Following on from the cat in a bin Lady story, we see numerous cat-haters telling us that the sight of someone putting a cat into a wheelie bin is “funny”. No, it isn’t, it is callous cruelty. Anyone who thinks it is funny needs to take a long hard look into their own psyche. We also get the usual bunkum wheeled out whenever people want to have a go about cats and the people they share their lives with.
Myth number one; Cat shit and gardens.
This is the first to get rolled out. I like my garden and take pride in what I grow. Mrs L and I share our lives with a dozen cats. Each of our neighbours has a similar number. So, we are surrounded by a colony of somewhere in the region of thirty plus cats. And, yes, they shit in the garden. Unlike the dogs who roam about, cats have the decency to bury their doings – usually in my borders. So what? Cat shit, like all shit is organic. It decomposes in the soil doing no harm whatsoever. I have not lost one plant due to cats. People who complain about this are simply looking for a justification for their dislike. If they were honest and merely confined themselves to saying that they don’t like cats, fair enough – they would go down in my estimation, but I’d respect their opinion after a fashion. If they come out with crap about cats shitting in the garden, I’ll treat them with the contempt they so clearly deserve.
Myth number 2; cat owners are enabling the murder of wildlife and that is cruel.
Bollocks, frankly. The domestic cat has lived alongside man since ancient times. Despite that, it is still a wild animal at heart. The domestication is only partial in that the animal is never fully tameable in the same way that we tame and control dogs. Cats are scavengers and hunters – taking what they can from where they can. If it’s a plate of Whiskas, that’s fine and dandy. They are just as happy crunching on a rodent. Man has generally found this relationship useful, preferring to have felines in the house to a nest of rodents. At least the cats don’t shit inside all over your food stores.
If left to their own devices without neutering programmes, they would exist in colonies of females with kittens and roaming toms. The queens would be kittening several times a year and the numbers would increase dramatically. Without a supply of food and population control from people, their effect on the local wildlife would be significantly worse.
Cats kill. They are carnivores. This is not cruelty and cannot be compared to the casual cruelty of a person knowingly throwing someone’s pet into a wheelie bin, deliberately causing suffering. Anyone who attempts to compare these two (Guardianista) again, gets the contempt they so richly deserve.
Myth Number 3; cats should be kept indoors.
Unless you are into the ritualised cruelty of de-clawing and preventing the animal from following any of its instincts, this is out of the question. Cats need to walk their territory. It is as much a part of their instinct as hunting and scavenging. So you don’t like cats wandering into your garden? There are products on the market that deter them, so buy one and put it in the garden if it bothers you that much.
One neighbour when we lived in Bristol, started shooting at our cats using a pea-shooter. I didn’t know who it was, but later spoke to someone who did. She wouldn’t divulge the name, so I reminded her that he was breaking the animal welfare act and if I did find out, I would take the matter up with the view to seeing him prosecuted. One thing I will not tolerate is animal cruelty. My warning had the desired effect, the pea-shooting stopped a day or so later.
We also put a sand-pit in our garden to encourage our cats to use it as a litter. It worked a treat – every other cat in the vicinity used it as well.
Whenever I see discussions such as the ones witnessed recently following the bin episode, I am reminded why, on balance, I like cats more than I like people.
And, just for all you cat haters out there:
Those are lovely cats.
Do you get a prize for guessing how many there are in that big ball of fur?
So I’m guessing you like cats?
I love all life forms and the sight of one creature being thrown into a shitbin appalls me,however when it comes to commies and anti smokers I am more than willing to make exceptions. In the pursuit of a better world it is
an absolute prerequisite to bin as many nannies ,zealots
and health freaks as is humanely possible.
Before our species and our fellow creatures can reach
a Nirvane of mutual co-existence, self righteous creeps and their fellow travellers will have to be liner binned of
to some cosmic tip.
Smoking Cat Flap
Well said. I like cats and dogs, but I struggle with the notion of an animal who, if you kick it, grovels to you. A cat will express its feelings very clearly and won’t thank you for your cruelty. Which is why we have cats living with us.
Best ever thing caught by one of ours while out on the prowl – someone’s roast chicken. The cats ate well for days. (If it was your chicken and you’re reading this – sorry!)
You haven’t read the execrable bullcrap from effete lefty whinger Gimpy yet, have you? Cats upset the eco-system now and owners should be prosecuted if they allow them out, apparently.
It’s original, I suppose. Pop over to Jack’s place. 😉
We have a cat. She has chosen to live here for more than ten years now. We feed her and my mum cuddles her every now and again but I just leave her alone. She’s quite happy with that; she isn’t an affectionate sort of cat, not by a long chalk. Hold her even for a few seconds and she hates it, desperately trying to free herself from your grasp. That arrangement suits me fine, particularly as she never sits on my computer chair now after a few nasty surprises!
