For all you who attack me for not going along with TNR or who get angry at me for even suggesting that cats be kept indoors or within outdoor enclosures, I have a modest proposal.
I suggest that we allow someone who has one of these cats to let his pet roam freely in your neighborhood under the same standards with which you tolerate free-roaming and feral cats:
Like most free roaming and feral domestic cats, it won’t be a skilled predator at first. So it will probably maim and maul a few children and domestic dogs before it becomes truly lethal.
Eventually, the man with the leopard will have his pretty pet leaving human and dog body parts at the door– just to show his owner what a great killer he is!
Scores of children and dogs and probably suburban deer and raccoon will succumb to the great cat.
But because we have the same standard for this free-roaming leopard as free roaming domestic cats, no one can do anything about it.
Now, you know that this scenario is absurd.
But if you really think about it, free roaming cats and ferals are leopards to small birds, mammals, and reptiles.One free-roaming cat could easily do as much damage to those species as our hypothetical free-roaming leopard would do to humans, dogs, and larger wildlife.
And this problem is made worse because it is socially acceptable in too many places to allow cats to roam. Dogs normally are strictly controlled by ordinances. If you can find a nice place that allows dogs some liberty, all power to you. Governments are quite authoritarian about dogs, but cats are essentially ignored.
This makes no sense in terms of ecology. Dogs actually have to learn how to hunt, and they be trained to leave wildlife alone. Cats are instinctive predators, and it is very difficult to teach them anything. The cat family has undergone an evolution toward great jaw strength and muscle mass, while the dog family has undergone an evolution towards greater social intelligence and greater endurance. That’s why dogs are generally less of an ecological problem than one might think– although they certainly are in places like the Galapagos.
In too many parts of the country, cats are deemed domestic animals, even if they cannot be tamed and are breeding freely in the wild. That means that wildlife management agencies have no jurisdiction over them. This legal limbo allows cats to exist in certain areas without ever experiencing the kind of controls that are needed to protect both public health and native wildlife.
So while it would be insane to let someone turn his leopard loose on a neighborhood, we have allowed a leopard of a smaller sort to run amok through our ecosystems for far too long. To a songbird or rabbit kit, the house cat is a leopard of the fellest kind.
But it is impossible to have a rational discussion about any of this.
Cats are America’s sacred cows.
The evidence is very clear about what sort of ecological damage they do. The level of denialism on that compendium of studies is breathtaking. Only creationists are more brazen in their attacks on what the evidence actually says.
If a individual or firm released a pollutant that sort of damage, you would want fines issued and arrests made. You’d want the firm put out of business.
But cats are cute. CEO’s are not.
Who cares about the facts?
When I was a young child, our family had only cats. They were outdoor-indoor cats, spending only nights inside generally. For most of my life, until I became an adult and got my own dogs and became more involved in ‘dog culture’, I never questioned having cats that way, or why it was considered ‘ok’ to let them roam free at will and wander on other people’s property.
But in recent years, learning more about the subject, I’ve become much more ant-free roaming cat. You’re right that it’s a stupid double standard, and cat culture has not changed at all from 100 years ago, unlike dog culture. There is something wrong with that. People react in horror if their dog kills an animal, but with a cat it’s just a shrug or even pride.
It’s not hard or expensive to cat-proof a yard for your cat to safely enjoy, or to screen a balcony or porch.
If there were packs of wild dogs roaming around, people would not tolerate it at all. But you can’t even tell half the time if a roaming cat is owned or not — wandering cats are just ignored. Why people can’t see the problem with that is beyond me.
and dogs get killed all the time as “dangerous” for doing what cats do with impunity
I am just not too keen on the size of the poop that thing is going to leave in the flowerbeds.
So what exactly are you suggesting? I’m not being obnoxious, I’m curious.
Keep beloved pet cats indoor or under control outdoors.
Allow wildlife professionals to kill every cat in wildlife areas.
Alright. It’s something I’ve had to reconcile being a birder and whipped cat owner. But now that we’ve got neighbor dogs on three sides and a stray tom with a serious vendetta it’s not so much of an issue.
But lizards in the house don’t get a pass.
