Feral Cats

PapiBarcelona said:

I'm with other people, this thread should never been made or even talked about on some public internet entitiy.

You're protecting your farm but stranger things have happened. I know someone just recently getting over a stressful ordeal that was a major inconvenience and 100 percent avoidable, all because of one nasty person. In the age of nothing is dismissed, too much tinfoil?

Save this stuff for the stories at the bar or something.

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E.Shell said:

Well said.

Cats and dogs running free are, at best, a terribly destructive invasive species, and at worst, actually dangerous.

A buddy can't even walk his dog on a leash in his own yard when she's in heat, free running pets in the neighborhood seem to want to fight with him for breeding rights. No, he cannot arm up and just kill the damn things, they belong to his neighbors and they're good dogs and it would start no end of trouble.

We have an elderly couple that rides around and feeds their herd of feral cats in several abandoned houses down on the shore. They think they are doing good somehow, keeping those poor stray cats from starving. The adult cats flourish and breed, perpetuating the problem and recreationally decimating wildlife.

I used to raise meat rabbits in the early 80s and had a terrible time with free running dogs at night. They couldn't get at my rabbits, but they tear at the fences and cages and would cause the rabbits to hurt themselves and trample babies as they panicked. Most of these dogs had visible collars. That was back then, when it was more farmland and farmers didn't tolerate free ranging and ravaging dogs. I can't even imagine trying to raise livestock now, with all the Disney-ish bleeding heart attitudes and the misguided idea that pet animals need their outdoor night life. First time I defended my stock, I'd be ostracised and locked up.

Wasn't it Schramms Turkey farm in Pasadena that had terrible ongoing trouble with neighborhood dogs, cute and fluffy pet dogs, tearing through enclosures and killing turkeys for fun. Nothing they did worked, no help from authorities, but when they finally handled the problem themselves, people (profoundly stupid, childish, irresponsible people) were outraged. The mean old turkey farm closed up right after that.

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Natural conservation and humanely caring for animals are 2 things that most think they support, but just don't get due to sheer ignorance. Most have no idea that hunters and farmers are the backbone of both, and fund a majority of the efforts. Spent some summers at a dairy farm in upstate NY, my uncle had a few barn cats, they kept the mice under control, and were fed, had blankets to sleep on, and were cared for, basically all he could do to keep them around the barn in the middle of a 100+ acre farm. Feral cats were still a problem, they would come onto the property and fight his cats, would get into his neighbor's chicken coops, and generally crap and kill birds everywhere. Despite having about a dozen cats in the barn, any that were seen in the fields or away from the barns were up there with groundhogs as "shoot on sight". Any dog that wasn't my uncle's and was near the cattle would get the same, collar or not.

E.Shell said:

If these poor wild pet pythons had fur, this travesty couldn't go on.

I would wager (void where prohibited) that, pound for pound, both in terms of feral cats and in unnecessarily victimized prey animals, the free running cat problem is about 1,000,000x worse than the python problem, enabled and perpetuated by the "Fluffy" syndrome.

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Cats are definitely more of a problem, no question about it. It's almost comical though to basically substitute "cat/dog" and "snake" in e-mails I get from USARK and PA humane society. It's probably more difficult for a regular joe to get a pet snake in FL than a gun in NY. Some USFW Lacey act regs in regards to prohibited species read about the same as ATF decisions on "non-sporting" imports and NFA rulings. Federally, there are fewer restrictions on keeping a King cobra than a Burmese python, and every year they keep trying to add more and more common species to the Lacey act list.

There are house sparrows, Norwegian rats, African bees, nutria, snakeheads, Hogs, and hundreds of other invasive species where nobody bats an eye at large scale efforts to control their population. Despite feral dogs and cats killing and infecting people while doing millions in property damage, they usually get a pass, or the public will only allow some complicated and expensive program like trap-sterilize-release without flipping out. Meanwhile some furry Pet orgs push to basically stop euthanizing strays, while others make it a priority, some push to end pet ownership, others seek out people to adopt a pet. They are all over the place, from PETA to Pets for Vets, with furry pets, logic goes out the window.

PapiBarcelona

PapiBarcelona said:

I'm with other people, this thread should never been made or even talked about on some public internet entitiy.

You're protecting your farm but stranger things have happened. I know someone just recently getting over a stressful ordeal that was a major inconvenience and 100 percent avoidable, all because of one nasty person. In the age of nothing is dismissed, too much tinfoil?

Save this stuff for the stories at the bar or something.

Click to expand...

If you don't care for the topic of this thread then don't read it further. It's obviously a "stressful ordeal" for you.

This thread should be in the water cooler, not Outdoor Sports.
I'd kill a cat if it needed to be killed, but no one would ever know about it.

