I never liked cats when I was growing up. A dog person through and through, I was very surprised by how quickly I developed affection for the little kittens my mom brought home soon after I graduated from high school. The sister is black, and the larger brother is white. Soon, they had my father and I reconsidering our pro-dog prejudices.
This is why I understand the uproar concerning a proposition by Mark Smith, a member of Wisconsin's Conservation Congress that an open season on feral cats be declared. To anyone who has a personal relationship with an intelligent feline, killing them seems abhorrent. However, I must take issue with the sentiment that ulterior motives are at stake. Smith has taken an unpopular but perhaps right view in an effort to preserve a quickly disintegrating balance of our local ecosystem.
Cats are possibly the most intelligent pet kept in our society. Their unique intelligence is due to their evolutionary status as a stalker-hunter. Watch a cat-its entire life revolves around hunting. When my parents' cats play with each other they constantly stalk and wait for each other, honing skills they no longer need.
The same thing happens when cats go outside. Birds, some tiny and endangered, have no recourse against aggressive predation by feral cats. Hundreds of thousands of birds are killed each year in this nation by cats. Cats are not native. They are a Eurasian species with no natural predators in America and they have become extremely harmful to native species. If you fail to see a cruel parallel in the case of European human invaders and the subsequent consequences for the native population, then you need not read any further.
We have transformed the landscape so far that it is unrecognizable. Buffalo no longer roam a wild prairie on the middle of this continent, and passenger pigeons no longer exist in numbers sufficient to block out the sun. If one looks outside, they will see an abundance of birds; no problem is evident. Upon closer examination you would see that they are European starlings and house sparrows, non-native invaders who along with cats are pushing native bluebirds and meadowlarks to the brink of extinction.
We as an industrial society must recognize that we are the ultimate cause of this genetic holocaust being waged on indigenous species the world over. Once we recognize ourselves as the cause, we must answer the question: Do we care?
I don't like the idea of shooting cats any more than the next person. However, it is disingenuous to present it as hunting, when it is really a population-control measure that has little in common with hunting and gathering for a sustainable purpose. Perhaps expanded live trapping and wide-scale efforts for declawing and sterilization are better approaches for dealing with the feral cat problem. They would certainly be more human. The most effective solution would be widespread implementation of all three.
It is important to put this issue in perspective. Many of us like cats, but there are far too many. They outsource demand by a wide margin. Every day farm cats are starved, run over and beaten to death with shovels simply because they are a nuisance with little inherent value in today's world. I'm sorry to inform our sheltered suburbanite campus of this reality, but any amount of investigation would confirm it.
To the rest of the world, where finding food is a daily problem and driving in daddy's SUV is not an option, this \debate"" would appear absurd. Let us not attach such a disproportionate amount of value to an animal that we allow it to destroy native populations of songbirds. Upon facing the choice of losing bluebirds forever and shooting a cat, I have to say that I would find the cat to be expendable.
Seth Bichler is a sophomore majoring in history.