Yeah, you like cats. They do still shit in my garden though. That ain’t a myth.
Great post, L-R.
Another one for all you cat-haters out there……some years ago, my then neighbour’s Jack Russel (surely the most eminently dislikeable of all dog breeds) attacked one of my cats, in my garden, and it took a lot of veterinary care to repair the damage.
I told my neighbour that if he didn’t keep his dog under control, and it attacked my cat in my garden again, then I would cheerfully treat the dog to the technique I was taught in the Forces about how to deal with a guard dog – grab the two front paws and wrench them violently apart so that the inner/upper ends of the bones rupture the aorta and the dog obligingly drops dead.
Naturally I wouldn’t have done this, in a million years, but the neighbour didn’t know that, and the threat did the trick.
Dog owners put up with similar ignorance from people who just don’t like dogs, but rather than admit that they hate something, they pretend to have principled objections to dogs.
The best one is accusing us of not cleaning up dog mess. Myth #1, dog owners hate the environment and delight in leaving dog mess everywhere.
Not keeping our dogs under control is also a good one, because dog haters are unable to distinguish between dogs that are playing and dogs that are fighting. Myth #2, dogs are dangerous when off lead.
And then there’s the tabloid-fuelled fear of certain breeds which strike terror into the hearts of the righteous. Myth #3, rottweilers and staffies cannot be trained and will eat your children.
“Should be on a lead!” as someone once said to my labrador.
2 cats live in the house. Well, one really as the other one seems to prefer the outside life. Sometimes the one that lives outside brings ‘kills’ home which are predominately small rodents but every now and again a bird. The rodents also have to put up with the local owl. Cuckoo threw out eggs of other birds and left them to bring up newborn cuckoo. Garden fishpond down the road lost most of it’s fish to a Heron. Neighbours chicken run got attacked by fox. Frogs in our pond disappeared one night???
Getting complicated now … Gimpy, sort it out. 🙂
Cats and me, well, we don’t get on. We both want our own way and the ways rarely coincide. I would still never consider wanton cruelty (even though the cats might). I can’t have a dog either. That level of subservience is embarrassing. For me it’s reptiles. They don’t give a shit.
Yes, there are neighbours’ cats who crap in the garden. I scoop it up with a shovel and place in around the rhubarb. If they could train their cats to crap beneath rhubarb leaves, that would be great.
As for killing, I know at least three local cats have spotted the mice who live at the end of the garden. The mice are still there. There’s no excuse, I have photographs of the mice, they aren’t scared of me at all. I could have caught them and I don’t have retractable claws, and I’m nowhere near cat-fast. The sparrows are also increasing in number, not decreasing, despite the attention of a lot of cats.
So if cats are supposed to be eradicating wildlife, the local ones need to buck up their ideas a bit. They aren’t doing what the Lefties want them to do.
Then again, neither is anything else.
Cat lovers, it seems, are everywhere… 🙂
Bucko – three kittens plus mother.
BenS – I didn’t say tha tthey don’t shit in the garden, merely that their instinct is to bury it whereupon it becomes fertiliser.
LI – mine don’t go near the rhubarb either. I think there’s something about it. The flowerbeds are a different matter.
Yup, I saw Gimpy’s execrable comments. Nuff said.
Julia – yes, I saw that one, too.
Vladimir – my sister has a dog, so I see this prejudice as well. I quite like dogs, just not enough to want one.
In my experience you get fewer problems with cats fouling your garden if you have one of your own. Which seems counter intuitive but presumably is due to other cats respecting the territory of yours. My two don’t hunt much but one of them did bring in a huge hawk moth caterpillar the other day, still alive and unharmed. I’ve never believed the propaganda about cats depleting wildlife, as you say feral populations are far more harmful and how is it that cats have been alongside us for centuries and yet it’s only in the last thirty years or so that bird numbers have gone into serious decline ? Paving over gardens does far more harm to urban wildlife than cats could ever do.
Yes, Man is far more harmful to wildlife than cats can ever be. And, like all predators, they will pick off the weak and sickly individuals, strengthening the breeding stock of the prey.
We have a great cat called Tim and very lucky as we live in the country. Tim is the best hunter I have ever seen and without fail every morning will bring us a rabbit as a present. Despite being fed several times a day he still brings us little gifts, over the past two weeks we have had Rabbits, Magpies, Rats, Mice and even a pheasant.
I would never be without him now, he is the most loving cat I have ever seen and sleeps on our bed each night. Each to their own I suppose, but I can never understand people who do not like Cats or Dogs.
Myth 1. Bury it? You must have blocked sinuses. The stench of cat poo is unmistakable and “bury” is a loose term – maybe accidentally kick some soil over it. Shit in the garden is shit in the garden.
