Posted on 03/10/2005 11:57:10 AM PST by ButThreeLeftsDo
The La Crosse man who's asked the state to allow hunters to kill stray cats says he's been getting death threats.
Mark Smith told La Crosse police he's gotten angry phone calls and messages at work and at home.
Police reports say one call made while Smith was working at the La Crosse Fire Department suggested it should be "open season on firefighters." Another woman told Smith that if the state Legislature approved his request Smith would be hunted down and killed.
Smith has asked the Wisconsin Conservation Congress to vote on his proposal at an April eleventh meeting. That vote would be advisory. The Legislature would have to consider the proposal before cats could be hunted.
Smith has proposed that any cat not under the owner's direct control or wearing a collar should be considered fair game for hunters with small-game licenses.
Sounds like you had far too much coffee too early in the morning. Back away from that keyboard, take a few deep breaths, and relax!
The posts you so well summarized are both hilarious nad accurate, expecially from a wildlife management perspective. Cats do, after all, breed like cats. As Ogden Nash said, "The trouble with a kitten is that - the kitten becomes a cat!"
And minus predators, cats can severely negatively impact wildlife. Should you think predator introduction is a good idea, think again. PantherPersons have artificially induced a population irruption of panther in the Everglades and one such radio collared beast was observed eating one of the last of some two dozen pets at the Trail Lakes Campground on US 41, near Everglades City.
Only when it began sizing up Game officers for their caloric value, and after being "outed" nationally, were the PantherPersons finally forced to remove their predator.
Hunting is far more controllable than the introduction of large bodied predators.
Gunpowder really is superior to tooth and claw.
God bless you for being a responsible pet owner! What made this whole situation worse is that these cats were no longer domesticated....they were wild and full of fleas and sickly... pathetic. Rounding them up to take to the shelter was a scary thing..I was afraid of getting bit or scratched and getting some sort of creeping crud from them. The last litter I took to the shelter... they didn't think would survive..they were that bad. the people at the shelter told me that where I come from..a town of about 50 houses, had the most stray cats brought in of all the county. We only have a few of them left now..they love my porch (sigh)...but I think they are all males... as last summer their were no new kittens. thank God for that.
You have no choice when living in the country. If I didn't eliminate strays on a regular basis we would be over-run in no time.
We need to get someone to host the pics, but that would be very cool.
I have some space on my .mac account. Maybe I can do it.
People dump animals off all the time.An gray kitten showed up here about 3 months ago,can't get rid of it ,looks like we'll have to move.Had about 9 cats running around here at one time then an F1 traveled over the house and we were down to around four.Hate to shoot them but you can't feed them all.
You obviously missed my post in the spirit for which it was intended. It is nitwit comments like yours above that I was referring to. There is a difference between necessarily controlling feral cats which we all understand (or dogs, other) and hilarious and accurate comments regarding the 'joy' and methodology of killing cats (or any animal) which you don't understand. It is not remotely funny and the difference is distinct.
I think you have hit the nail on the head...These are the same people who did this:
When we first moved here I saw an old man walking up an down the street..it was rainy and cold..yet this old man walked up and down the street for hours..finally he came to our door and I called our neighbors and told them that he was there..(he lived across the street)I was informed that he was being punished because he didn't sweep the floor...the guy must have been 80 years old...his neice was a real piece of work....she would hit and kick the guy thinking no one one was watching...finally one day she tied the old guy up with a dog chain to a chair on her porch...I finally had something I could prove to the police so I called them to report it. She had him untied by the time the cops arrived so nothing was done...I finally found out who was his legal guardian and reported the abuse to him...the crap hit the fan. Not for the neice...but for me. I had them calling me names and having complete strangers come up to me and tell me I was nosey and to mind my own business....the topper was when she brought her dog over to our yard and made it trample through the flower bed..when my husband confronted her she feigned ignorance and said he had gotten loose. I asked the old man to sit on my porch when he was locked out of the house..usually 90+ out and he asked me to keep him in prayer...he finally died with no real help in his final days. They wouldn't even take care of their own family...might be too much to ask them to take care of their cats.
My only solace is that the children of this lady (who defended her by harassing me and calling me names) have learned by example how to take care of her when she gets old...what goes around will come around.
Holy crap...reading that gave me chills. How can any human being be so evil? I cannot understand how some people are allowed to live. Hopefully karma will come around and give those people worse than anything they have dished out. I don't know how I could take living around people like that. Unbelievable.
Well, there are exceptions to every rule.
Associated Press
APPLETON, Wis. - A 59-year-old man is charged with shooting and killing his neighbor's cat because it was a nuisance.
James J. Shilka, of the Town of Oneida, is charged in Outagamie County Circuit Court with felony mistreatment of an animal causing death.
A criminal complaint said Gail Carriveau let out her 9-year-old cat, Sheba, on Sept. 26 and the cat never returned. Carriveau searched for her cat and posted fliers and checked area animal shelters, but there was no sign of the cat.
During a later search she ventured on to Shilka's property and found the body of her cat behind a building, and she called police.
Shilka told police he shot the cat in the head with a .357 magnum when it came onto his property, and he then threw the body down the hill behind his pole barn, the complaint said.
Shilka allegedly told police "there are numerous cats on his property and they are nuisances."
Carriveau has had other problems with cats in the past; on May 18 another of her cats was shot and had to have its leg amputated and on July 25, 2003, another cat was found dead in her garage of a gunshot wound to the abdomen. No one is charged in those incidents.
Shilka faces up to 3 1/2 years in prison on the mistreatment charge.
We have a slight stray cat problem in our neighborhood. I just tamed one (a domestic short-hair with siamese markings), which took me about six months. Fed it a couple of times, talked to it whenever I saw it, that sort of thing. When it got tame enough, I took it to the vet. He checked out healthy, so I had him neutered and got him all his shots, and took him home. Poor boy, his roaming days are done, but he'll live longer.
Taming a stray may be the ideal way of dealing with an individual feral animal, but it requires patience, tolerence for wild ways (like spraying or marking everything), and a willingness to spend money (the complete series of shots and checkups and neutering for an adult cat can come to over $400). I'm tenderhearted, I've taken in two or three cats and a dog in my time, but I don't think my approach would work if faced with a large number of starys.
VietVet
Jeffrey Dahmer started out this way...this is just one recent example:
INDIANAPOLIS -- An 11-year-old girl has been placed on home detention on suspicion that she beat and tortured a kitten that later had to be euthanized because of its injuries.
Police said they believe the girl tied a cord around the cat's neck and swung it in the air like a lasso Saturday.An Indianapolis police officer who was called to investigate saw the girl slam the kitten down, causing the animal to cry out, police said.
The kitten suffered severe injuries and infection, and therefore needed to be euthanized, the city's animal care and control division said.
"There are indications from our officer's report that the animal was infested with maggots and, in fact, had its rectum ruptured over the course of the alleged torture," the division's Jeff Bennett said.
The kitten was one of several cats that live in a garage on a property near the girl's home.
How many of them were shot when they were on a leash?
I would keep your cat on a leash!
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