I’ve never owned a cat. But I just do not understand how people can let their cats roam. I’d worry myself sick if my cat were wandering about. Not only that, I am more respectful of my neighbors than to allow my animals to poop on their property and run free at will. I just don’t get this loose cat mentality.
It makes sense that pet cats should follow much the same “rules” as pet dogs. But then, what about the very useful barn cats that so many farmers have? They do serve a real purpose in keeping down mice and rats that would otherwise thrive and which can be a real problem.
Dogs in rural areas are not really subjected to the same laws as the ones in urban centres.
Actually, the best rodent control I’ve heard of is the ferret. Contrary to what many thing, ferrets don’t go feral readily. Only New Zealand has a population feral ferret/polecat hybrids. And they are much more effective at keeping rats out of granaries, which is why ferrets were always sold at livestock auctions.
The other way to control rats is to get someone with three or four good ratting terriers, and let them loose in the granary. They will kill far more rats than any cat, and they’ll do it quickly.
Also, ferret droppings alone are enough to scare away rats. Just place the droppings near the granary in an area where rats are likely to enter.
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/129/1/Earth-friendly-rodent-control.html
Dat’s good, MRS! I’ve wondering the same thing here for a long time.
If you dont like cats roaming just catch them and take them down to the local animal control (or call for pickup), after a few trips and fines pet owners will eventually change. This is the policy of most communities towards dogs for the last fourty or so years, it took time but attitudes changed. These days if you see a dog wandering loose its not feral its stray, and no one would argue with you for turning him in, its the responsible thing to do. Back in the thirties it wasnt the same story, you actually had feral dogs sculking down alleys, but that’s changed.
If everyone who cared took every oportunity to rid the neighborhood of stray cats by simply turning them in, the feral ones wouldnt be far behind. People who want to keep their cats under such circumstances will keep them responsibly, and the ones who don’t will lose their animals.
Were you actually recommending ferrets? I must protest. I adamantly protest. Ferrets could naturalize to just about any enivironment or terrain your country and climate could throw at them, including deserts and grasslands, marshes, any type of forest, whatever. Such a bad idea; you’re right, they are efficient killers, thats why its such a bad idea. It may not be ferrets but the UK and several other coutries now have feral mink (I know, they were never domestic), not only that, but I’ve heard Polecats in parts of Europe are hybridizing their way to extinction due to unwise introductions. I’m sorry but you are wrong, the danger of feral ferrets is as high as it is for cats, racoons (Japan), rats, or pigs.
Out of curiousity, what makes you think they wouldnt (go feral)?
I’ve heard even wild ones are very tame, I myself have approched more than one pine martin, on of them I could’ve plucked right from the tree he was in, they’re completly fearless.
What you do is you remove the canine teeth on the ferret so it can’t kill to survive on its own.
Ferrets have never naturalized anywhere but New Zealand.
Hi,
As a ferret enthusiast I have to say that what you are proposing is extremely cruel- rats are fierce fighters and a ferret being worked on rats without canine teeth will suffer terrible injuries. It would be like sending a defanged terrier underground to meet a fully toothed fox.
You do not need to resort to suggesting such cruelties to make the point that ferrets won’t survive in the wild, and that ferrets can be used for vermin control- wild mustelids would easily out compete them and domesticated ferrets have very few survival instincts as it is. They have no fear of predators. There are only a few cases of self sustaining feral ferrets and NZ is one of them, but even so these animals were not pure domestic ferrets, but hybrids. A similar situation exists in the UK, but without the devastating consequences as the niche they occupy is the one created by low European Polecat populations. Feral ferrets have not become established for various reasons- the removal of their teeth not being one of them.
I have been working ferrets on rabbits for nearly ten years and have never felt the need to remove their teeth. It is considered a cruel practise within the ferreting cummunity and I am deeply dissapointed to see you suggesting it. Ferrets are amazing, hard working domesticated animals that deserve respect. Much like dogs. And if being worked there is no reason why these ferrets would be left to take their chances in the wild anyway. We use tracking collars and our working ferrets are not disposable- they are respected and valued members of the hunting team.
So unless you would also suggest defanging the terriers as a precaution, please reconsider your thoughts on defanging ferrets. It is absolutely not necessary, and is not a respected practise amongst ferreters.
Thanks,
Polecatty
The only reason why I’m suggesting this is the old way ferreting used to be done in the US.
