The Bloodthirsty National Park Service Is All Set to Trap, Remove, and Kill the Famous Cobblestone Cats of Old San Juan as the Tyrannical Feds Ratchet Up Their Worldwide Campaign of Felicide

Unaware of the Grave Peril That It Is In, a Cat Enjoys a Moment of Repose

"The situation that these animals experience at the park, especially at the Paseo del Morro, is not ideal for them and is inconsistent with National Park Service policies regarding the feeding of animals and invasive species."

-- Myrna Palfrey of the National Park Service

Roughly five-hundred years or so ago when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Puerto Rico they brought with them an unspecified number of cats in order to control the rodent population and to this very day some of their descendants live on in Old San Juan. Over the course of the following half-millennium these so-called colonial or cobblestone felines endured abandonment, abuse, starvation, disease, hurricanes, and other deprivations but they somehow persevered.

They even survived the the yankee imperialists' ouster of the Spanish at the point of a gun in 1898 during the Spanish American War. They lived through all of that and much, much more but, sadly, the sun looks to be finally setting on their long residence in Old San Juan. 

The National Park Service (NPS) in Washington has ordered their removal and unless the citizens of San Juan are willing to act with alacrity, it is going to trap, remove, and exterminate every one of them. Such a dénouement will be an unspeakable, dastardly, and unpardonable crime of epic proportions perpetrated against noble and totally innocent cats who have suffered mightily and overcome innumerable hardships in order to have survived against all odds for such an extended period of time.

Old San Juan is located on the western half of the Isleta de San Juan which in turn is connected to "new" San Juan on the mainland via two bridges and a causeway. Although it may be small, it contains most governmental offices and, based upon the more than one-million visitors that it draws each year, it is the territory's number one tourist attraction.

The cats themselves reside at the Castillo San Felipe del Morro and along the Paseo del Morro, a cobblestone promenade that separates the old fort from the Bay of San Juan. Collectively, the Castillo, Paseo, bastillions, powder houses, and three-quarters of the stone wall that surrounds Old San Juan are known as the San Juan National Historic Site (SJNHS) which was made into a federal park on February 14, 1949 and that is how that the NPS was able to have gained jurisdiction over Old San Juan and, much more importantly, forms the basis for its assertion that it has the authority to annihilate the cats.

Furthermore, there cannot be any denying that the SJNHS is not only a valuable piece of real estate but a prestigious one at that. For instance, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966 and in 1983 it was designated by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site, thus becoming only one of a dozen such parks in the entire United States.

As far as it is known, the cats do not have anywhere to hang their hats but since the thermometer seldom dips much below eighty degrees Fahrenheit, they apparently fare all right living out in the elements except, of course, during hurricanes. Plus, they not only are a huge tourist attraction but they are so valued by the locals that at least one road sign has been erected warning motorists to be on the lookout for them.

Such thoughtful consideration for the well-being of cats is known to exist only in Milford, Connecticut, and on the remote Japanese island of Iriomote. (See Cat Defender posts of January 26, 2007 and November 27, 2006 entitled, respectively, "Cat Activists Succeed in Getting a Connecticut Town to Erect a Cat Crossing Sign" and "After Surviving on Its Own for at Least Two Million Years, a Rare Japanese Wildcat Is Facing Its Toughest Battle Yet.")

Another Unsuspecting Cat Rests on the Paseo del Morro

The cats have been fed and watered by Save a Gato since 2004 and although some reports claim that up to ninety-five per cent of them have been sterilized, the charity itself on its web site puts that number at a considerably more modest fifty per cent. The cruel dumping of cats by local residents and, most likely, some tourists as well makes an accurate accounting difficult.

Normally cats are vaccinated against rabies and other diseases at the same time that they are sterilized but press reports fail to mention whether that has been the case with those living in Old San Juan. If not, that would constitute an egregious oversight on the part of Save a Gato.

Even more alarmingly, those felines who become either injured, sickly, or simply elderly are apparently denied all access to veterinary care. At least that is the verdict according to Alfonso Ocasio who has been traveling to Old San Juan since 2014 in order to help care for the cats.

