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.