Wild cats dog war museum (Just think; someone actually got paid to write that headline….)
A young museum patron was scratched, the curator has flea problems and a simulated-beach landing zone has become a giant litter box at the National Museum of the Pacific War.
Yep, I’ll bet American troops never had to deal with cat poop on Tarawa, eh? Then again, this is exactly the sort of thing that can and does happen when people neglect to spay and neuter their pets. You certainly can’t blame the cats; they’re just doing what comes naturally and what they need to do in order to survive. Domesticated cats do not belong in the wild, and yet this is all too often what happens when cat owners neglect to do the right thing. No one wants to see cats euthanized, but when we neglect to spay and neuters our pets, what else can we expect to happen?
Fredericksburg officials are rounding up scores of stray cats that prowl downtown, dining in trash bins at night and leaving unwelcome calling cards.
Eleven cats have been nabbed since five traps were first laid last week, Police Chief Paul Oestreich said Wednesday.
“We’ll keep them for four days, and, if they are not adopted or claimed, then they’ll be euthanized,” he said, noting seven cats had been euthanized and one claimed.
Calling the wild cats unadoptable, some say the colony of feral felines instead should be vaccinated, fixed and released back into their habitat along Town Creek, behind restaurants on U.S. 290, which they frequent.
“They don’t deserve to die,” said Bonnie Smith of the Pedernales Animal Welfare Society, which assists the city on animal control issues. “It’s really the result of people who don’t spay and neuter their pets. That’s the culprit.”
This sort of thing is a tragedy that doesn’t need to happen, but it’s one that is more prevalent than any of us realize. In my own neighborhood, there is a pack of feral cats that live and hunt in the weeds along the lakeshore in our back yard. Eventually, the city of Seabrook will pick them up, hold them for a few days, and then euthanize them for lack of other options. This will hard stop the cycle, though. Until and unless cat owners take their responsibility to spay and neuter their pets seriously, our tax dollars will continue to go to dealing with the problem of feral cats in urban areas. It doesn’t have to be like this, but it undoubtedly will continue. And stories such as this one will be and are the norm. You’d think people would learn….
