Subject: [janglo] EVENT: Protest Outside Knesset on Behalf of Street Cats
Date: 27 February 2006 9:23:08 AM IST
From: Zippora P.
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;Please join us this coming Wednesday just before 8 a.m. outside the Knesset where we are planning to demonstrate against the Government’s proposed plan to forbid the feeding of street cats.
The demonstration will last until approx. 9 a.m.
For further details, please contact Eve (Chaya) [numbers deleted - NG].
I only post this because I find it funny. Street cats are like the scourge of my life, diseased and disgusting and overrunning this country, and here there is a group of people that is not only willing to feed them, but even willing to demonstrate publicly their lunacy. Weirdos.
I think that was an important demonstration. Since you seem to be ignorant of the efforts in your own country to *reduce* the numbers of street (aka feral or stray) cats, here’s my attempt to educate you.
For decades many countries have attempted to reduce the number of homeless animals by simply slaughtering them en masse. Obviously, this has not worked. People seeking to find a more humane solution to animal overpopulation came up with Trap-Neuter-Return (TRN). This process involves trapping cats, sterilizing and vaccinating them, then returning them to their trap location and making sure they are fed on a daily basis. Because these so-called cat colonies are fed every day, the feeder (known as a caretaker) can see when a new, unsterilized cat has moved in. That cat can then be TNRed. Because these cats are unable to reproduce, their numbers will be naturally reduced over time.
Most street cats are street cats because they have been abandoned by cruel, uncaring people, or because people are too stupid or stubborn to have their indoor/outdoor cats sterilized. Your disgust should be directed toward people, not the cats.
As you can see, the ability to feed street cats is a key part of TNR, an effort to humanely reduce the street cat population.
Also, TNR involves vaccination, thereby reducing diseases (and most feline diseases do not affect humans, anyway).
TNR does seem well-intended, except in the cases of people who use it as an excuse to sustain a population of cats in the middle of human population centers, ie cities. I wonder, though, how TNR would advance in a society like Israel that’s full of people who choose not to spay/neuter their pets for religious reasons? I guess there are leniencies and loopholes to that rule, but my understanding is that Judaism is pretty clear about not removing an animal’s sex organs. Perhaps as an alternative, or addition, to TNR, Israeli society might want to invest in effective and efficient garbage removal, to undercut the environmental source – trash piling up everywhere from Eilat to Metulla – for a feral cat population that I imagine continues to grow from season to season. Of course, I imagine that would also require the government to step in and dispose of trash in areas where Arabs live, and I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.
Anyway, thanks for the education. It’s apparent I have a lot to learn on the topic of feral cats, should I ever develop a real interest in that subject. But since I won’t, and I’m mainly concerned with (a) keeping them away from me, and (b) not doing anything too cruel to achieve (a), I’ll continue to be weirded out by the cat people who protested in front of the Knesset.