HOW WE SEE IT: Cat Colony Ordinance Not The Answer
Posted: October 2, 2012 at 3:47 a.m.
When it comes to domesticated animals, it’s good, common sense municipal policy requires animal owners to restrain them. In short, allowing animals to roam free doesn’t jive with most people’s expectations for urban living.
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Opinion, Pages 5 on 10/02/2012
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Feral cats have much greater effect than disease and chasing your pets. Several studies show that feral cats kill more small animals in nature than all other factors combined including disease, starvation, natural predation, normal mortality, and road kill.
Feral cats in urban areas kill more songbirds, rabbits, squirrels, and other baby animals than all other factors combined. If you're not careful, they'll also get those chickens Springdale won't let us have.
Allowing feral cats to roam under any circumstances, regardless of the "humanity" of it is misguided at best and more accurately a rediculous idea.
Posted by: jeffieboy
October 2, 2012 at 9:46 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
So lets round'em up and "KILL" them all, that will fix it! For some reason I was expecting a little more than a neanderthal solution to the problem from the educated, kind, well informed folks at the NWA paper!
This may not be a perfect solution to the problem, but it is a step in the right direction. It will reduce the number of feral cats in Fayetteville, reduce predation on wildlife, improve their health and well being, open the door for a non-profit group to work with volunteers and the city to provide humane care to these animals that are only here do to our negligence. For those that might not agree completely with this ordinance, this article should be a wake-up call to you regarding what could happen if we don't support TNR for Fayetteville. Hats off to the City council members for addressing and supporting this controversial issue!
Don't be fooled by the term Euthanize, forcefully holding down one of Gods creatures and injecting him or her with a very painful lethal dose of poison is Killing not euthanizing!
Posted by: fishingbears10030849
October 2, 2012 at 11:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Feral cats will always be with us. The question what is the smartest and, yes, the most humane way of managing and controlling feral cat populations in our city. Trap, remove and kill does not work. It merely creates a vacuum for other cats to move in and repopulate the same areas over and over again. Trap, Neuter, and Return (TNR) avoids this vacuum effect while gradually reducing the feral cal population and reducing unwanted behaviors, such as caterwauling and fighting. Vaccinating these cats controls disease. TNR works. It is working in communities across the country. Oklahoma City, a city with a population of 580,000 and a feral cat problem at least as troublesome as ours, has recently adopted a TNR program called "Community Cats".
TNR was "invented" at at Stanford University in 1989. At that time, there were about 1,500 feral cats living on the Stanford campus. The university administration decided to hire a trapping company to catch and exterminate the cats. A small group of women who worked at Stanford joined forces with the Palo Alto Humane Society to convince the university to try something different. Instead of trapping and killing, they wanted to trap the cats, sterilize and vaccinate them, find homes for kittens and friendly cats, and return the rest to the campus. They succeeded, and the Stanford Cat Network was born.
Within a few years, the Network sterilized all the cats on campus, adopted hundreds of friendly cats and kittens out to loving homes, and set up official feeding sites throughout the campus. By 1992, no new kittens were born on campus. If new cats appeared, they were immediately spayed or neutered and put up for adoption if they were friendly. There are at present about 200 feral cats living on Stanford's campus.
A TNR program, properly implemented and consistently pursued, will manage and control Fayetteville's feral cats in an intelligent, reasonable, and humane way.
Posted by: Mullikens
October 2, 2012 at 12:02 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
All the people who currently dump cats in Rogers could then dump them in Fayetteville and know that it was okay, because once they become feral they will be cared for! What about the fleas they harbor, those get under the houses of innocent home owners. We've dealt with that issue in the past, not fun at all.
Posted by: suek
October 2, 2012 at 4:45 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
This ordinance is just like the leash law for animals riding in the back of a truck. It will be violated every day and eventually forgoten because it cannot or won't be enforced. Unfortunately, this cat round-up will cost the taxpayers quite a bit more money than the vehicle lease law. Both, however, are like all "feel good" laws, they cause the suporters to get a warm fuzzy feeling that the rest of us pay for.
Posted by: Moneymyst
October 3, 2012 at 7:03 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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