I grew up in a small town. My parents still live there. For purposes of this post, I'm going to call it Small Townville for anonymity.
My son regularly visits my parents' house, and stays weekends with them. When we arrived one Friday to for his visit, we found a note stating that we had to go to the library, where Mom was attending a meeting.
Mom used to be on the city council, and in fact spent four years as president. She's been retired from city politics for years, and she's partially disabled, so I wondered what could be going on that would cause her to want to get involved again.
Well... it seemed that the thriving and sophisticated community of Small Townville, Ohio, has nothing bigger over which to have a political controversy than... (drum roll please)... the regulation and control of CATS.
Council was considering a proposal to require that all cats be either kept indoors, or kept on a leash. (Obviously, no one on city council has ever tried to keep an outdoor cat indoors, or leash train an adult cat.) The ordinance would require owners to license their cats, and allow for the capture of loose cats by private citizens. Captured cats would be turned over to an authority - the humane society, if I understand correctly - and the owner would be required to pay a $50.00 fee to get the cat back.
Are they serious? They want to take the first line of rodent population control off of the streets of a town surrounded on all sides by farmland? What do they think is going to happen to the field mouse population on the edges of, and somewhat creeping into, their town?
Whose idea, I asked, was this?
Apparently a local resident's regular visitor from out of town suggested it. It was stated that other municipalities have passed similar ordinances, and this guy thinks Small Townville should follow suit.
Now, I've seen what happens in Small Townville, Ohio when the number of outdoor cats is reduced in just one neighborhood.
Ten years ago, when I was still living at my parents' house, there was a fire at a warehouse in my their neighborhood. The warehouse (which was for the storage of lumber) burnt to the ground, and all of its little inhabitants - mice, chipmunks, rats, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, deer, and (so we were told) a coyote - had to find somewhere else to live.
Local residents ended up with a plethora of little critters in our garages and backyards. Trash cans became a war zone, with the battle between the critters and the human residents waging daily. It took major effort to keep one's garbage from ending up all over one's back yard. Worse, a fair number of folks had to deal with rodent infestations in their outbuildings.
In our part of the neighborhood, there were a lot of outdoor cats, who quickly began the task of getting the pest population under control. My own Tabbyrella began the practice of tithing mouse, rat, and squirrel parts to the family, which is how I learned of the upsurge in local animal population. It became really inexpensive to keep her fed... all I had to do was let her out in the evenings.
Our neighbor, a crazy-cat-lady-in-training (her house was clean) had seventeen cats, ten of which were living in the neighborhood as strays before she "adopted" them - paid for them to have their shots and everything. She also saw a big upsurge in the hunting habits of her cats. Her catfood supply lasted a lot longer than it normally would have.
Soon, our two homes and the homes around us began to have a great reduction in our trash problems. This was great! All we had to do was keep our cats healthy, and eventually balance would be restored to the neighborhood.
One neighbor, noticing the increased wandering activity of the cats, decided that they must be responsible for the tearing up of her trash. No amount of discussion could convince her differently. She called police, ranted and raved, and even physically attacked cats which dared visit her property. My cat came home with a broken tail, bent at an angle as if someone had stepped on it. We were never sure it was her, but Tabby wouldn't go into her yard after that.
Finally, in her infinite wisdom, the cat-hating neighbor poisoned her garbage and left poisoned "treats" sitting around her back yard. Squirrels, mice, and rats feasted, then got sick. The sick animals were easy to catch and kill, so those were quickly picked off and eaten by our neighborhood mousing champions. Seven cats and a little kitten died of rat poisoning. My own cat got sick, but the vet managed to save her by injecting a huge amount of fluid in between her skin and muscle tissue. Cats have loose skin, so that didn't hurt, but it was a weird and very uncomfortable experience for her.
After *someone* reported to the sanitation department that the woman had rat-poisoned her trash, the trash collectors rightfully refused to come pick it up until she got rid of the poison and replaced her cans. However, it was too late for the cats.
After the deaths, the rodent population began to increase again. In a funny twist of karmic fate, the cat-hating neighbor ended up with a squirrel infestation inside her house... which *someone* reported to the health department. She was fined and ordered to exterminate. Too bad she didn't have any cats to help her out with that!
It was months before we started to get things back to normal. During the winter, several residents had to have outbuildings cleaned out by an exterminator, including my parents. By spring, the ill-fated kitten's siblings had grown, and the cat population of the neighborhood was back to normal, though Tabby wasn't hunting much except for bugs. The poisoning permanently damaged her digestive system.
With the increase in cats came another slow decline in the pest population, as evidenced by reduced interference with our trash, reduced sightings, and no more infestation issues. Eventually a balance was restored. There were enough critters to be cute, but not enough to be a nuisance. That meant we had to go back to being our cats' main providers of food, but at least no one had to deal with squirrel infestations in their outbuildings.
The lesson was obvious - outdoor cats are a community's first line of defense against overpopulation of little pests. Remove the mousers, and suddenly you have a rodent population control issue on your hands.
Apparently, council members never learned that lesson... they were seriously considering the ordinance. A petition was circulating to bring the issue to a public ballot, and it seems that the local population was all up in arms about the huge cat controversy.
