Thread: Do you like cats?

Originally Posted by cartm58

We are well past the need of protecting grain stores in the village for today's domestic cats, they are purely kept as pets by their owners and
serve in that capacity as companion animals.

The problem is not the cat per se but the owners failing to keep their pets in an appropriate controlled environment and failing to de-sex their pets so unwanted litters dont go feral.

Most farms have cats to try and keep the rodent population down, the ones that don't, use poison. Periodic mouse and rat population booms invade at least the outer areas of most towns from time to time. Protecting of grain stores is mainly done by sheet metal these days, its the other damage they do we need to protect against - some examples I've seen recently include stocks of dry dogfood in a rural store with a hole in every bag, vehicle wiring chewed up, house wiring chewed up (in some cases starting fires), clothing in drawers destroyed by mice etc. Just because you live in a highly urbanised area doesn't mean everyone does. Your argument falls very close to the one that runs "since we have bitumen roads nobody should own four wheel drives".

Note that I have no argument with your second paragraph and particularly agree about desexing animals.

John

NEIGHBOUR'S CATS MAKE GREAT HATS!