EDITORIALS

Let us reason together

Even if it’s about kittens in the yard

A FEW nights ago, between football games, one of the national television networks carried a story on one of their hour-long news magazines about . . . cats. That is, your cat. Your crazy, deadly, devil-may-care, murderous cat. Yes, ma’am, yours, too.

It seems some operation dubbing itself a research center put a small camera on a bunch of house cats to find out just what it is they do during the day when you let them out. Oh, sure, they’re on the porch meowing for you to rub their bellies when you get home of an evening. But this researcher wanted to know what they did during the day. Boy, did he find out.

Between darting through traffic and checking out storm drains-from the inside-many of your tabby friends were stalking victims: squirrels, birds, lizards, anything alive and moving that was smaller than they are.

One cat owner was so mortified by what she saw that she was last seen on the program putting a bell around the neck of her dear, sweet kitty cat. All the better to keep it from killing even more songbirds in her backyard. Your little baby has a lot of Sylvester in him, lady, and he wants Tweety dead.

Killing is not all that cats do during the day when you’re not around. They fight other cats. And, sometimes, nature being what it is, make kittens.

Folks living in Fayetteville didn’t need a nighttime newsmagazine to tell them that. They’re living it. They hear it at night when the cats square off. They see it in the day when yet another litter of starving kittens wobbles across the street. Feral cats have become a big enough problem for city government to start getting involved.

Specifically, there is a proposal to catch the critters, sterilize them, then put them back right where they were-if the human who owns the land is willing to accept them. If all the cats are spayed or neutered, and our math is correct (not to mention our fuzzy memories of biology class) eventually the feral cats will die off.

This would accomplish two things: First, those who enjoy the cats, feed them, and generally encourage them to hang around, could sleep at night knowing that they weren’t accomplices in any plan to kill off a bunch of cats. (Even if it’s called euthanizing them.) Second, the cats would eventually disappear, and those who enjoy songbirds and squirrels, not to mention keeping their house cats out of the parenting business, wouldn’t have to deal with the untamed cats prowling around outside.

But in Fayetteville, of course nothing is easy.

While the city council mulls its decision, opponents of the plan have been heard from. Also proponents. One alderwoman said she’d seen a trapped cat, and wondered how humane the trap-neuter-release program really is.

Well, ma’am, it’s a heckuva lot more humane than the trap-and-kill-them method.

Another resident said the city shouldn’t be in the business of releasing feral cats at all, because they fight and spread disease.

Well, ma’am, you’re right. But we’ve got to start somewhere. If killing them were the only option, the city would have too many people who wouldn’t call animal services. And that’s what we’ve got now. Along with a feral cat problem.

Let’s compromise, shall we? This plan sounds like something both sides can support. Who knows? If it works, other cities might try it.

Come, let us reason together. And eventually get rid of all these cats.

Editorial, Pages 12 on 09/22/2012

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