Cat-owners just won’t be stopped unless laws are introduced. Until then, what can we do to protect our feathered friends from the rabid feline killers?
Cat-owners just won’t be stopped unless laws are introduced. Until then, what can we do to protect our feathered friends from the rabid feline killers?
This has grown into a full-blown diss battle shitshow between “cat mums” and the “cat mum haters” in South Korea and while it has been an issue online for many years, I’m just so worn out from the sheer stupidity of this situation. A disproportionate number of people on the “cat mum” side refuse to think critically and modify their behaviour. The ones who should maintain the least amount of dignity and level-headedness possible during the worst times to still educate the “uneducatable” also gave up any cordiality left in them and hate on cat mums for the sake of it. The worst thing, though, is that this is not just limited to one specific country. I can guarantee you will be met with pure madness in the YouTube comment section for any bird documentary showing predation by cats. It’s universal and sees no end.
This has led nowhere so far and only created more tension between the public majority who unconditionally love and will protect cats at all costs (generalised as “cat mums”) and the non-feline animal lovers (bird lovers in particular) who are all just lazily grouped into the “cat mum hater” category.
I read briefly about the efficacy of TNR programmes somewhere and found that it was still unclear for the most part whether it was actually effective in controlling feral cat populations without adoption of neutered cats. There are suggestions that TNR must be coupled with adoption in order to be successful in what it is meant to achieve. So I personally think TNR is a good place to start investing in, but it’s never going to be a definite solution.
The simplest and probably the right thing to do is to encourage everyone to adopt stray cats, stop breeding them, and keep them inside where they belong (they’re ‘house cats’ after all). But guess what people are inclined to do? The opposite of all three.
Will there ever be a universally accepted, humane solution for this problem? Will people ever accept that feral cats destroying ecosystems is not ‘nature taking its course’? Will they ever be willing to take accountability for what their ancestors have done despite not having directly contributed to the act of introducing cats to their non-native habitat many centuries ago?
We have a long, long way to go, and we might not even get there before the full damage is done.
To add: Hatred is never the answer. I’m not too fond of cats (or dogs) myself, but I feel this is similar to how others must feel about other invasive animals like starlings and escaped parrots. A lot of the aforementioned “cat mum haters” are seemingly obsessed with the observation that cats “kill for fun” and thus should be exterminated. Again, this only fosters more hatred and will lead nowhere. Hatred is a self-defensive emotion designed to protect you from the mental repercussions of having your values contradicted or violated. Even so, it’s more likely than not to also be harmful to oneself. In the end, it doesn’t shield, it only stabs. If you think we are justified to hate cats for their impact on the environment and endangered birds, then we may as well be justified to hate on house sparrows and house finches (in East US) for their impact on native bird populations. Violence is bound to create problems, never solutions.
I’m a bird lover (and watcher) and I’m a cat person too.
The thing is that reading the tone of the OP one feels like here is one more of those trolls trying to overgeneralize and to over-categorize—cat = killer, and a rabid one with that— instead of actually trying to expose and discuss the issue. What’s the point of such a post? To put more oil into the fire in order to get some cheapo giggle?
My thoughts exactly, and precisely why I’m just so exhausted hearing this internet debate over and over that amounts to nothing. A lot of them are merely out to witch hunt and prove themselves right, when there really isn’t a right or wrong verdict. They’re chasing their own feelings.
I get the frustration though, as I’ve struggled with this personally myself (although I didn’t go around pushing my agenda to everyone or pissing people off). Change is slow, and many are not as open-minded as we expect nor have the mental flexibility of others. But I’ve come to learn eventually that all this negativity and confirmation bias helps nobody, especially not the animals and nature we so care about. I think people who are in the same boat as me also just need a little more time to settle down, think and move on.
But it’s still really sad seeing people blindly at each other’s throats just because they can.