I haven’t done a Caturday post in awhile, but I found an old photo with a story I wanted to share.
In 2009 I filmed a documentary for the show "Engineering the Universe" (this was with the same crew that helped me Kill A Planet). We wanted to make a scale model of the solar system that people could instantly grasp, so we went to the Denver Broncos’ Mile High Stadium to use the football field there. We put the Sun on one end and Pluto at the other… but I won’t spoil it. It’ll air eventually!
Anyway, as we walked onto the field through the corridor between bleachers, this cutie was guarding the way:
But what was she guarding? If you look down on the right near the end of the corridor, you’ll see a blue metal door ajar with a green bin in front of it. I saw some movement, so I peered in… and got a surprise.
I guess Guard Cat was actually Mama Guard Cat! She was very skittish, but the kittens were friendly and adorable. The whole crew wanted to take them home, but we decided they had a pretty good life right here. I’m sure they get fed, and had plenty of rodents and such to choose from. The stadium is huge and no doubt is the cat equivalent of a food court.
Happy Caturday!
January 16th, 2010 at 8:31 am
at a stadium like that, i bet they could even has cheezburger.
January 16th, 2010 at 8:47 am
A lot of Broncos fans would probably want to make nookie on the 50 yard line. This Broncos fan bested them all and delivered in the stadium.
January 16th, 2010 at 9:13 am
Plain luck you survived the quard.
January 16th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Awwwwwww – you and Jerry Coyne make me wanna get another cat (but I’m only allowed one).
Been visited by a coupla new ones lately. I thought the cold might have made them desperate, but they look to be owned, so I dunno why their suddenly incurring on our territory.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:05 am
For future reference, this is how feral cat colonies start and then get out of control. One unfixed female cat can lead to 60-something inbred, sick cats within about 6 months (I have seen it happen). From there, of course, it continues to balloon. Even if they seem like they have a pretty sweet life and are probably eating SOMEthing, and right now don’t seem to be in an trouble…they’re still going to cause problems. And soon.
If you find a group of kittens like that, there’s no reason to leave them rather than take them home. If you leave them, they’ll never be vaccinated or dewormed–or fixed. The females will have kittens every heat cycle, wearing their bodies out prematurely and putting them at risk for feline sexually transmitted diseases. The males will roam, fight with other toms, and likely be exposed to feline blood-borne illnesses. If there aren’t many other cats around, subsequent litters will be quite inbred and consequently very unhealthy and unhappy kitties.
When you find cats like that, you can also try contacting a feral cat rescue group and see if anyone in the area can at least get the cats fixed and vaccinated. Often there are groups who devote their entire volunteer time and funds raised to keeping feral cat colonies under control; they’re often thrilled to catch one before it becomes a problem. A good overall contact is Alley Cat Allies (http://www.alleycat.org) who has listings of feral groups by area, among other things.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:28 am
They has lots of cheezburger.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:15 am
They’re so cute… but they’ve probably grown up feral as opposed to loved and taken care of in somebody’s home. We have four cats at Casa Spacewriter — all rescues. One of them was nearly feral when we got her; she’s never lost her initial distrust of humans, even though she’s been with us for 12 years now and taken care of nicely.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Mama Guard Cat probably plays better defense than the post-bye-week Broncos this year.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I can’t wait until I have kitties again. Very cute.
January 16th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
This illustrating scale sizes is a real passion of mine. As an active amateur astronomer myself, I love talking with people about the relative sizes of things. Most people haven’t a clue in this regard and TV does not help 1 bit. It seems every video illustration of our solar system is grossly out of proportion.
Anyway, I’m just hoping like heck you have not contributed to these misconceptions. Mile high stadium would be a bit too small of a venue to do a good illustration all the way out to Pluto. By my estimation, if you put the sun under the scoreboard and Pluto on the upper seats all the way across to the area above the opposite endzone (270 Yds er so), the Sun should be a baseball sized thing (Yellow paint optional) and Pluto would have to be an imaginary speck because Pluto is smaller than 1/20th of a millimeter in diameter at this scale. Earth would be smaller than a 1 mm sphere and be about 27 feet away.
I use the “Earth as a Peppercorn” model and have found beads the appropriate diameter to represent the planets. The sun is a bowling ball (Painted Yellow) at the Peppercorn scale.
My only use for a sports stadium is to tell people that if we crushed all the atoms on earth together so the space between the electrons was gone, (essentially a small neutron star) the earth would fit into a football stadium.
January 16th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Thank you for leaving the cats there. If there’s food and plenty of shelter, you’ll just be making them miserable putting them into an already overcrowded shelter.
I just had to convince someone to put a cat back last month because they insisted it was “abandoned”, when all signs pointed to it being somebody’s outdoor cat trying to get a treat from passing humans.
Cats aren’t humans. They don’t care about the difference between a “real house” and an outdoor house with shelter.
January 16th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
We have three indoor cats, two boys and a girl, all neutered and loved.
About the Mile High cats: if those cats are truly wild, the best thing to do might be to catch and neuter them, give them collars with cat tags, and let them go at the stadium again.
January 16th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
#6: I don’t mean to come across as judgemental or anything, but … that’s not normal. Maybe you should consider changing your Ob/Gyn.
January 16th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
If the crew were good homes then that would have been preferable to leaving them there where they would grow up feral and reproduce more kittens until there isn’t enough food, or the stadium owners/managers decide to remove them.
Being a long time pet owner, cats do respond well to a loving home, just the same as dogs.
January 16th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Jewel, your science kitty is 100% win.
What did we ever do before icanhazcheezburger?