On November 3rd, he told the Associated Press that owing to a lack of available veterinary care he has been forced into adopting those that become sickly, elderly, and are dying and to subsequently do whatever he can for them. (See "Activists Fight Bid to Remove Puerto Rico's 'Colonial Cats'.")

Press reports have neglected to speculate on the total number of cats involved but close to two dozen of them can be counted in group photographs taken of them. Although life is sans doute difficult for them, they appear, at least from a distance, to be rather healthy.

Nevertheless, they desperately need to be vaccinated, provided with competent veterinary care, and furnished with shelters of some type. Emergency plans also need to be made for their care and safety during hurricanes.

Above all, the cats need to be socialized and, in so far as it is possible, placed in loving homes with responsible owners. They have suffered deprivations, neglect, and abuse for way too long.

The details are sketchy but the NPS apparently has had the cats in its crosshairs for the past twenty years. Along about 2005, however, it entered into an uneasy entente with Save a Gato in order to introduce TNR. Even that was not a good deal for the cats in that the plan also entailed getting rid of some of them.

A Large Number of Cats Call the Site Home

All that is known about that part of the arrangement is that some of them were shipped to the United States where they, supposedly, were put up for adoption. The remainder were, presumably, exterminated in San Juan. 

Even more deplorably, Puerto Ricans never have been known for either their responsible or compassionate care of animals; au contraire, they are one of the worst peoples in this world when it comes to nakedly exploiting, abusing, and abandoning all species of animals. For instance, in addition to their hideous abandonment and neglect of those cats residing in Old San Juan, they are known for, inter alia, getting rid of others, dogs, and farm animals by routinely flinging them to their deaths from bridges, intentionally running them down with their automobiles and trucks, as well as butchering them to death with machetes.

There are few governmental sterilization programs, precious little animal welfare instruction in the schools, and the territory has only about a half-dozen animal shelters. Packs of starving dogs are left to roam the streets while others are sealed up in sacks and left to die in the jungle. (See The New York Times, March 9, 2008 "Scrutiny for Puerto Rico over Animal Treatment.")

The racing industry unspeakably exploits horses for profit whereas countless others are abandoned on islands, such as Vieques, to fend for themselves. (See Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, June 4, 2021, "Camarero Racetrack: A Money Machine That Runs on Injured and Abused Horses" and the Associated Press, January 17, 2017, "Puerto Rico Island Tackles Overpopulation of Horses.")

The territory's one bright star has been San Juan's decision in 2015 to ban carriage horses. That act places it light years ahead of the low-life, moneygrubbing bums in Manhattan who continue to line their already bulging pockets by unspeakably abusing carriage horses. (See the Associated Press, April 22, 2015, "Puerto Rico Mayor Bans Horse-Drawn Carriages in Capital.")

Although the NPS had grudgingly agreed to give a scaled-back version of TNR a try, it never has been enamored with either it or cats in general. "This (TNR) was never meant to become a shelter," Myrna Palfrey, superintendent of the SJNHS, groused to Latino Rebels.com on November 16, 2022. (See "Old San Juan May Soon Be Without Its Iconic Street Cats.") " TNR works better in enclosed places."

Consequently, the NPS' decision earlier this autumn to scrap TNR and to kill off the cats hardly came as any surprise. However, since Americans so dearly love to be seen by the outside world as a moral, rational, and democratic people, the NPS is precluded from simply showing up in Old San Juan with its guns blazing and shooting every cat in sight; on the contrary, it first has to concoct an elaborate propaganda campaign in order to dupe the entire world into believing that it is acting on the side of the angels and all that is holy and good.

In fact, just about all extermination campaigns, whether they be directed against cats, other animals, or people, begin with grotesque fabrications of the truth whereby the intended victims are relentlessly demonized as being so vile, worthless, and despicably evil as to be totally unfit to be allowed to go on living for as long as another solitary second and in that respect the NPS' war against the cobblestone cats is not any different. Rather, it has been copied chapter and verse from the playbooks of the NPS' sister agencies within the federal bureaucracy, such as the loathsome United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and such seasoned and prolific cat defamers and killers as the Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and, of course, PETA.

