Sterilizing Cats Is Cruel, Barbaric, and Deadly

The American Bird Conservancy's (ABC) highly successful Cats Indoors campaign has led to the proliferation of TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) programs in practically every city across the nation. Whereas for the ABC and its allies (National Audubon Society, PETA, National Geographic, National Wildlife, etc.) the only good cat is a dead one, for TNR advocates the only good cat is a sterilized one. Unless both of these factions are confronted and their lies exposed, Felis domestica will one day go the way of Tyrannosaurus rex and the woolly mammoth.

Whereas the malevolent designs of aulirophobes such as the ABC are pretty much transparent, the machinations of the sterilizers are far more insidious. Extermination and sterilization both lead to the same cul-de-sac as far as cats are concerned; the latter merely takes longer.

Not only is sterilization bad for the species as a whole but, more importantly, it is cruel, barbaric, and dangerous for individual cats. Although methods vary, the long road which ends with the removal of either a cat's ovaries or his testicles usually begins with starvation and trickery. TNR advocates' main objective in feeding feral cats is sterilization, not the alleviation of hunger. Consequently, after a while they cut off the food supply and begin starving the cats in order to lure them into their baited traps.

Not only does this duplicity cause the cats to become even more wary of humans and thus reducing their adoptability, but it also constitutes a rather traumatic experience for them. Having never before known anything but freedom, they are suddenly trapped in a cage, transferred to an even more confining pet carrier, and then transported by strange-looking, queer-sounding giants to a veterinarian's surgery.

At the surgery the real barbarism begins. The cats are first anesthetized and then sterilized. One of their ears is carved up as a permanent signpost to let their mutilators know that they have been fixed. Sometimes microchips are surgically implanted in their shoulders.

There are many problems with these procedures. First of all, the anesthesia alone kills some of the cats. The Times-News of Twin Falls, Idaho reported in its April 18th edition that a recent sterilization party in Jackpot, Idaho claimed the life of one cat while under anesthesia. Secondly, some cats die soon thereafter from Vaccine Associated Sarcomas (VAS), which are cancers caused by the mandatory vaccinations which all sterilized cats receive; this is particularly true in the case of inoculations administered for the Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) and rabies. Thirdly, postoperative care at the sterilization mills is almost nonexistent. After their surgeries the cats are returned almost immediately to either the wild or to a shelter where sometimes their incisions either break or become infected. Their carved-up ears can also easily become infected. Back in February, Alley Cat Allies held a spay and neuter clinic one weekend in a Washington, D. C. school and thereafter left the cafeteria in such a mess that the school was forced to close the following Monday. Based on this, one has to question not only the procedures themselves but the sanitary conditions under which they are performed.

Most TNR groups would have the public believe that all cats trapped and sterilized are returned to their territories where they live out their lives. This is patently untrue. Alley Cat Allies, for example, returns only forty per cent of the cats it traps; the remainder are sent to shelters where almost one-hundred per cent of them are exterminated shortly after their arrival. The petit fait that sterilizers are seldom willing to admit that they, too, exterminate large numbers of cats is proof that they know what they are doing is morally reprehensible.

Shelters are even filthier than the sterilization factories. Not only is space severely limited but cattery diseases are rampant. Consequently, many cats who were relatively healthy living in the wild become incurably sick when incarcerated. Right on cue, the shelters then capitalize on these illnesses and a general lack of space as convenient justifications to exterminate more cats. A similar situation prevails at homeless shelters and soup kitchens where chlamydia pneumoniae and other communicable diseases are rampant. Warehousing is deadly for both animals and humans alike.

Cats have just as much a right to live as do humans and this includes the right to procreate. Moreover, since they have so many enemies in this world cats need to have robust sex lives. The argument that sterilized cats live longer and healthier lives is difficult to substantiate. It might have some validity as far as indoor cats are concerned but even that is questionable. If a cat is kept indoors, sterilization (and vaccination) is superfluous; to sterilize a cat in order to ensure an owner's peace and quiet is cruel an self-serving. More importantly, it is difficult to see any health benefits for sterilizing homeless cats; on the contrary, they need their testosterone and estrogen not only to survive but also to ensure that they produce offsprings.

