Killing Cats Is No Solution

Decades of euthanizing free-roaming stray and feral cats has not resulted in a sustained reduction in their numbers or improved the health and safety of communities or cats (“Time for a Cat Management Plan,” July 11, 2012). Trap and kill is not only ineffective and unpopular with citizens, it’s a poor use of limited municipal funds.

The alternative is a strategy known as Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) in which feral cats are spayed and neutered, rabies vaccinated and ear tipped to identify them as sterilized. After TNR, the cats’ health improves because they no longer reproduce and fight over mates, and nuisance behaviors are greatly reduced or eliminated. To help curb plague and other flea-borne diseases, flea control for the colony is also important.

Whereas few municipalities have enough money or manpower to trap and remove hundreds of feral cats, volunteers do exist for TNR programs. Dedicated caretakers provide food, water and shelter, watch over the health of the cats and remove any newcomers for TNR or, if a cat is tame, for adoption.

In addition to TNR for feral cats, pet cats must be spayed or neutered to prevent reproduction, kept indoors or safely confined to their property and provided with safety collars and visible identification.

If there were less scapegoating and more community support for feasible, effective and humane solutions like TNR, there would probably be fewer homeless cats in the community today.

This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2012.

MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN

FACT: Trap & Sterilize (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue the cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today — FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague — Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)

FACT: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY *NOTHING* HUMANE ABOUT TNR. Nearly every last TNR’ed cat dies a cruel and heinous death; under the wheels of a car, from other cat and animal attacks, finding environmental poisons, starvation, dehydration, heat exhaustion, freezing to death, infections, incurable diseases, parasites, etc., etc. And if very very lucky being humanely shot to death or re-trapped and humanely drowned (the two most common methods often employed on all farms and ranches to protect their gestating livestock’s offspring and valuable native wildlife dying from cats’ Toxoplasmosis parasites). This doesn’t even begin to count the thousands of defenseless native animals that each invasive species cat skins alive and disembowels alive for their daily and hourly play-toys. The only difference in destroying cats immediately and humanely instead of trapping and sterilizing them first — then releasing them to the fate of an inhumane death — is that some money isn’t going into an HSUS or SPCA board-member’s pocket, veterinarian’s pocket, cat-food company CEO’s pocket, or a drug-company CEO’s pocket. And that’s the ONLY difference!

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1 Comment

Nature Advocate says:

July 25, 2012 at 6:33 pm

The TNR CON-GAME

FACT: Trap & Kill failed because cats cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control.

FACT: Trap & Sterilize (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue the cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today — FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague — Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)

FACT: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY *NOTHING* HUMANE ABOUT TNR. Nearly every last TNR’ed cat dies a cruel and heinous death; under the wheels of a car, from other cat and animal attacks, finding environmental poisons, starvation, dehydration, heat exhaustion, freezing to death, infections, incurable diseases, parasites, etc., etc. And if very very lucky being humanely shot to death or re-trapped and humanely drowned (the two most common methods often employed on all farms and ranches to protect their gestating livestock’s offspring and valuable native wildlife dying from cats’ Toxoplasmosis parasites). This doesn’t even begin to count the thousands of defenseless native animals that each invasive species cat skins alive and disembowels alive for their daily and hourly play-toys. The only difference in destroying cats immediately and humanely instead of trapping and sterilizing them first — then releasing them to the fate of an inhumane death — is that some money isn’t going into an HSUS or SPCA board-member’s pocket, veterinarian’s pocket, cat-food company CEO’s pocket, or a drug-company CEO’s pocket. And that’s the ONLY difference!