The San Antonio City Council Rebuffs the Cat Killers and Instead Adopts TNR for the Felines Living in the Japanese Tea Gardens

The Idyllic Japanese Tea Gardens

 

"The truth is, over the years, probably even before God, cats have existed in the park."

-- Liz Skipper, Purrfect Haven

The forty-five to sixty feral and stray cats who call the Japanese Tea Gardens inside San Antonio's Brackenridge Park home were granted a temporary stay of execution on January 4th when the City Council voted to scrap the city's trap and exterminate program. In its place the council has agreed to institute a pilot trap, neuter, and return (TNR) program.

Bowing to the homicidal howls of employees of the Gardens who alleged that the cats were digging up flowers, ailurophobes who ludicrously claimed that the felines were a threat to humans, and bird lovers who believe that the only good cat is a dead one, Animal Control and the Parks and Recreation Department began trapping and killing the cats last autumn.

Although the death toll is likely much higher, at least three cats were executed before opposition from cat advocates forced the council to reconsider. (See Cat Defender post of October 19, 2006 entitled "Animal Rights Groups Pressure San Antonio Officials to Stop Killing Cats in the Japanese Tea Gardens.") 

Under the pilot program, the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition and Purrfect Haven will work with Animal Control and park officials to trap and sterilize the cats as well as to manage the colonies. Feral cats will be returned to the Gardens while strays and kittens will be socialized and put up for adoption.

All of the felines will be vaccinated and microchipped as well. The lone dissenting vote came, as expected, from bird-lover Richard Perez who argued that the cats were a threat to both birds and children and therefore should be exterminated. First of all, since the majority of the cats are feral it is highly unlikely that any human would be able to get close enough to them in order to be scratched.

Visitors to the Gardens are a thousand times more likely to be stung by either a bee or a mosquito than to be scratched by a cat. Secondly, cats have just as much of a right to be in the Tea Gardens as do birds.

 If Perez and his bird-loving fascists fear for the lives of their charges they should trap them and keep them indoors at their residences. After all, cats have been living in the park for a very long time.

"The truth is, over the years, probably even before God, cats have existed in the park,"  Liz Skipper of Purrfect Haven averred to the Express News of San Antonio on January 4th. (See "City Council Roundup: TNR for Tea Gardens' Cats.")

Moreover, this dispute should never have occurred in the first place. Volunteers from Purrfect Haven and the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition have been caring for the cats for more than ten years and it was monstrous for the city to suddenly start killing cats. City officials should accordingly be held liable.

Although the council vote was a definite victory for the cats and their supporters, the battle is far from over. The TNR program is only a pilot project and the stingy-as-hell City Council has allocated a miniscule $5,000 for its implementation.

Of course, council members probably have more important things on which to spend the taxpayers' money, i.e., whores, drugs, booze, and junkets. Furthermore, bird lovers and other ailurophobes are not about to abandon their drive to exterminate all cats.

It is therefore incumbent upon the cats' caretakers to remain vigilant at all times against both political and criminal offensives directed against the cats. This is no time for them to either celebrate or to rest on their laurels. The war to protect cats is an ongoing struggle.

Photo: Brownleg.dreamhost.com.