I live in a resort area. Some locals decided we needed to do something about feral cats. They started a program named catch and release. They capture cats, have them neutered and release them back where they were captured. The program is working.
A recent visitor from Voorhees, New Jersey wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper stating the program also called trap-spay-release, is ineffective, that cats are decimating the songbird population in America, etc. etc. She claimed this statement could be verified by the American Bird Conservancy. Then she states how the American Bird Conservancy said cats wearing bells do not help protect wildlife.
Gag me if I'm wrong here, but the name trap-spay-release doesn't include a reference to putting bells on cats as if they might be Tiny Tims still tiptoeing through the tulips. Maybe in New Jersey the two ideas are somehow synonymous. I don't know, but I moved from there to here and don't recall such a reference in the Philly papers.
This all from a woman who lives in New Jersey, a state where builders are developing land at the rate of an acre an hour! And she wonders where all the songbirds have gone? Please!
Here is a fact you need to consider, ma'am. HUMAN encroachment into wildlife habitat is the leading, number one, biggest cause of the decline of the songbird population. Humans just like you! And you're from New Jersey and you don't see what is happening around you? It's called overpopulation by people who think trees are a nuisance, in the way, do nothing but take up space. How many trees are cut down in your state every day? There's something to research.
And you blame cats? When was the last time you saw a cat driving a bulldozer? Operating a chain saw? Hell, we could put bells on all the construction workers and that too wouldn't protect the American songbird population!
How about air pollution? Think a songbird's lungs can process the fumes pumped from the tens of thousands of SUVs running around you state? How about the exhaust from the thousands of trucks on the Turnpike? Or those wonderful North Jersey chemical plants, oil refineries?
Why in God's name do people like you blame the innocent for the actions of the guilty? The feral cat population in our region didn't start out as feral cats. People who visit this resort town left them behind, abandoned them when they return home. Students attending the local university did the same thing.
You people who abandon animals are not the problem?
Most of the locals who like cats, feed them. Sated cats do not hunt. Hungry ones do unlike humans who kill animals for sport, would kill songbirds if they were a bit larger.
Next time you're a guest somewhere, try to really understand the people who live there before howling about something you know so little about.
TRAP-SPAY-RELEASE and by the way, add a little bell to the cat's collar for good luck! I've never seen a feral cat with a collar! Wake up and look out your window in Voorhees, New Jersey. Are there any trees left?
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