 Old San Juan Cares Enough about Its Cats to Have Erected This Sign

In that respect, Old Palfrey Bird did not miss a beat in dutifully trotting out all the old lies and tropes that she has learned from her mentors. Her professors and superiors within the NPS surely must be immensely proud to have churned out such an apt, albeit morally warped, pupil.

"The situation that these animals experience at the park, specifically at the Paseo del Morro, is not ideal for them and is inconsistent with National Park Service policies regarding the feedings of animals and invasive species," is how that she threw down the gauntlet on October 25th in an NPS press release. (See "Environmental Assessment for Paseo Del Morro Free-Ranging Cats.")

To begin with, whenever either anyone or group begins by referring to any species or group of individuals as "these animals" or "these people" that is a clear indication that they are not only prejudiced against them but totally despise them and are therefore willing to go to almost any length in order to get rid of them. Secondly, although wildlife biologists, ornithologists, environmentalists, and others, like to divide the animal kingdom into so-called native and non-native species, that is a totally bogus distinction.

Cat-hating individuals, such as Old Palfrey Bird, tingle from head to toe with unbridled delight every time that they bandy about terms such as "non-native" and "invasive species" as if they had just stumbled upon some kernel of eternal truth that has somehow miraculously eluded the remainder of humanity down through history but doing so establishes only their dishonest and criminal natures. As anyone with so much as a grain of intelligence realizes, the study of natural right is totally dependent upon how far that researchers are willing -- and able -- to go back in the archaeological and historical records.

For example, the phony-baloney and blowhard Wildlife Society of Bethesda, Maryland, has been attempting for decades to not only eradicate cats but also the wild horses and burros of the West, Maryland, and North Carolina by claiming that they too are an introduced species and therefore do not have any right to exist. Yet, other researchers claim that horses were present in North America thousands of years ago.

"There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed," Mark Twain astutely observed in his 1897 essay, "The Lowest Animal."

C'est-à-dire, the lies that Palfrey and her fellow defamers and villains spout so freely are nothing short of a worldwide prescription for the ruthless practices of felicide and animalcide. If she and her cohorts were ever to train their malignant tongues and killing devices on Home sapiens, they would instantly be denounced as genocidal maniacs and executed themselves for crimes against humanity. It is only because so few individuals care about cats and other animals they are allowed to get away scot-free with their detestable crimes.

Moreover, there is unquestionably good money, academic papers, and prestigious chairs waiting at the degree mills for those individuals and groups that exterminate en masse cats and other animals. Doing so also enables them, at least temporarily, to slake their thirsts for feline blood.

Like His Mates, This Good-Looking Cat Is Also Doomed to Die

These despicable monsters already have eradicated cats from somewhere between one-hundred and two-hundred islands around the world and they are now setting their sights on those living on the mainland. Following that, they will extend their eradication campaigns into private dwellings and gardens.

"The abandonment of animals is a problem that we, as a society, are facing throughout Puerto Rico, and we are seeking to address within the park," Palfrey continued in her press release.

That, too, is more of her self-serving baloney in that the only thing that either she or her agency ever have done for cats and other animals has been to defame and eradicate them. Besides, Puerto Rico's problems with abused and abandoned animals extend far beyond the SJNHS.

Much more to the point, it is beyond ludicrous for the NPS to label the cats of Old San Juan as an invasive species when it was not until 1898 that the American imperialists first set foot in Puerto Rico and not until 1916 that the NPS itself even came into existence. If there is any invasive species afoot on the island it is surely Palfrey, the NPS, and their fellow yankee imperialists.

Palfrey and her misbegotten ilk refuse to acknowledge it, but to malign, abuse, and kill the cats is unjust. First of all, their descendants were shanghaied and brought to the island against their will.

