The Ventura County Star Races to the Defense of the Cat-Killers on San Nicolas Island

"The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it."
-- Sherlock Holmes

As expected, the thousands of letters sent to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in protest against its and the United States Navy's plan to gun down two-hundred cats on San Nicolas Island have fallen upon deaf ears. Au fait, they have only stiffened the resolve of the cat-haters to carry out their heinous crimes. (See Cat Defender post of June 27, 2008 entitled "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

It also is not surprising that the capitalist media has decided to all but ignore this story. The only news outlet providing coverage is the Ventura County Star of Camarillo and it has never attempted to disguise its prejudices. (See June 5th and June 6th articles entitled, respectively, "Feral Cats May Be Eliminated from San Nicolas Island" and "Biologists Want Island Cats Killed.")

The navy, like all branches of the military, never engages with its critics. Since it has all the weapons of mass destruction and money that any one-hundred nations could ever use, it is largely beyond the reach of both public opinion and political control.

Environmental groups have been attempting for years to convince the federal courts to stop it from killing whales and dolphins but so far they have little to show for their efforts. Although the navy does not need its new high-powered sonar, it is not about to forgo using it just to save the lives of marine mammals.

For their part, the morally-warped minds at the USFWS continue to argue that killing the cats is permissible so long as it is done humanely. Not only is that pure sophistry but the agency has a rather skewed view of what is humane.

For instance, the agency's mouthpiece, Jane Hendron, told the Star on July 5th that tracking down the cats with bloodhounds and then shotgunning them to death was humane because the dogs will not be allowed to eat the cats. (See "Plan to Kill Cats Has Animal Rights Groups Crying.") She furthermore claims that leghold traps can be made humane by adding padding.

That is more self-serving lies and nonsense. Besides, those concessions have been made in order to protect the Island Fox (Urocyon littoralis dickeyi), not the cats. The biologists do not want them to be either injured by the snares or eaten by the dogs. The possible spread of the canine distemper virus to the foxes is another reason for keeping a close rein on the dogs.

Exposure of its machinations, however, has placed USFWS on the defensive and this has prompted it to turn to its buddies at the Star for succor. Always willing to lend a hand whenever there is feline blood to be shed, the Star quickly dredged up old washed-out, gray-haired Grace Smith to tell more lies. (See photo below.)

Although the Star is careful not to disclose her affiliation, it does admit that this hateful old bag has been killing cats on San Nicolas for the past nineteen-years. It also is likely that she has helped to eradicate cats on San Miguel, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and Santa Barbara as well.

The Star is so accommodating that it even sent reporter Zeke Barlow with Smith to San Nicolas in order to produce a scurrilous two-minute video that defames cats. Various species of shorebirds, pinnipeds, and the Island Fox are vividly recorded in living color by Barlow while Smith busies herself extolling their virtues.

Images of the death row cats are, however, conspicuously absent from the video because it would be counterproductive for sharpies like Smith and Barlow to allow the public to see their innocent faces. If that were to happen, the public just might get the idea that they also are sentient beings endowed by their creator with an inalienable right to life.

Nonetheless, Smith and Barlow are wagering that out-of-sight will translate into out-of-mind as far as the public is concerned and that will enable them to go right ahead and gun down the cats. If the Star remotely resembled anything approaching an honest newspaper it would allow feline advocacy groups to visit the island and videotape the cats. It would then post their video alongside Smith and Barlow's anti-cat screed and let the viewers decide for themselves who is right and who is wrong.

That is not about to happen, however. As Sherlock Holmes remarked to Dr. Watson in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, "The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it."

It also is a sure bet that neither Smith nor the Ventura County Star will be on hand in order to videotape the USFWS's assassins as they hound down the cats and then blow out their brains with blasts from their shotguns. The public likewise will never be allowed to see images of terrified cats caught in deadly leghold traps or to hear their plaintive cries for mercy just before the USFWS summarily executes them.

The lowly Ventura County Star also will be conspicuously absent once the wildlife biologists get their filthy hands on the cats' bloody corpses. The public therefore will never see the sadistic joy written all over these monsters' maps as they rip them to shreds in a frantic search for evidence in order to justify their crimes.

Perhaps even more telling, Smith does not have one kind word to say about the cats. In a sickeningly dull monotone that barely disguises her intense hatred for the species, she labels their presence on the island as "unfortunate" and insists that they must be murdered because they are preying upon her precious birds and lizards as well as eating deer mice she wants set aside exclusively for predation by the foxes.

She goes on to describe the cats as "totally feral" and "not subsidized." In making that admission she is unwittingly calling attention to the failure of both the navy and wildlife proponents, such as herself, to provide them with food, water, shelter, inoculations and, if necessary, sterilizations.

The fact that the navy would first of all shanghai the cats and then abandon them to their own devices is in and of itself a flagrant act of animal cruelty for which those responsible should be brought before the altar of justice and punished severely. By defaming and killing them, the USFWS and Smith are only compounding the crimes of the navy.

Smith also is vividly reminding the taxpayers that it is mendacious, no-good rotten bums like herself, the navy, and the USFWS that are being subsidized to the tune of millions of dollars a year in order to kill, abuse, and defame cats. If the issue were ever put to a vote, it is precisely Smith and her fellow freeloaders who would soon find themselves standing in the unemployment line while the cats would not only be given reprieves but lifetime care as well.

