hunting /killing feral cats

[Christian]

should see our yaught club over in east boston. theres gotta be 50 cats within 1 block. poopin all over the boats and in the yard. yuck. someone keeps feeding them, but they still are not nice, the second you come close they hiss and run. only thing that bothers me is the poo, the skunks attracted by the cat food are nicer than the cats

[Nebe]

i hope they open the season up quick... cat guts make mean eelskins

[Raven]

some friends and i were walking around the river area and came apon a man in a small boat still tied up to the dock.....he was in the process of feeding what appeared to be his cat and we thought...oh how nice......as the cat was eating he slowly slipped a rope around its neck without it noticing and waited a bit for it to almost finish its meal.....then casually he grabs the concrete block the rope was tied to...and drops it silently over the side....narating that he's been trying to catch this breeder cat for several years....suddenly that cat ran out of rope and was hauled over the side screaming violently much to our amazement and shock as it went down bloop, bloop, bloop and drown.
afterwards......he told us that one cat had given birth to way to many cats and that the place was totally over run with them.

[Gotofish]

Jeez Raven, that was morbid!

[Saltheart]

I'll save my breath. Anyone who would kill someone's cat cause it was outside or didn't have collar is too stupid for me to even waste words on.

[Iwannakeeper]

I would imagine that ground cat would make good shark bait as well.

[fishweewee]

I understand that feral cats are not the same as domesticated ones.

I understand that feral cats wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

I understand that feral cats carry disease.

I understand that feral cats make messes of people's garbage cans.

It just burns my biscuits that people are so irresponsible - that they would let unspayed/unneutered cats into the wild ... so that you have a problem like this pop up.

(Guess you can tell I'm a cat person.)

[capesams]

I know what you mean Ben...these a-hole's come over the bridge for a few days and leave THEIR pet's here....we're nothing but a dumping ground to them.

[Raven]

as i very much enjoy cats and consider myself a cat person but do not presently have any as pets because we have dogs and birds...... i re-told that story to illustrate that cats are so successful at breeding that going unchecked in the wild they will quickly over populate.

personally i was horrified and considered saving it...but the water there is very deep , black as coffee without creamer and the air bubbles that surfaced indicated it was already in cat heaven.... we were all in shock!
yes it was quite morbid and something i'll never forget.

Just like the introduction of a foreign species into an ecosystem they can completely wipe out the native animals if they are their food....Feral cats have to be looked at in that light and cat owners need not feel that their personal pet cats are being threatoned with extermination.

Those are completely justified feelings and very natural but animal rights activists cannot just ignore the problem, vote no and sweep it under the rug saying "not in my backyard" until the wild feral cats population gets more and MORE out of control like the coyotes have. Cats are a favorite food of coyotes and i have lost my last two real nice cats to them in a matter of weeks down at the cape. But what we're talking about here is a population of 2 MILLION cats breeding out of control and the population will double and then quadruple in a matter of years....so the problem has to be addressed.

[fishweewee]

Raven, I totally understand what you're saying.

I'm a hunter. I enjoy hunting. I don't hunt for subsistence, but I only kill what I eat. I don't hunt for fur. That's just me. Same ethic goes for fishing, but now I mostly limit my kills to tasty bottom fish.

I understand the need to bring populations in balance when things are outta whack.

If a few million feral cats need to be culled - FINE.

I'm splitting hairs now, but I don't think it should be called hunting - it's really pest control. Don't know anyone who would go out of his way to eat cat meat, and displaying cat (or dog) fur would horrify most people.

Do it humanely - bullet in the head and off to kitty heaven.

I'd much rather snipe a cat quickly than drown it or poison it.

It bothers me that a lot of hunters (I would venture to say the majority of them) HATE cats.

Call me a fool, but when I see a neighborhood cat in the yard, I scoop it up and scold its owner about the dangers of coyotes and unwanted kittens. Far from me to shoot a stray cat, I'm the neighborhood sucker who puts out a bowl of milk and a can of tuna for it.

