturbing a cat. They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. I got a hefty fine for…
>>> They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. In Western Australia it's now illegal to let your cat out the house unless it's chipped, tagged, tattooed and de-sexed. Other states will probably follow soon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/9-leading-causes-of-bird-dea...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>> They aren't chipped or tagged and there are no registration fees unlike dog ownership. There is no equivalent of a dog catcher or fines for people who let them wander. In Western Australia it's now illegal to let your cat out the house unless it's chipped, tagged, tattooed and de-sexed. Other states will probably follow soon.
what's tagging (as opposed to chipping)?