Predators

I know a lot's been made of the 'problem' here in respect to predators who endanger our children.

I'd like to take a moment to point out this problem in another light.

To wit:

The feral cat problem in Ukiah is BEYOND any city I've ever seen (any CITY).

I've got a crop of four showing up this year.

None are tagged, fixed, or have shots, of course.

Tiny furry disease vectors wandering up and down. They sure are cute, though.

I've yet to have seen ANYTHING proposed about this problem, and apparently (from speaking with a nice older woman who goes to Alaska in the summers to avoid Ukiah summer), it's been like this for ages.

She said there's someone in the apartments near Mervyn's that just POURS catfood into the gutter like a pig trough.

Is it legal to hunt them? What about with tranquilizer darts?

Hmmm....sorry, little slow this morning. How do feral cats and child predators relate??

One bit my dad when he was a kid and gave him scarlet fever.

There's lots of kids in my neighborhood. They play all around where the kitties hang out. They don't know how dangerous they can be.

They do look cute, but they are really wild animals.

I caught one two years ago and had him fixed. It was like catching a tiny mountain lion. Nothing like my cat at all.

And the four I'm reporting is just last night's crop.

Agreed - how does this relate to predators in our community?

That said, yes we have our share of feral cats. The only way to battle this issue is to take some responsibility even if you have to do it for someone else.

Last year we had a stray lurking around our property (somebody just dumped her there) who had a litter of 7 kittens in our ski boat. Lovely. Of course our daughter (who was 5 at the time) wanted to keep everyone of them.

So we took advantage of the situation. We educated our daughter about what a problem this is for the kitty world and people world. We went as a family to take momma kitty to the vet and have her fixed then we found her a nice home (where she is doing great) after her kittens were weaned. Although the mother wasn't feral the kittens were CRAZY!(the father is a crazy feral cat and our next 'project') But we were able to find homes for 4 of them. Of course we let our daughter pick one for her and we took the last 2 to the shelter where they found homes as barn cats.

Was it a pain in the ****? Yes. Did it cost us some money? Yes. However we have a wonderful pet, a happy daughter who has learned a lot from the experience and eight less cats out there poppin' out feral kittens and not to forget other happy pet owners who received one of the kittens.

We could have just let the 7 kittens and mom go wild, but that would not be the responsible or humane thing to do and would have set a poor example for our daughter. Like it or not, we as community members need to step up and take some responsibility for others actions when it has an impact on us all.

Never miss an opportunity to teach your children well.

I've been trying to get the one I fixed to be 'tame' enough to take back to the vet (after fixing him, he no longer would contest the other kitties at the trough and starved).

I've had no luck. I still can't get within five feet of him. I can't keep feeding him (he's overdue for his rabies shot by some months).

If I leave, I'm pretty sure he'll die of starvation.

The really wild ones are 'lost children' in my book. I'd almost want to take a shotgun to them to be as kind as possible.

Oh, and it was merely a cute 'headline' but one of the issues is all the dead bird carcasses.

They are all over the place.

Cats are, after all, really just little furry sharks. Nice to play with, but the whole point of our species' interaction is that they eat critters that it's a pain for us to catch (same with the terrier breed, including pit bulls, if you check).

Predators.

Basically, hired guns. And these ones are ronins.