When we domesticate an animal we have a responsibility to take care of it. Pisses me off.

[Raven]

i totally agree with you fish wee wee that its a pest management problem!

unfortunately, Hunters are the only group of people large enough to do the culling when the population is in the millions.....

poison is not the answer either as other animals eat the poisoned animal
and they die as a result too....

i was once paid to poison gophers and squirels at a golf corse in San Diego,
cal. and would watch them eat the strychinine laced green grain and die....why?,because they had cases of bubonic plague in the fleas they had on their bodies and had to be culled so i was VERY familiar with the effects of the poison on animals.
then many years later..................

i was working in milford, Ma. smashing up an old cast iron tub in a basement
making a huge racket....my dog a dingo named Sadie was with me as usual
and left the imediate area because of the intensity of the smashing. she wasnt out of my sight for more than maybe 5 minutes. It was then 5 oclock FRIDAY (quitting time) and we both hopped in the van and headed for home....all happy with everything being fine and dandy. Quite suddenly, my dog instantly went into TOTAL rigormortis (sp?) as rigid as an oak table and she quit breathing ,eyes rolling back....and had no heart beat....
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i locked em up right in the middle of the road and performed CPR on my dog
with everyone beeping their friggan horns at me....as i was blocking traffic in both directions and didnt really give a damn... i was pounding on her chest and blowing air up her nose.....and got her jump started again and then hauled a$$ doing 80 mph to the nearest vet.....and had to repeat the proceedure again before i arrived, as i watched her dying....i knew instantly that she was poisoned with strychinine rat poison.....
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i went BURSTING into the vets office freaking everyone in there out completely carrying that dog in my arms and ORDERED them to instantly inject her with seconal (a downer drug also known as reds) to seperate her body from the brain.....and when i'm extremely pissed off there is no such thing as taking "NO for an answer" and people realize that in a very big hurry.

the vet imediately complied with my demands and she snapped right out of it like a MIRACLE in several minutes much to their amazement...asking me
how the hell did you know that......???? and i explained....how...
so poison is definately not an alternative for culling.........

[scoobe]

My parents own a restaurant and when I was in hs I used to feed the alley cats in the back with table scraps. They got to be pretty friendly. There was one smokey grey one that got particularly brave and even let you touch him.

I think the solution would be to have trained, state hired animal control type officers doing the killing. Then again I guess the point of letting citizens do the huting was to lower costs.

[Notaro]

yup, i agree with that.

Hey Ben, what about those stray cats in Chinatown? Shouldn't they be considered as feral? I know some of the restaurant owners keep cats without tags, but theya re domistcated, and use them to control pests in the restaurant. What would you do about that?

[fishweewee]

Originally Posted by Notaro

yup, i agree with that.
Hey Ben, what about those stray cats in Chinatown?

Oh, man, I have to bite my toungue on this one.

Let me just say, I'm very leery of Chinese restaurants that are located right next to pet stores.

[Raven]

Originally Posted by fishweewee

Oh, man,

Let me just say, I'm very leery of Chinese restaurants

i was sitting in a chinese restaurant waiting for my take out order
and i noticed a little mouse coming down this hallway....see...
and
this other squeemish lookin dude was sitting nearby and hadn't yet noticed it..so i waited for my que.....watching for his reaction apon seeing it....

suddenly he sees it ....and cringes....and i said with the most precise timing ever.... " ya know those little pieces of meat in the house fried rice?"

and Pointed to the mouse..... with hungry eyes.....
well thats all he could take and turning green he ran out of there...ahhh ha ha ha....

[Notaro]

its cheaper to have a cat to extreminate the rodents in the restaurants than hiring the professional.

[likwid]

Originally Posted by Notaro

its cheaper to have a cat to extreminate the rodents in the restaurants than hiring the professional.

A box of .22 rounds is cheaper than a cat.