Xref: utzoo rec.birds:1422 rec.pets:9576 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!acadia!saulnier From: saulnier@acadia.crd.ge.com (Emilie T. Saulnier) Newsgroups: rec.birds,rec.pets Subject: Re: wandering domestic cats Message-ID: <4018@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Date: 28 Nov 89 18:24:13 GMT References: <2196@leah.Albany.Edu> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: saulnier@acadia.crd.ge.com (Emilie T. Saulnier) Followup-To: rec.birds Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY Lines: 46 In article <2196@leah.Albany.Edu> gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) writes: > >Personally, I think letting your domestic animals run loose in other >people's yards is irresponsible and rude, even if it isn't illegal. Is it still *irresponsible and rude* if those other people also have cats that they let out? What if the cats aren't hunters? What about domestic animals that don't kill birds and rodents (lets say geese, since I often see them roaming around here)? What if the neighbors don't care about their personal menagerie of wild birds and rodents or nature in general? If you are talking about the general population of birds and rodents, is letting a cat run loose on your own property any more responsible (after all there will be birds and rodents there too)? In fact, is developing a piece of land for an apartment complex any less harmful to the local population of birds and rodents? What about the birds and rodents that are killed by automobiles? Is it irresponsible and rude to drive a car, on the grounds that it might kill a wild animal? (All right, I'm getting carried away here :-)) >There's nothing natural about semi-feral animals being let out of >someone's back door to go kill off the local wild bird or rodent >population. This is no less irresponsible than dumping a tankfull of >guppies into the local trout stream, IMHO. Does this mean guppies kill off trout? >This argument that cats do some kind of service by killing rodents is >pretty flimsy. Are there a lot of tabbies out there killing hordes of >lice-infected sewer rats and thereby saving us all from the plague? What if they're killing off deer-tick-infested mice? >rodent-killing action I've seen is several chipmunks which were killed >right under our bird feeders by a neighbor's cat. I'd actually be Is it less irresponsible to put bait out to attract birds and rodents to a dangerous place? Would the cat get less chipmunks if they weren't so conveniently preoccupied, and always at the same place? Or if they weren't so tame from human contact? >I know some people enjoy the independent nature of cats; personally I >like the more dependent (maybe it's dumb 8^] ) nature of dogs. ^^^^ Don't you mean fish? :-) Emilie Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com