Also troubling is the fact that, contrary to what TNR advocates allege, not all colonies of sterilized cats are cared for in a proper manner. For instance, despite all of its millions, Alley Cat Allies feeds the Boardwalk cats in Atlantic City only cheap dry food, which has been shown to cause lower urinary tract problems. Cats are carnivores and need meat; a milk substitute called Cat Sip along with some fruits and vegetables would also be beneficial to their health.

Critics will argue that the feline population must be kept in check by either exterminations or sterilizations. This is nonsense. If the sterilizers are so concerned about keeping down the population of cats why do they sell the eggs they remove from female cats to cloners such as Low Hawthorne of Savings and Clone of Sausalito?

The problem is not too many cats, but rather too many people and too much greed. More to the point, to kill and sterilize innocent animals who have committed no crime other than daring to exist is morally indefensible.

Just as both extermination and sterilization should be opposed, so too should such draconian anti-cat laws as those which require licensing, collars and leashes, mandatory vaccinations, and imprisonment indoors. Statutes which set unreasonable limits on the number of cats a person can own are also a bad idea.

National Geographic Is Trying to Exterminate Cats

Over the past several years the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), the National Audubon Society, PETA, National Wildlife, and National Geographic have launched a coordinated campaign to have all the feral cats in American rounded up and exterminated. Appendaged below is my response to one of National Geographic's many anti-cat screeds; the fascists at the magazine refused, of course, to print it.

Dear Inveterate Liars and Hypocrites:

This epistle is in response to Maryann Mott's pack of lies, entitled, "U.S. Faces Growing Feral Cat Problem."

Tell me, did the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and the NationalAudubon Society pay you to print Mott's anti-cat screed or are the writers and editors at National Geographic merely fascistic ailurophobes?

First of all, there is not any reliable scientific evidence available as to the number of birds and mammals killed by cats or the impact of their activities on these groups. There are, however, numerous other far more significant causes of avian and mammalian mortality than feline predation. Among these are: habitat destruction, pollution, radio, TV, and cell phone towers, electrical lines, pesticides, tall buildings, collisions with airplanes, trains, and autos, climate change, wind turbines, infant mortality, diseases such as avian influenza and the West Nile Virus, hunting for sport (such as by your buddies, Dick Cheney and John Kerry), extermination campaigns launched by airports, nuisance extermination programs aimed at pigeons and geese, and predation by foxes, weasels and other animals.

Even the planting of genetically modified crops is having a deleterious effect upon wildlife. For example, recent studies conducted in Old Blighty have shown that GM crops are harmful to songbirds, insects, bees, butterflies, and wildflowers. Specifically, herbicides used on genetically modified rape weed also kill broad-leaved wildflowers such as chickweed and flat hen which are eaten by skylarks, tree sparrows, and bullfinches. Why don't the bird lovers go after genetically modified crops instead of cats? Could it be that they own stock in Monsanto?

Also, birds of prey, such as hawks, eagles, owls, etc., kill other birds. Noise pollution is also having a detrimental effect upon songbirds and their ability to teach their fledglings not only to fly but to sing as well. Finally, the widespread extermination of cats that National Geographic is recommending has already indirectly led to the deaths of dozens of bald and golden eagles who have died from dining on the sodium pentobarbital-laced carcasses of cats and dogs which have been indiscriminately dumped in landfills. National Geographic, the ABC, and the Audubon Society are too dishonest to mention these facts.

Although I do not take any pleasure in attacking birds, it nonetheless must be noted that birds, too, have a detrimental effect on the environment, other animals, and humans. For instance, it is not unusual for owls, hawks, and eagles to kill cats, kittens, rabbits, snakes, lizards, mice, and chickens. Ospreys kills fish and crabs and all birds, especially songbirds, kill insects. Based upon the logic put forth by National Geographic and bird lovers, defenders of earthworms and other insects would be justified in demanding that all birds be either caged or exterminated.

Furthermore, it is the pinnacle of hypocrisy for the ABC and National Geographic to accuse cats of being disease-carriers when this is not only patently untrue but it is birds in fact who spread all types of influenza as well as the West Nile Virus. More pertinently, both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been issuing warnings for months concerning an expected pandemic of avian influenza. Goose dropping foul reservoirs and streams with Escherichia coli, salmonella, and giardia. Pigeons and other types of birds sometimes make a nuisance of themselves and scarecrows have never been erected in order to frighten away cats.