Secondly, the present-day felines were born there and therefore have a right not only to be there but also to be free from abuse and to continue to reproduce. If an animal's birthright does not establish a right for it to exist then nothing else does.

Another federal agency that has become infamous for vilifying and killing cats is the Smithsonian Institution in Washington which receives a billion dollar a year in welfare from the taxpayers in order to perpetrate its evil deeds. First of all, it operates two wretched zoos where it not only traffics in exotic species but nakedly exploits, abuses, and routinely kills them and the other animals that it has unjustly incarcerated.

Secondly, it traffics in cats that it in turn exploits as guinea pigs in order to gather data on their alleged predatory habits before killing them. Thirdly, one of its researchers, Nico Dauphiné, was caught flagrante delicto a few years back attempting to poison a TNR colony in Washington. (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2011, November 18, 2011, and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals," "Nico Dauphiné, Ph.D., Is Convicted of Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats but Questions Remain Concerning the Smithsonian's Role," and "Nico Dauphiné  Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

Like serial cat killer James Munn Stevenson, her conviction has in no way negatively impacted her career. Now known as Nico Arcilla, she is president of the International Bird Conservation Partnership in Monterey, California, and that petit fait establishes without a doubt that convicted cat killers and their supporters stick together like congealed feces. (See Cat Defender post of August 7, 2008 entitled "Crime Pays: Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank.")

An Orange Cat Looks Out at the Bay of San Juan for Perhaps the Last Time

Protected by America's corrupt-as-hell judicial system and with its welfare funding guaranteed by an equally corrupt Congress, the Smithsonian never has seen any reason to mend its evil ways. "Ten-thousand years after their ancestors invaded our Fertile Crescent settlements, house cats -- trailing our armies and sailing on our ships -- have spread like dandelion fluff," is the absurd lie that its Abigail Tucker attempted to pass off as the gospel truth in the October of 2016 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. (See "To Save the Woodrat, Conservationists Have to Deal with an Invasive Species First: House Cats.")

First of all, cats never invaded the Fertile Crescent or anywhere else for that matter. They are indigenous to that region and several others as well around the world.

What Old Tucker Thing and the Smithsonian are attempting to accomplish is to deny the species any legitimate right to exist anywhere on planet earth. Secondly, cats were welcomed into the homes of the residents of the Fertile Crescent not only for the companionship that they provided but also for their uncanny ability to protect their food supplies from rodents, birds, and other wildlife.

Thirdly, no cat ever voluntarily marched behind any conquer's army or voluntarily sailed on any imperialist's ships. Au contraire, they were shanghaied by conquers and imperialists, caged and transported against their will to far-flung lands and once they had exhausted their usefulness they were inexcusably abandoned to fend for themselves.

Now they, along with cows, sheep, goats, rabbits and even some imported species of wildlife, such as foxes, are being demonized and cruelly extirpated by the same evil imperialists. Old Tucker Thing and the Smithsonian are certainly aware of that but they are equally far too dishonest and unjust to admit it.

The cobblestone cats of Old San Juan are therefore innocent victims but blaming the victim is every bit as American as apple pie. Meanwhile, to hear the loudmouths and elites within the federal bureaucracy and the degree mills tell it they themselves never can do any evil.

It thus seems clear that all the palaver disseminated so freely by the likes of Palfrey, the NPS, and Tucker about so-called invasive species is nothing more than a rallying cry for all fascists, totalitarians, and maniacal killers to anoint themselves as lords of creation and to exterminate and steal to the content of their black souls. If allowed to succeed, they not only will have destroyed everything that is beautiful and worthwhile on this planet but they also will have successfully turned all truth, morality, justice, history, and logic on their heads.

Palfrey's second offensive against the cats has been to idiotically claim that they are attacking tourists. Yet, when pressed by Latino Rebels she was unable to authenticate a single complaint that has been lodged against them. The best that she could come up with was to claim that she had received some complaints over the telephone.

