07-30-2017, 01:46 PM
Earlier comment from terracore: “The stereotype of the 'crazy cat person' has some scientific merit. Cats carry a parasite that infects rodents and humans... people who feed feral cats might not be thinking rationally.”
I do not think the parasite link has any basis, but we still have to consider rationality. Paul Kvinta, author of the cat article, also did a 2015 article on kangaroo culling (link at end of the cat story). Here are some excerpts. As you read them you realize you can replace kangaroo with “cat” or any other animal to be saved:
“Around Canberra city the animals are everywhere. In 2009 kangaroo densities (were) 510 per square kilometer..., more than five times the desirable amount for healthy grassland ecosystems.”
Kangaroo protector Carolyn Drew monitors the culling site “every night during the cull. Her colleagues watch other sites...No kangaroo deserves to die, Drew insists, so she’s here every night, as a witness if nothing else. ‘Kangaroos are sentient beings with feelings, hopes, and dreams,’ she says. (Drews and others try, with varying degrees of success, to interfere with the culls.) ...We felt what the animals felt...we were sensitized to their perspective...”
"Drew admits that it’s hard, year after year, tramping into the bush in freezing weather at night, risking arrest, and having little to show for it. Drew says 'lots of (kangaroo protectors) are still suffering PTSD from seeing (a particularly bloody cull)'....”
Do not doubt that these feelings are similar to what we will see from Hawaii’s feral cat protectors, should culling programs ramp up. Are we to regard this as rational behavior? I don’t think so.
I do not think the parasite link has any basis, but we still have to consider rationality. Paul Kvinta, author of the cat article, also did a 2015 article on kangaroo culling (link at end of the cat story). Here are some excerpts. As you read them you realize you can replace kangaroo with “cat” or any other animal to be saved:
“Around Canberra city the animals are everywhere. In 2009 kangaroo densities (were) 510 per square kilometer..., more than five times the desirable amount for healthy grassland ecosystems.”
Kangaroo protector Carolyn Drew monitors the culling site “every night during the cull. Her colleagues watch other sites...No kangaroo deserves to die, Drew insists, so she’s here every night, as a witness if nothing else. ‘Kangaroos are sentient beings with feelings, hopes, and dreams,’ she says. (Drews and others try, with varying degrees of success, to interfere with the culls.) ...We felt what the animals felt...we were sensitized to their perspective...”
"Drew admits that it’s hard, year after year, tramping into the bush in freezing weather at night, risking arrest, and having little to show for it. Drew says 'lots of (kangaroo protectors) are still suffering PTSD from seeing (a particularly bloody cull)'....”
Do not doubt that these feelings are similar to what we will see from Hawaii’s feral cat protectors, should culling programs ramp up. Are we to regard this as rational behavior? I don’t think so.