You had to remove the canine teeth, so that the ferret would never go feral. I’ve never heard of one getting injured. This is what my grandparents did. The big problem was that dogs were very likely to catch the ferret and kill it while it was doing its work.
Maybe times have changed. They have actually outlawed rabbit ferreting in my state for many, many years. You can still run them in granaries.
Our rabbits actually do not dig their own warrens, but on the coldest days in winter, they go underground. When it was legal, you could send a ferret underground and catch the rabbits with your hands as they came out.
A terrier can never go feral. A coyote will eat it.
Yes it is quite different now- defanging [along with muzzling] is one of the ‘old’ practises that have been ditched due to welfare and practicality reasons- ferrets can get terribly ripped up by rats, especially if they find a female rat with young in the nest.
Dogs are always broken to ferrets now and someone who brings a dog that isn’t proofed to ferrets on a hunt becomes a very unpopular person indeed. That’s a real shame that ferreting for rabbits has been outlawed where you live…there’s not much better for rabbiting than a ferret or two and a good fast dog. Very exciting stuff!
I imagine a yote would make very short work of a ferret as well. Terriers would have more chance of surviving that ferrets would here, but there are no yotes to contend with.
BTW, I was suggesting that this be done under anesthesia at the same time the ferret was neutered.
That’s when it was done.
The procedure being done under anesthesia would not prevent injuries from rats though, which is really the main welfare concern.
That aside, you might be interested in this forum as it has an expansive ferreting section in addition to many dog sections…some great stories, pics and info to be found.
http://www.thehuntinglife.com/forums/
You’ve convinced me. I hereby rescind the suggestion that anyone defang a ferret for any reason.
In Greenland, all dogs have their canine teeth removed for safety purposes. The only dogs allowed in Greenland are sled dogs, and they must be put down when they turn 5.
The Inuit tradition was to turn out the sled dogs in the summer, where they went quite wild and occasionally attacked people. If they had too many sled dogs– usually the older animals that were too old to run– they just left the run out all year. Many starved to death. Many became quite dangerous to people.
So they came up with these regulations– which seem draconian to us– but are probably necessary. Remove the older dogs from the population, so the only dogs around would be useful. Take away their canine teeth so they couldn’t hunt, so no one would think it was a good idea to turn them loose in the summer to fend for themselves.
That is really interesting, didn’t know that. You are right in that is seems draconian but it probably necessary for that particular situation given the conditions and cultural practises…I do not believe that this would be good working ferret husbandry, though, and I am very glad my dog is not subjected to those methods. I suspect she would have trouble retrieving rabbits if she didn’t have her canines and full use of her teeth!
There is another good reason for leaving ferret canine’s intact, and apart from the cruelty factor was probably a key factor in the drastic reduction of ferret defanging.
A ferret that finds a rabbit in a stopend will kill the rabbit and move on quickly to find more…a ferret that doesn’t have teeth will still find such a rabbit and will still try to kill it, but will end up spending a lot of time scratching away at the rabbit. It will end up exhausted and inclined to sleep, or may simply persevere for hours. A very bad situation if the ferret is under a rock pile or other surface where digging is impossible.
Canary Islands: http://www.physorg.com/news190372260.html
But I’ve never heard of any other examples.
I’m not talking about turning ferrets loose on farm. I’m talking about using them to drive out the rats so people and dogs can kill them.
Just neuter them and remove the canine teeth, and they can’t naturalize. They will starve to death.
That’s the way they did in the old days in WV, and we have never had a wild ferret.
What makes me think they won’t go feral?
If they are neutered and have no canine teeth, they can’t survive in the wild.
And even if they did, they couldn’t outcompete native mustelids, which is probably why the US has never had a feral ferret population.
Ferrets used to be very common on farms in the East for ratting and rabbiting purposes.
Domestic ferrets have been domesticated for centuries, and the ones that took over NZ had to be backcrossed to polecats.
I absolutely hate the anti-ferreting laws that exist. I believe they come from a period of paranoia based upon some isolated cases on islands.