Kindhearted Alfonso Ocasio Has Cared for the Cats Since 2014

Furthermore, her assertion is pure nonsense. Cats do not attack humans unless it is in self-defense and only then when they have been cornered and all possible escape routes have been foreclosed to them.

On the contrary, they are a big hit with the tourists. "I see tourists completely enamored of these cats," Old San Juan resident Nydia Fernandez testified to the Associated Press.

Palfrey's third avenue of attack has been to claim that the cats are killing wildlife but yet once again she has not produced so much as a scintilla of evidence in order to substantiate that claim. Her fourth argument has been to claim that TNR does not work but Alley Cat Allies (ACA) of Bethesda, Maryland, and others would vociferously disagree with that.

Finally, Palfrey has derided the cats' as being unsanitary. "Encounters between visitors and cats and the smell of urine and feces are...inconsistent with the cultural landscape," either she or one of her underlings argued to the Associated Press.

As any fool should already know, cats are extremely clean animals; in fact, they are far cleaner than just about all humans. If there is a problem with urine and feces it is because it is impossible for them to properly bury their waste products on cobblestones.

This problem, if it does indeed exist, could be easily remedied by Save a Gato scooping up the feces and washing away the urine with water. The charity additionally could provide the cats with shelters and litter boxes away from the cobblestones. That would not completely remedy the situation but it would eliminate most of the problem. 

In order to understand how that the NPS and its sister agencies are able to get away scot-free with their despicable crimes against the animals year after year, some understanding of the federal regulatory process is required. First of all, although the NPS is an autocratic agency that pretty much does as it pleases, like all such bodies it works hard to dispel that image of itself.

In order to do so, it concocts an elaborate, albeit totally dishonest, public relations' offensive designed to pull the wool over the public and to convince it that the regulatory process is not only fair and democratic but that actually the public has voiced its full approval of its arbitrary en masse eradications of cats and other animals. Included in this totally bogus scheme is a brief period set aside for supposedly soliciting comments from the public, the formulation of a management plan, and the preparation of an Environmental Assessment (EA).

Opponents of the NPS Protesting at a Public Meeting 

"(The) NPS is initiating public scoping for the participation of a draft Free-Ranging Cat Management Plan and and Environmental Assessment," Palfrey wrote in the October 25th press release cited supra. "The National Park Service needs your help, and we need to hear from you as we commence this important process."

While she had the wind up, Old Palfrey Bird swore, presumably with a straight face, that this regulatory process was on the level. "Public comment and involvement is not merely a step or a check mark in the process," she blew long and hard. "It can influence how decisions are made, and the NPS takes this process very seriously."

The first thing to be noted is that she mentions only "how" decisions are made and not the decisions themselves. Secondly, earlier in the same press release she was singing an entirely different tune. 

"The proposed action seeks to humanely remove free-ranging cats that live within the historical site," she admitted. In other word, the NPS already has decided to kill the cats and the entire regulatory process is nothing but a cruel sham.

Even her palaver concerning "humanely" removing the cats is a barefaced lie because, like all wildlife biologists, ornithologists, and PETA, she fervently believes that killing them by any and all methods, no matter how unjust and cruel, is humane since they are not fit to exist in the first place.

Besides, Puerto Rico has very few shelters and even fewer residents who would be willing to adopt the cats. A sanctuary would be the obvious solution but none are known to exist on the island.

For example, when the NPS came to the assistance of the USFWS during its extermination of all but fifty of the more than two-hundred cats residing on San Nicolas in the Channel Islands, off the coast of southern California, between 2009 and 2011, it used leghold traps, shotguns, rifles, bloodhounds, and likely even deadly poisons in order to get rid of them. It also denied advocates for the cats any opportunity whatsoever to participate in the drafting of both the cat management plan as well as the EA.

In fact, it and the USFWS also went to gargantuan lengths in order to stifle public criticism of its cat-killing spree. For instance, the USFWS announced its EA in a press conference on May 19, 2008 and only allowed public comments up until June 17, 2008.