My son regularly visits my parents' house, and stays weekends with them. When we arrived one Friday to for his visit, we found a note stating that we had to go to the library, where Mom was attending a meeting.
Mom used to be on the city council, and in fact spent four years as president. She's been retired from city politics for years, and she's partially disabled, so I wondered what could be going on that would cause her to want to get involved again.
Well... it seemed that the thriving and sophisticated community of Small Townville, Ohio, has nothing bigger over which to have a political controversy than... (drum roll please)... the regulation and control of CATS.
Council was considering a proposal to require that all cats be either kept indoors, or kept on a leash. (Obviously, no one on city council has ever tried to keep an outdoor cat indoors, or leash train an adult cat.) The ordinance would require owners to license their cats, and allow for the capture of loose cats by private citizens. Captured cats would be turned over to an authority - the humane society, if I understand correctly - and the owner would be required to pay a $50.00 fee to get the cat back.
Are they serious? They want to take the first line of rodent population control off of the streets of a town surrounded on all sides by farmland? What do they think is going to happen to the field mouse population on the edges of, and somewhat creeping into, their town?
Whose idea, I asked, was this?
Apparently a local resident's regular visitor from out of town suggested it. It was stated that other municipalities have passed similar ordinances, and this guy thinks Small Townville should follow suit.
Now, I've seen what happens in Small Townville, Ohio when the number of outdoor cats is reduced in just one neighborhood.
Ten years ago, when I was still living at my parents' house, there was a fire at a warehouse in my their neighborhood. The warehouse (which was for the storage of lumber) burnt to the ground, and all of its little inhabitants - mice, chipmunks, rats, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, deer, and (so we were told) a coyote - had to find somewhere else to live.
Local residents ended up with a plethora of little critters in our garages and backyards. Trash cans became a war zone, with the battle between the critters and the human residents waging daily. It took major effort to keep one's garbage from ending up all over one's back yard. Worse, a fair number of folks had to deal with rodent infestations in their outbuildings.
In our part of the neighborhood, there were a lot of outdoor cats, who quickly began the task of getting the pest population under control. My own Tabbyrella began the practice of tithing mouse, rat, and squirrel parts to the family, which is how I learned of the upsurge in local animal population. It became really inexpensive to keep her fed... all I had to do was let her out in the evenings.
Our neighbor, a crazy-cat-lady-in-training (her house was clean) had seventeen cats, ten of which were living in the neighborhood as strays before she "adopted" them - paid for them to have their shots and everything. She also saw a big upsurge in the hunting habits of her cats. Her catfood supply lasted a lot longer than it normally would have.
Soon, our two homes and the homes around us began to have a great reduction in our trash problems. This was great! All we had to do was keep our cats healthy, and eventually balance would be restored to the neighborhood.
One neighbor, noticing the increased wandering activity of the cats, decided that they must be responsible for the tearing up of her trash. No amount of discussion could convince her differently. She called police, ranted and raved, and even physically attacked cats which dared visit her property. My cat came home with a broken tail, bent at an angle as if someone had stepped on it. We were never sure it was her, but Tabby wouldn't go into her yard after that.
Finally, in her infinite wisdom, the cat-hating neighbor poisoned her garbage and left poisoned "treats" sitting around her back yard. Squirrels, mice, and rats feasted, then got sick. The sick animals were easy to catch and kill, so those were quickly picked off and eaten by our neighborhood mousing champions. Seven cats and a little kitten died of rat poisoning. My own cat got sick, but the vet managed to save her by injecting a huge amount of fluid in between her skin and muscle tissue. Cats have loose skin, so that didn't hurt, but it was a weird and very uncomfortable experience for her.
After *someone* reported to the sanitation department that the woman had rat-poisoned her trash, the trash collectors rightfully refused to come pick it up until she got rid of the poison and replaced her cans. However, it was too late for the cats.
After the deaths, the rodent population began to increase again. In a funny twist of karmic fate, the cat-hating neighbor ended up with a squirrel infestation inside her house... which *someone* reported to the health department. She was fined and ordered to exterminate. Too bad she didn't have any cats to help her out with that!
It was months before we started to get things back to normal. During the winter, several residents had to have outbuildings cleaned out by an exterminator, including my parents. By spring, the ill-fated kitten's siblings had grown, and the cat population of the neighborhood was back to normal, though Tabby wasn't hunting much except for bugs. The poisoning permanently damaged her digestive system.
With the increase in cats came another slow decline in the pest population, as evidenced by reduced interference with our trash, reduced sightings, and no more infestation issues. Eventually a balance was restored. There were enough critters to be cute, but not enough to be a nuisance. That meant we had to go back to being our cats' main providers of food, but at least no one had to deal with squirrel infestations in their outbuildings.
The lesson was obvious - outdoor cats are a community's first line of defense against overpopulation of little pests. Remove the mousers, and suddenly you have a rodent population control issue on your hands.
Apparently, council members never learned that lesson... they were seriously considering the ordinance. A petition was circulating to bring the issue to a public ballot, and it seems that the local population was all up in arms about the huge cat controversy.
Months later, I learned that the ordinance was defeated on the public ballot by a respectable margin, but not unanimously. Too bad. I would have loved to see the cat haters get skunked.
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