Myth 2. Agree. Cat owners do not “enable” – that talk is typical Authoritarian inversion. However, the number of cats in the Uk would be significantly less if not kept as pets, so cat ownership DOES impact needless slaughter of wildlife. Before one bans fox hunting, ban cat ownership and I do not see the justification of banning cat ownership. We would probably be overrun by vermin if we did.
Myth 3. More authoritarian lerks.
I like cats. Yes, when they look at you they are thinking “When I get bigger, I can eat you”, but until then and as long as you feed them, they are your best friend. I enjoy stroking cats and giving them massages – they go ga ga, dribble and are very pleased to see one once they remember. Alas, I am now allergic to airborne dry cat spittle, so I must dose myself up in anti-histamines.
I like dogs but only if properly trained and in the right settings. They are often smelly and slobber.
Finally, I do not understand people who treat other people worse than these animals. Some pet owners, I believe, hate people. I’d buy them a mirror only I suspect they cast no reflection.
Nothing wrong with my sense of smell. Cats dig a hole, shit then backfill the hole. As I said, there are about thirty of them in the immediate vicinity and there is no problem with it. It is no more of a problem out in the open air than someone’s cigarette smoke. Also, horse shit smells, yet people are happy enough with it on their gardens. My point remains; this is a non-problem.
Given that pet ownership includes neutering programmes, queens that would be responsible for thousands of offspring during their lives no longer reproduce, that one doesn’t hold up.
I don’t hate people. I can’t say that I like them very much. Cats (and other animals) behave as their instincts drive them, they are what they are. I see no reason to look favourably on my fellow man when often all I see is malice, spite, hatred, wanton violence, cruelty and control freakery.
1. It might be a non-problem for you, but your stance is irrational. I can tell if a cat has shat in my garden, ergo it is a problem. To think you can compare the pong of horse manure to the utter rank stench of cat shit is fanciful. Horses eat hay, cats, meat. Join the dots.
2. “that one doesn’t hold up”. So you think we would have more cats if nobody kept them as pets? You are kidding, right? Anyway, in your defensiveness you seem to have not noticed that I believe it may do us a favour having domestic cats in terms of vermin control.
3. I said some. Further, if you do not see malice, wanton violence, cruelty and control-freakery in cats, then you should look again.
You normally make alot of sense, so it is disappointing to see your logic, reasoning and perceptions appear crumble when you come to pets.
Roger, there is nothing irrational about accepting the natural world as it is. Living organisms defecate – what they eat is neither here nor there. Horse manure stinks as much as that of carnivores and is as unpleasant. If my neighbour puts it on his garden, I have to smell it. He doesn’t ask if it’s okay and I don’t expect him to. It is not a problem.
In France, people allow their dogs to wander about freely. I can’t say that I much like it, but that’s the way it is. And, yes, they come into our garden and shit and, yes, it stinks. We scoop it up and put it onto the flower beds to decompose. Not a problem. I don’t complain to anyone about it any more than I complain about someone walking past me smoking a cigarette (I don’t like that, either). It’s only a problem if you choose to make it one. I fail to see how this makes me irrational.
No, I’m not kidding about feral cat colonies. One fertile female queen will have around three litters per year. Kittens are sexually active from about six months old. Therefore, by the time the mother is on her third litter, the first one is producing. Do the maths. During her lifetime, that queen will be responsible for several thousand progeny. Although you would have to factor in a degree of accidents and illness, they would multiply at a much greater rate than currently happens. A pet cat that has been neutered is responsible for no progeny and will not hunt continuously throughout its life – that’s several thousand kittens that never got born. In general, a neutered domestic animal is most likely to hunt during the early years of its life as it responds to its instincts. As they grow older, they become lazy – for the most part. To suggest that domestic animals that have a ready food supply and hunt because their instinct drives them to, take more wildlife as kills than an expanding feral colony that relies entirely on kills for sustenance, is illogical and defies the biological and mathematical facts.
I would also point out that we have feral colonies here – and despite them living entirely on their kills, we have an abundance of wildlife. This is because like predators the world over, their predation is likely to weed out the weak, injured and sick, strengthening the gene pool of the survivors.
As for cats being cruel, you are anthropomorphising. They are not cruel. Again, this is natural behaviour. A cat kills with a bite to the nape of the neck. Having a short snout, the animal is vulnerable from bites as the prey tries to defend itself. The cat will tire its prey in order to pacify it to the point where the killing bite poses no risk to itself. This is not malice or spite. Cats, unlike humans do not experience the necessary intellectual functions to do this. If you want to blame someone or something because this appears cruel to you, blame nature or God if you believe in him.
I am making as much sense here as I always do – it’s the same live and let live approach that I take in every other aspect of my life.