January 16th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
8. Kris Says:
I just had to convince someone to put a cat back last month because they insisted it was “abandoned”, when all signs pointed to it being somebody’s outdoor cat trying to get a treat from passing humans.
Thank you. My family (me) was, long ago and far away, almost the victim of an overzealous ‘catter’. He was an outdoor cat who apparently survived being on an engine when it started (even making it to the attic/crawlspace with a dislocated shoulder and lots of injuries).
This was another time, when he went missing for several days (a day or so is always, with cats, a given). Finally we discovered some passing girl had ‘found’ him, and taken him home. He was apparently kept inside, or he would have returned to us by himself.
J/P=?
January 16th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Awww … the cuteness just caused my head to ’splode!
January 16th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
I prefer my cats to not eat rodents for obvious reasons, and to absolutely not eat people food unless it’s also cat healthy food. Cats are awesome creatures who are friendly and loving if they haven’t been subjected to a difficult life of survival.
January 17th, 2010 at 2:41 am
The entire cat family was an ideal group of candidates for TNR (trap, neuter, release). There’s undoubtedly some TNR organization in the area. This allows the cats to grow up feral but not to keep on reproducing at the insane rate that feral cats can accomplish, and become helpful rat/mouse/pest hunters in the local environment.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:25 am
I’m going to agree with Karen here – Trap, Neuter, Release! I wish more people would understand that overpopulation is a huge issue (my area they actually started discussing hunting feral cats because the problem is really bad), and finding homes for cats is often not an option since there are far more cats than homes for them. Spaying/neutering cats in in a place like this stadium, then putting them back where they came from is a good option, and tends to work pretty well. It needs to be done early too – it’s amazing how young kittens can get pregnant/impregnate each other.
January 17th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Another vote for trap/neuter/release!
January 17th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Feral cats are not a part of the native landscape. They eat birds, small mammals, and other creatures that are. In some places, these animals they eat are endangered or threatened. These particular cats are probably not going to be eating endangered species, but they still don’t belong where they are.
Do a Wikipedia search for ‘feral cat’, and you’ll find some sad statistics (I know Wikipedia is not always reliable, but look to the citation links if you don’t trust this information):
–According to the article linked to in reference 12 of the Wikipedia entry, “U.S. Faces Growing Feral Cat Problem”, there may be as many as 70 million feral cats in the USA, and they may kill up to 1 billion (1 BILLION) small mammals. Yes, some of these animals they eat may be considered ‘pests’, but not all of them are, and there are native predators available to remove them. The feral cats themselves, cute as they may be, have become pests.
– Feral cats also kill up to 100 million bids a year in North America alone.
–Feral cats have an average life span of two years (five in ‘managed colonies’); compared to a dozen or more for domestic cats, especially those kept inside.
–They may pose a disease threat to other animals, both domestic and wild, including humans.
The exact numbers may be debatable, but I don’t think it can be argued that feral cats are not a problem, even if they are trapped, neutered, and released. Nature IS red in tooth and claw, and the life of feral cats cannot be as pleasant as that of a cat kept inside. The lives they take are often from species that cannot handle any more threats.
I love cats, but I think house cats belong in houses.
January 17th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Sorry, I should have said ‘1 billion small mammals PER YEAR’…
January 17th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
@22 Stadiums are not part of the natural environment either.
The idea of having cats in a building in order to control pests is not really all that new and is a big reason why we even have domesticated cats.
These cats are no different from barn cats of yore.
January 17th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
@sgiffy #24
I agree, and I don’t really have a problem with these particular cats. But many of the comments suggest that all feral cats should be left alone, or helped through trapping, neutering , and releasing. There are just too many of them out there to use that as a solution to the problems they’re causing.
As I said, I love cats. But, IMHO, 70,000,000 of them, living the lives that so many of them do, is too many.
January 17th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
The problem with attempting to find homes for all feral cats is that there simply aren’t enough homes. Not NEARLY enough. There aren’t even enough homes for the TAME cats that come into shelters.
I am curious Paul, what do you see as the solution? I see a few options, please tell me if there are more. One option is spay/neuter and release. Another is euthanizing a majority of feral cats in this country.
I prefer TNR myself, especially in environments (like a stadium, or a farm) where the cats are serving a purpose.
January 17th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Harsh as it is, I think euthanizing many of them is the only answer. Shelters have to destroy many of their animals already, I know, even adoptable ones; but I cannot think of other workable solutions for this growing problem. I agree that TNR may work where there is clearly not a conflict with native wildlife, but it cannot be the total answer.
Personally, I think euthanasia is more humane than leaving them to live the brutal, short lives that most of them do. They are preyed on by other animals, and often suffer from disease.
If they were native, I’d say that’s just the way of nature. But they are not native, and their destruction of native species is a definite problem. I feel the same way about other invasive species as well, whether it’s Asian carp, feral pigs, or feral dogs. I realize that many people don’t agree. many think that killing any animal, for any reason, is wrong. I sympathize, but don’t agree; especially when entire species are at stake.
I also think there should be stiff fines for people who knowingly release any non-native species into the wild; and more effort should be made to prevent accidental release as well.
January 17th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
What… is your name? (Admit it; it was your first thought, too.)
There’s no outdoor cats in my neighborhood; the coyotes keep eating them.
January 18th, 2010 at 2:54 am
[...] A Discover blogger finds a cat in a stadium. And kittens! [...]
January 19th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Typical guard cat chasing a bear away:
http://www.jaggle.nl/index.php/media/item/lief_poesje_verjaagt_stoute_beer/