They Cat Be Serious

I’ve followed this story about the potential legalization of hunting feral cats in the state of Wisconsin and resisted commenting thus far--until my girlfriend Pat asked me to write something about it.

As I’ve previously stated, I’m a gun owner--three rifles and two shotguns. I believe in our Constitutional right to bear arms and in responsible gun ownership. I enjoyed roaming over my grandfather’s three hundred fifty acre farm in south Alabama when I was a youth. Today we lament poachers illegally hunting deer on our property, but legal hunting in the US is a right I will defend until my death.

Government intervention in the form of hunting laws has helped species like the wild turkey and the alligator recover from predicted untimely demises.

That’s a good thing.

When I was a kid it used to be an exciting event to actually see a wild turkey, but in the past ten years I’ve watched wild turkeys stop traffic on Johnson Ferry Road during rush hour in east Cobb County Georgia. Yesterday I read this news story about a dog saving its owner from an alligator in Tampa, Florida. The dog died, unfortunately. By the way, I believe that Alligators are going to become an even larger menace as a result of human encroachment into their territory in the next few years. We have some twelve-footers here in the marshes at St. Simons.

Which brings me back to my topic—WHO THE HELL THINKS IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO START SHOOTING STRAY CATS? Not me.

Why do these morons want to legalize cat hunting? Because Morris and Tiger and Kitty Mewmew kill…

“Some experts estimate that 2 million wild cats roam Wisconsin, and the state says studies show feral cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds a year.

South Dakota and Minnesota both allow wild cats to be shot.”

My answer?

Well at least wild cats do what cats are supposed to do—they hunt and kill their own food. They aren’t like stray dogs that spend all of their time “poaching’ food out of your trash cans and dumpsters. North Georgia is filled with “nuisance” black bears that pillage campsites and home sites and yet bear hunting is severely limited if not outlawed.

What if we declare open season on stupid-assed little kids (like I once was) with new BB guns? How many songbirds are killed each year by little idiots with shiny new Daisy and Crossman products which they got as Christmas presents? Is killing and eating a bird a crime punishable by the death penalty if killing and leaving a dead bird in your neighbors’ back yard is just a “phase” in growing up?

I guess I am intellectually astride the fence here, but I have a hard time supporting a “LEGAL” hunting season on any species that humans have already interjected their influence into the spread of the population. If every pet owner maintained their pet by controlling their breeding habits or having them spayed/neutered, there wouldn’t be a need for “dog (im)pounds” and “shelters” in the first place.

With the demise of the Florida Panther and the Bobcat here in the south, there are a number of species like Raccoons, Opossums, and Armadillos that are trashing everyone’s yards and rummaging through everything in sight looking for a free meal. The deer in the state parks in north Georgia are stripping everything within eight feet of the ground bare and they are literally starving to death.


I’m not a big animals’ rights activist and I think that the PETA people are basically crazy, but my old cat friends Buddy, Patches, Hoover, Mr.-T and my Mom’s cat Tom deserve a better fate than a load of #6 shot or a 22 bullet from some camouflaged hunter stalking them from a distance of 25 feet when their only crime is that they slipped out the back door unnoticed.

Know what I mean?