Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Cats. Wow!

[Kevin Wolf (kjwolf]

At 10:31 AM 9/3/2001 +1000, Forbes Jan wrote:
> It seems fashionable at present for some people to be anti-cats and other
> domestic pets at all costs, on environmental grounds.  While I care about
> the environment and do my best to preserve and respect it, I regard this is
> a hard and uncompromising view that leaves no room for individual
> circumstances such as the environments where people live and how they manage
> their animals.  IMHO this sort of extreme view virtually makes cats and dogs
> the enemy, much as the Nazis did to the Jews and as such is a form of
> paranoia.
>
> Provided what people do is within the law and their pets are not harming the
> environment or interfering with how others choose to live their lives I
> believe that people in cohousing ought to be left to make their own choices
> about the pets they keep.

Jan
I may be one of those people who have an "extreme view (that) virtually 
makes cats and dogs the enemy".  They are not the enemy, except when they 
are harming the environment which they do when they are allowed to roam 
where wild animals live.  Kudzu in the south is a beautiful plant but 
extremely bad for native plants and animals outside of the area in which it 
originated.  Fire ants are important but once outside of their initial 
territory where they were controlled by natural limits, are horrible for 
the environment.  Cats were domesticated to kill rats and mice.  People 
don't have barns with the need for cats to control  rat populations.  Now 
these crafty, skilled predators are loose in huge numbers, well beyond any 
carrying capacity for the environment.  They are well fed and in most 
suburban habitats, densely packed.  The scientific evidence is overwhelming 
on the damage they do to native prey species.

I haven't read a single post arguing against indoor cats. I have no 
problems with cat owners keeping cats indoors.  (Though I wish they would 
learn about the damage that occurs depending on the animal protein they are 
fed.)  If you equate those of us who would like to see song birds have 
priority over cats in our gardens as paranoid and on the level of the 
Nazis, you will have a difficult time living in a functional cohousing 
community.

Reaching agreement on this issue takes some diplomatic discussion.  The 
group doesn't benefit from turning people like me into evil paranoids who 
want you to gas your pets.

I suspect you are feeling guilty about your cats but don't want to talk 
about restricting their "freedom" for the common good.  You probably know 
that your cats either kill wild animals or just their presence scares birds 
away to have to compete for resources somewhere else.  Thus when you write 
"their pets are not harming the environment or interfering with how others 
choose to live their lives", you probably know outdoor cats harm the 
environment and interfere with how I would like to have my garden be an 
asset to song birds and wildlife, and not a death trap for the neighboring 
cat(s) to stalk.

But as I said in a previous post, N Street gave up on controlling the cats 
because it wasn't worth the arguments and strife to get cat owners to 
restrict their cats to indoor life.

Good luck on this issue.

Kevin
  
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