Finally, birds start forest fires which are responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine woodlands as well as the destruction of thousands of homes and the deaths of untold numbers of animals, other birds, and humans. For instance, an owl which had just stolen a bird from a nest ignited a forest fire in Lake Chelan, Washington back in July of 2004 when it crashed into a power line. Also during the same month, a red-tailed hawk sparked a forest fire in northern Los Angeles County when it, too, flew into a power line.

As if the lies and hypocrisy of National Geographic and bird lovers were not enough, there remains the simple fact that no animal has been more maligned and mistreated down through history than the cat. For starters, shelters in the United States alone exterminate more than ten million cats every year. Animal Control, veterinarians, game wardens, and the military exterminate tens of thousands more each year. For instance, the U.S. naval base in Rota, Spain poisons them with antifreeze and suffocates them in trash bags. I wrote to both the Spanish government and senators Kennedy and Lugar about this appalling situation but none of them even had the common courtesy to reply.

University and government laboratories kill tens of thousands of cats annually but this is only after they have tortured and mutilated them by subjecting them to hideous experiments, none of which have any scientific merit at all. These tests are only conducted, aside from the sadistic thrills they provide researchers, in order to line the pockets of both the researchers and cat breeders.

Out-and-out capitalists of the scientific world, such as Lou Hawthorne of Genetic Savings and Clone of Sausalito and Heimtech of Sioux Falls, mistreat, deform, and murder countless cats in order to genetically engineer clones and transgenic (allergy-free) cats for retail sale. Onychectomies are another barbarism which man in his unmitigated gall has decided that he has the God-given right to inflict upon cats.

Kill traps, predators (owls, foxes, dogs, etc.), motorists who deliberately run down cats, poisonings by ailurophobes, neglect and unsanitary conditions at shelters, and diseases, such as Feline Spongiform Encephalitis (contracted from eating commercial cat food contaminated with BSE), kill countless more.

The American Bird Conservancy and the National Audubon Society are both corrupt and hypocritical organizations. For instance, the phony-baloney Audubon Society spent more than fifty years drilling for oil in the Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in Louisiana. It made $25 million of the deal, but one wonders how many birds and mammals that it killed in the process. If it is so in love with birds, why does it behave in this manner?

As for Mott and National Geographic, they both have a lot of chutzpah to suggest that cats should be left to starve, kept indoors, sterilized, licensed, and put on leashes.

I think that it is crystal clear to any objective observer that the American Bird Conservancy, the National Aududon Society, PETA, National Geographic, and other like-minded groups are simply cat haters. In fact, I would be willing to bet that practically every one of them are meat eaters and wear clothing made from animals. Many of them may even be hunters and fishermen or enthusiasts of such patently inhumane businesses as greyhound, horse, and dogsled racing.

Sterilization is almost as bad as extermination. Of all the cats trapped under these draconian trap-neuter-and return (TNR) schemes only about forty per cent are returned to their habitats; the remainder are exterminated at shelters. Almost one-hundred per cent of all cats taken to shelters are killed and most of them are killed upon arrival, thus foreclosing any hope of adoption. The shelters and advocates of TNR can always find some convenient excuse to snuff out the life of a defenseless cat -- illness, wildness, no room at the inn, etc. Sterilization factories also sell the eggs that they harvest from female cats to cloners such as Lou Hawthorne. TNR advocates' propensity to shade the truth and to tell outright lies, like that of the ABC and National Geographic, is almost endless.

Unfortunately, the extermination of cats has already begun. During the mid-1990s PETA poisoned thirty of Atlantic City's famous Boardwalk cats. In its membership's twisted minds these executions were carried out on humanitarian grounds: better dead than homeless. If PETA's warped morality is allowed to prevail, how much longer will it be before the same thinking is applied to humans?

In conclusion, I would recommend that the membership of the American Bird Conservancy and the National Audubon Society as well as the staff of National Geographic and all other cat haters be immediately trapped, spayed, neutered, and confined to cages. People who do not possess a scintilla of either morality or integrity are dangersous to all life on this planet and should be put away where they cannot do any more evil.