Good grief, I need my own farm so I can let my dogs roam free and shoot everything else.

Sorry I missed this thread on New Year's Eve. Sadly, not going to review 4 pages at 50 posts per page.

All I can say is that I have shot a couple of feral cays while out hunting 200+ acres. Don't even care if I was deer hunting at the time. Took one's head off at 100 yards with a .300 Win Mag.

One of my buddies out there that owned another 200+ acre farm and tried to keep the deer and turkeys on his property by feeding them, would get pissed off as hell at the neighbor's dogs. They were continually running the deer and turkey off of his property. He was about to shoot the dogs, but I asked him to let me send the neighbor a letter first to inform him that if his dogs did not stop running deer, my "client" would be in the right to shoot those dogs. The problems with the dogs stopped.

Freaking humans. lol

Wild cats have to eat too. Whether it be rabbits or birds, its a meal to them. Wild dogs have to eat too. When animals don't have people feeding them kibbles and bits or 9 lives, they have to go and feed themselves the old fashioned way. Kind of like how humans would have to do it if there weren't supermarkets and restaurants galore nowadays.

Wild deer, feral hogs, they all have to eat. Some are better on the human dinner table than others.

rob257 said:

If you don't care for the topic of this thread then don't read it further. It's obviously a "stressful ordeal" for you.

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Wise old owl weeps

Cannot order shinebox on Amazon, as no fingers, only talons

rob257 said:

If you don't care for the topic of this thread then don't read it further. It's obviously a "stressful ordeal" for you.

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I'm enjoying the thread and will continue to read it. LOL

pbharvey said:

This thread should be in the water cooler, not Outdoor Sports.
I'd kill a cat if it needed to be killed, but no one would ever know about it.

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Question is, when does a cat, dog, "pet" bird, etc. need to be killed?

Does the neighbor's rooster need to die because it wakes me up every morning? lol Just a hypothetical, but a question nonetheless.

Is cat, dog, duck, chicken on the menu? Lots of people have pet chickens. My wife's uncle on Long Island has them. Once we figure out our house situation, we might very well have them. I have plans for coops and three different breeds we want to get. Meanwhile, we will still buy chicken from the grocery store and order it at restaurants, especially Popeye's and will continue to do so even with chickens in the backyard.

Remember, even homosapien is on the menu sometimes. Ask the survivors of the soccer team that crashed in the Andes. Think I have that right.

Ah, the PC world that we live in combined with the internet makes for some excitement. Only thing more exciting will be when we get back to the stone age or we are fighting the machines.

fabsroman said:

Question is, when does a cat, dog, "pet" bird, etc. need to be killed?

Does the neighbor's rooster need to die because it wakes me up every morning? lol Just a hypothetical, but a question nonetheless.

Is cat, dog, duck, chicken on the menu? Lots of people have pet chickens. My wife's uncle on Long Island has them. Once we figure out our house situation, we might very well have them. I have plans for coops and three different breeds we want to get. Meanwhile, we will still buy chicken from the grocery store and order it at restaurants, especially Popeye's and will continue to do so even with chickens in the backyard.

Remember, even homosapien is on the menu sometimes. Ask the survivors of the soccer team that crashed in the Andes. Think I have that right.

Ah, the PC world that we live in combined with the internet makes for some excitement. Only thing more exciting will be when we get back to the stone age or we are fighting the machines.

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Once you start eating those fresh yard eggs you won't want to ever buy them from a store again

gtodave said:

So much funny in this thread



This makes absolutely no sense. Why would a fox attack a cat over a rabbit? Cats fight back...rabbits do not. I've actually seen a fox looking for food walk right past a housecat, without so much as a sideways look. The cat was not afraid.



Indeed

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The foxes and cats compete for the same food sources. Once those easy to kill food sources are depleted, then they are eating each other. Pretty sure a mountain lion would eat a fox if it was hungry enough.

What does a wolf pack do to coyotes? It kills all of them, yet the coyote can bite back. Lions kill hyenas and vice versa.

https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/brothers-that-dont-get-along

My favorite Dear Abbey letter from years ago was titled “I shot your dog today”.

The letter was from a farmer that had more than enough animals to feed. He was tired of people dropping cats and dogs on his farm because people thought a farmer would feed and care for them. He explained how destructive the abandoned pets were. How they harassed and injured his stock and carried disease. He didn’t have time to take them to a shelter or find homes for them.
He explained the animals were the responsibility of the owners not his and closed the letter by saying “I SHOT YOUR DOG TODAY “.

It’s all in perspective. Someone else is not responsible for your pets. I don’t advocate cruelty but problems require solutions.
Feral cats carry disease are harmful to wildlife and can leave a stinking mess behind. Feral dogs can be down right vicious.