In the Star article cited supra, Smith gives the game away when she chastises the public for being unable to distinguish between feral and domestic cats. "It's difficult for people to make a distinction between a cat at home and feral cats," she bellyached.

In making that contrast, what she is really saying is that whereas domestic cats have a right to live homeless cats have absolutely none. It would be interesting to know if she would make a similar distinction between wild foxes and their captive-bred cousins or between orphans and children with parents?

Although she is far too dishonest and cowardly to ever admit it, what she is doing is using the cats' socio-economic status and powerlessness as excuses in order to kill them and that is nothing less than textbook Nazism applied to the animal world.

She also lets slip the ludicrous statement that there is nothing cute about feral cats. Not only would millions of cat-lovers vehemently disagree, but cuteness or the lack thereof has absolutely no place in the discussion of which animals should be allowed to live and which ones should be exterminated.

In the final analysis, it is her profuse praise of the foxes' friendliness coupled with her condemnation of the cats' skittishness that reveals the true nature of Smith's antipathy toward them. First of all, since the navy has been waging intermittent eradication campaigns against them for the past two decades the cats have good reason to be wary of people.

The problem with inveterate cat-haters such as Smith is much more profound, however. In his play Hippolytus, Euripides observes that men who will not consent to be everybody's friend are universally hated and it is precisely cats' independence and unwillingness to be abused that is at the root of all their troubles.

To liberally paraphrase Machiavelli, the world is divided into fascists and democrats. In other words, one group of people look upon all of creation as nothing more than their own private pot de chambre whereas the remainder of humanity simply wants to live and let live.

In Smith's case, she obviously does not have any use for either animals or people who will not accept her superiority and suck up to her. Being every bit as thick-headed as the door to the vault at Fort Knox, Smith and her fellow wildlife proponents will never accept the fact that the world is plural and that all animals and people have an unconditional right to both life and liberty.

Individuals and groups that hate cats are invariably fascists and that is another reason why it is so vitally important that rotters like Smith, the navy, USFWS, and their cohorts be exposed and stopped. Today it is cats, other animals, and Mother Earth that they are attacking; tomorrow it will be either unpopular groups or anyone who dares to stand in their way.

Smith wraps up her anti-cat diatribe by uttering the non-sequitur, "Our hope is to bring back the natural ecosystem as much as possible and the removal of feral cats is a necessary step for that." What she is conveniently omitting from her self-serving hortatory silliness is the utter impossibility of ever restoring San Nicolas to anything approaching its pristine ideal so long as invasive species such as herself and the navy remain on the island.

It is first of all difficult enough for wildlife to flourish while airplanes are taking off and landing, missiles are being launched, military maneuvers are taking place, and they are being run down for sport by sailors. Besides, as imperialistic America continues to plunder and exterminate, the naval base on San Nicolas is bound to be enlarged and that will ultimately crowd out the animals. (See photo above of a Vandal missile being launched from San Nicolas.)

Secondly, allowing wildlife biologists to exterminate species that they hate and to subjugate other animals via electronic monitoring and captive-breeding programs hardly fits the definition of restoring the "natural ecosystem." All that Smith and the USFWS are doing is using welfare money in order to impose their own prejudices upon San Nicolas's animals.

After heaping volumes of vitriol upon the feline species, Smith then attempts to dress up her ailurophobia as something noble and courageous. "I don't think it's right to have something go extinct because we can't be brave enough to handle a difficult situation," she pontificated to the Star.

Although wildlife proponents are famous for their distortions of the truth and frontal assaults upon logic, Smith's megalomania takes the cake. The Freuds of today would have a field day exploring the inner recesses of her desiccated gourd.

More to the point, there is not anything that is either courageous or noble about killing defenseless animals; im Gegenteil, it is the easiest and most cowardly thing in the world to do.

To cap it all off, she has the unmitigated gall to present herself as a cat-lover! Employed by such infamous cat-killers as Les Underhill of the University of Cape Town and Linda Winter of the diabolical American Bird Conservancy, that is an old familiar dodge that has rarely fooled anyone.

Instead of attempting to compete with the likes of Roger Clemens and George Bush for the title of the "World's Biggest Liar," Smith should instead publicly acknowledge exactly how many cats she has killed on San Nicolas and elsewhere over the years. She should then be indicted for murder.

In conclusion, further appeals to both the USFWS and navy are most likely to be futile. Both of them are autocratic institutions impervious to the wishes of the people. The USFWS's initial willingness to accepts comments from the public was merely pro forma.

Appeals to United States Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are likewise most likely a waste of time in that neither of them have ever shown much interest in either animal rights or the environment. Au contraire, both of them view public service as primarily an opportunity to not only line their own pockets but those of their spouses and children as well.

Congresswoman Lois Capps, who represents the twenty-third district of which San Nicolas is a part, might be worth an eleventh-hour appeal. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could possibly block the killings if anyone could ever gain his attention.

If officials in California refuse to act, cat-lovers should organize a boycott of tourist attractions, produce, and Hollywood films. It is imperative that a strong message be conveyed to those in power that this mass slaughter will not be tolerated.

Photos: USFWS (logo), Jason Redmond of the Ventura County Star (Smith), and Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (missile).