There’s no outdoor cats in my neighborhood; the coyotes keep eating them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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=?

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.

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.

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.