I think that most of the anti-ferret laws were passed because until very recently, there was no approved rabies vaccine that was tested & proven safe and effective for ferrets. Many states had laws completely banning ferrets as pets. It used to be illegal to vaccinate them with rabies vaccine; there are some modified live rabies vaccines, no longer in common use in the USA, that can cause a rabies-like disease in cats and ferrets.(Although many people did anyway, using killed vaccine for cats.) But the modern rabies vaccines are labeled for cats and ferrets as well as dogs.
Ferrets are legal to own in most states now. I think only California and Hawaii ban pet ferrets now. But it’s still illegal to hunt with them. I don’t know if there’s any place in the USA where that’s legal.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/25536806
Every case I have found is either iffy (like this one) or on some island. Never on a major continent.
If you don’t want to run ferrets out and ferret rats, then use ferret droppings.
Most female ferrets are spayed before they even reach maturity, for the simple reason that if a female ferret is not bred when she becomes sexually mature (6-8 months), she will die of aplastic anemia. It’s for this reason all ferrets sold in pet shops are pediatric neuters.
Ferrets are actually quite inept at naturalising to environments- which is why they are found in a feral state in only a very few, specific locations.
They are cold climate animals that do not adapt well to heat at all [I have to be very careful with mine in summer. They will get heatstoke and die swiftly if allowed to overheat, which they are very prone to doing] and they are not versatile hunters like cats. There is a big difference between a mink and a ferret. A mink would eat a ferret for breakfast and is fast, flightly and wonderful at swimming and climbing- all traits that the domestic ferret does not posses.
Ferret/polecat hybrids have much more zing to them, and these are what can be found in NZ.
I live in a country where ferrets have been used for hunting rats and rabbits for a very long time, yet we do not have any feral ferrets. They just can’t survive. On the other hand, we do have big problems with cats, foxes, rats, pigs, dogs and many other introduced species.
You are right about them being fearless, though. It is another trait that contributes to a low survival rate- they will happily walk into the jaws of a dog or fox!
If people neutered their cats, the problem would havebeen solved already.
In my sister’s farm, they’ve always had cats, actually it is the same cat family for decades already. They have lived in the stable for those decades, given birth to many, many cubs. My sister gives away some of the new cats, some are killed sometimes. Once in a 5-10 years, they neutre the new big mother cat.
If the cats are neutred, and if they are loved in their place, they don’t roam far. They are not feral cats. It is a diffenent class. Even in US, they classify cats like that; feral, out-going tame cats and indoor-cats. And the feral are the problem.
The Finnish farm cats are very good landrace, and it would be just idiotic to talk about them as they were a disaster of a somekind. If that system works in a place, why change?
Most people DO neuter their cats. That has no effect on the already-huge feral cat population that has breds at will, without human supervision, for decades. That is a problem that cannot be solved by holding the average cat owner responsible, since most of them are not directly responsible for it.
Maybe in Finland they aren’t a disaster, but North America, they clearly are.
I DO NOT recommend turning ferrets loose to control rats, if you care anything about your ferrets! They CANNOT live long on their own in North America–they are just too domesticated, and have way too many natural predators here, and as others have already said, are fearless, and will go right up to ANYTHING, and so get killed. I HATE those cutsie Nature movies showing domestic ferrets happily playing in the wild, as if they were wild critters, because it gives disgruntled ferret owners the idea that they can just release their pets that they are tired of, and they’ll live happily-ever-after! In reality, they die of exposure, starvation, or if lucky, are killed quickly by predators. They DID used to be sold en masse and released on farms in this country in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s before all the laws against them got passed(by ignorant wildlife officials that didn’t know what they were talking about regarding ferrets establishing feral populations in the U. S.), but those unsentimental farmers didn’t really care what happened to the ferrets, so long as they did a bit of rat control before they expired. Ferrets have been escaping and have been purposefully released in the U. S. since Revolutionary War days, in massive amounts throughout the country as rodent control as mentioned, lost by hunters(before hunting with them was outlawed in the U. S. and since by “poachers”!), and continuously as escaped/released pets ever since–and they never have established a wild population. To survive in the wild, they seem to need very specific circumstances–a population of European rabbits who dig warrens they can shelter in and which provide food for the ferrets, and no other competing predators–the only places I’ve heard they’ve survived are island environments with these particulars.
[…] And long-time readers of the blog know that I once made a comparison between letting pet cats wander and turning out a leopard into a neighborhood. […]