Airs – Ian Lance Taylor

Feral Cats

Last Thursday we trapped five feral kittens living in our backyard. We took them to the vet on Friday morning, where they were neutered and were vaccinated for rabies. We picked them up on Saturday, and kept them inside. On Sunday we let the two males go. Today we let the three females go. Unfortunately, although we trapped the kittens, we weren’t able to trap the mother, who was too wary to spring the trap. We will try again to catch her next week. This was all a somewhat lengthy and messy procedure, helped greatly by a volunteer from a local organization called Fix Our Ferals. Besides the cats, we also managed to catch a skunk; we released the skunk as quickly as we could, but unfortunately not before the whole area got sprayed.

Did we have the right to do this? Clearly the cats did not want to be trapped, and they were quite agitated about it. While the cats do not have any expectations about having kittens of their own, it is part of their natural life cycle, and we have taken that away from them.

What makes the difference for me is that we had been feeding them, and they were happy to take the food. If we had not been feeding them, I think that trapping them would have been questionable. While cats are obviously not native to the area, we live in a city which is in no way a wilderness. If the cats had been fending for themselves, as the deer, racoons, and skunks do, I don’t think we would have been right to interfere in their lives in this way. A rabies vaccination might have been acceptable, but not neutering.

But since we were feeding them, we were domesticating them in a small way, making them stronger and healthier, and in general taking responsibility for them. We therefore had to take responsibility for their actions, including the kittens they would have. We were within our rights to prevent those kittens.

I believe that we did the right thing, but I admit to not feeling entirely easy about it.

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Ian Lance Taylor

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11 responses to “Feral Cats”

  1. fche Avatar
    fche

    What actual problem is neutering supposed to solve?
    Is there a rash of kitten roadkill?

  2. cypher Avatar
    cypher

    I still remember how bad I felt when our cats came back from the vet after being neutered.
    A consolation may be that neutered cats live longer, see e.g.:

  3. cypher Avatar
    cypher

    Missing URL in previous comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat#Domestication

  4. etbe Avatar
    etbe

    In Australia feral cats are a serious problem, they kill many native animals. The policy on wild cats is not to trap and release, the government will collect them if you trap them (the local council can often lend traps) and they will be given away freely to anyone who pays for the neutering. If no-one wants them then they are put to sleep.

    Recently the coal lobby has been claiming that wind farms kill birds, but the truth is that the bird death toll from wind farms is minute while the toll from feral cats is significant.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_sterilization

    As for the right to prevent kittens, when the government pays for the living expenses of refugees, the mentally ill, or criminals, does it have the right to neuter them? Historically it seems that most countries have answered “yes” to that question at some time in the last 100 years (see the above URL for details).

    I believe that humans are a higher form of life than cats. Cattle (which are approximately as intelligent as domestic cars) get eaten, while cats only get sterilised (unless no owner can be found). So cats aren’t doing too badly.

  5. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    fche: Besides etbe’s comments, if we feed cats but don’t neuter them, we will have an exponentially increasing number of cats. This does not seem desirable.

    cypher: Thanks for the note. My earlier experiences with unneutered male cats are that they definitely have shorter lives, because they get into serious fights.

    etbe: I expect that cars are smarter than cattle these days. Cats are treated better than cattle, but then I personally am a vegetarian and would tend to treat cattle better.

    I don’t think that people in the U.S. would accept forced sterilization of humans today, though you are certainly correct that they once did.

  6. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    “Higher form of life”? I hope that was meant ironically, or referred to intoxicant intake.

  7. etbe Avatar
    etbe

    Ian: An exponentially increasing number of anything is not sustainable in the long-term.

    Domestic cats appear to have significantly smaller brains than cattle.

    I’m currently involved in a mailing list discussion where a “conservative” is arguing that (among other things) social security etc are a bad thing because they allow poor people with defective genes (why else would they be poor) to have more children. So obviously there are some people in the US who don’t have a great problem with such things.

    ncm: We are significantly more intelligent than cats, we are capable of producing better art, are capable of making moral decisions that are way beyond cats, and we as a species essentially own the earth. Whatever criteria you might have for one species being better than another, we beat cats.

  8. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    etbe: (1) I don’t know of any population of cats that have committed genocide against members their own species. (2) I don’t know of any population of humans covered in soft fur. (3) Cats are members of a clade that includes many different species, that is not in danger of aggregate extinction. (4) No population of cats routinely consumes intoxicants. (5) I have never known a cat to make such a specious claim as yours. I can present additional criteria on demand.

    My point was not, and is not, to claim that cats are “better than” humans, but rather that it is meaningless (and more than a bit dopey) to claim that humans are “a higher form” of anything, just as it would be to claim that cats are, criteria or no. The traditional form of your claim is that humans are “closer to angels” and farther from mud, and it’s a small step indeed from there to out-and-out racism, which is also traditional.

    My wife used to ask me if this or that article of clothing made her “butt look too big”. The only answer I could honestly conceive was “too big for what?” We can compare cats and humans along axes of our choosing, but we can’t avoid choosing, so the comparison is either meaningless, self-serving, actively dishonest, or all of the above. You may congratulate yourself for your erudition, but if you’re not honest about what you’re really doing, who are you fooling?

    Absolute brain size is also a near meaningless comparison, so it tells effectively nothing about cats vs. cattle.

  9. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    etbe: I was just riffing on your typo of “cars” for “cats”.

    ncm: I hope you are aware that the correct answer to your wife’s question is “no.”

  10. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    ian: If you say “no” you might get asked again.

  11. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    ncm: This kind of thing is the grease that keeps a marriage running smoothly.

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