New policy allows waterfront cats to be killed “by any means deemed necessary” MILILANI, Hawaii––Hawaii Department of Land & Natural Resources chair Suzanne Case “is moving at a hurried pace to kill cats with a lead pellet fired from a high powered pellet rifle to the head or heart,” alleges Carroll Cox––who is not […]
“Rabies roulette” in Tampa: the odds favor TNR
You are 32,250 times more likely to hit double zero than to meet a rabid cat in Hillsborough County TAMPA, Florida––With the 2016 final numbers yet to be reported by Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the lowest annual total of rabid cats ever found in the U.S. came in 2015, the second lowest […]
Talking about cats in Holy Week
ANIMALS 24-7 visits with Stacy LeBaron of Community Cats podcast Yes, it is Dog Bite Prevention Week, according to the U.S. Postal Service, and Easter week according to the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, and Friday is Passover, celebrated by about 17.4 million Jewish people. But somewhere in the vicinity of 400 million people worldwide worship […]
Street dogs in the U.S.? Nathan Winograd has gone barking mad.
by Merritt Clifton Among the most vociferous critics of ANIMALS 24-7 guest columnist Jeff Young’s essay We cannot adopt, warehouse or rescue our way out of dog & cat overpopulation! was No Kill Advocacy Center founder Nathan Winograd. Winograd’s own recommendations in response to the homeless dog and cat problem have long been a hodgepodge of wishful […]
Aussie feds inflated feral cat population 3 to 10 times to push cull policy
New study reports the findings but ignores their meaning BRISBANE, Australia––Normally, if a major study discovers an alleged ecological problem to be just 10% as bad as was previously imagined, one might expect celebration to follow. The researchers, other experts, nonprofit organizations, and every politician who ever addressed the issue, however transiently, might be expected […]
What if an island has no cats?
Birds on remote islands are sometimes better off with cats than without them Part II of a two-part series. See also When the cats are away, the mice will play––and the rats & rabbits. Gough Island, also in the South Atlantic, never had any cats. “Today, the British-owned island, described as the home of the most […]
When the cats are away, the mice will play––and the rats & rabbits
Purging cats from South Atlantic islands often harms birds more than helps them (Part I of a two-part series. See also What if an island has no cats?) LONDON, U.K.––Fourteen years after declaring victory over feral cats on remote Ascension Island, on behalf of sooty terns, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds […]
The animal issue that made Donald Trump a presidential candidate
Or, what is bio-xenophobia? (Part I of a four-part series. See also How an ant doctor came to be driving public policy; How the Twin Towers fell on animals too; and Questioning the claims of “crisis.”) With just six weeks left of the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign season, xenophobia, the fear of foreigners, has thus far […]
Cats on the air everywhere!
Half an hour with Stacy LeBaron of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society NEWBURYPORT, Massachusetts––North American awareness of human impact on natural habitat is sometimes traced back to Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 essay A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which preceded his much better known essay Civil Disobedience by a matter of […]
How “secondary poisoning” kills your outdoor cats
Threat to both ferals and indoor/outdoor pets by Merritt Clifton Asked one of the most dedicated of the multitude of “cat ladies” of my acquaintance, “Do you know if there’s truth to the idea that if cats eat rats who have been into bait stations, the cats will also get the effects of the warfarin?” The […]