During that interlude, it held only one public meeting and that was on June 4, 2008. When ACA belatedly found out about the lopsided EA, most likely from a June 5th story in the Ventura County Star of Camarillo, it mounted an e-mail response since it had not been given sufficient notice in order to have organized a letter-writing campaign. 

What Will Become of the Cat-Themed Chairs?

True to their dishonest natures, the NPS and the USFWS as well as the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the California Department of Fish and Game, the California State Lands Commission, and the California Department of Parks and Recreation, who assisted in the brutal slaughter of the innocent cats, dismissed ACA's petitions as duplicates and thereby declared that there was not any significant opposition to the eradication. From start to finish, the entire regulatory process was an anti-democratic, one-sided fraud foisted upon the public. (See Cat Defender posts of June 27, 2008, July 10, 2008, April 28, 2009, November 20, 2009, and February 24, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island," "The Ventura County Star Races to the Defense of the Cat-Killers on San Nicolas Island," "The Quislings at the Humane Society of the United States Sell Out San Nicolas's Cats to the Assassins at the Diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service," "Memo to the Humane Society of the United States: Tell the World Exactly How Many Cats You and Your Honeys at the United State Fish and Wildlife Service Have Murdered on San Nicolas Island," and "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society of the United States Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

As far as it is known, the USFWS and the USDA's Wildlife Services have employed an identical modus operandi throughout their protracted war against cats in the Florida Keys. (See Cat Defender posts of May 24, 2007 and June 23, 2011 entitled, respectively, "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA's Wildlife Services Commence Trapping and Killing Cats on Florida's Big Pine Key" and "Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys.")

None of the particulars have been announced, but it is pretty much one-hundred per cent certain that neither Save a Gato nor any other advocates for the cats will be permitted to participate in the NPS' writing of the draft Free-Ranging Cat Management Plan or the EA and that demonstrates that there is not so much as a jot of legitimacy in the NPS' modus operandi. If there were, it would at least allow the citizens of Old San Juan to not only participate in the decision making process but also to vote on the cats' fate.

Fascists, despots, and cat killers do not broker any resistance and they never play by any rules, even their own. "La politique, c'est l'art d'empêcher les gens de se mêler de ce qui les regards," is how that Paul Valéry is quoted in Marginalia Rhumbs et autres de Paul Valéry and Jean Prévost as summing up the art of politics.

  

Even the two public meetings that the NPS held on the cats' fate were rigged. At the first one held on November 2nd at the SJNHS' Visitor Center at Castillo San Cristobal attendees were not even allowed to speak. Rather, they were urged to be satisfied with leaving written comments.

Earlier in the NPS' October 25th press release Palfrey had stated that the "preferred method" for citizens to participate in the public meetings was for them to leave comments on the park service's web site. Clearly, the NPS was setting them up so it could cavalierly dismiss their written comments as being irrelevant just as it and the USFWS had done with ACA earlier in regard to the San Nicolas cats. Even those citizens willing to play the NPS' dishonest game were given only until November 22nd to have submitted written comments.

At the November 3rd meeting the cats' defenders finally were allowed to speak and they took full advantage of the limited opportunity afforded them by laying into the NPS with both claws. "This doesn't make sense?" "We have our doubts!" "We have questions!" and "Let's defend the cats," the attendees shouted at the NPS to no avail according to the Associated Press.

"I'm not alone in wanting to know the answers," Old San Juan resident Toru Dodo told the Associated Press. " These (cats) are one of the wonders of Old San Juan."

The Cat Exterminators at the NPS Surely Will also Remove This Statue

"This is like Disney World for cats," Ocasio told the Associated Press. "I don't know how these people can face the world with their proposal."

Old Palfrey Bird was every bit as unmoved as a stone and instead held on firmly to the elaborate charade that she earlier had improvised. "These are the initial stages," she lied through her rotten teeth to the Associated Press. "We don't have any answers right now."

What she meant by that last crack is that she has not yet figured out exactly how that she is going to be able to get away with killing the cats but she is sure to come up with something sooner or later. In the end, the feds always have their way.

With the NPS' decision already etched in stone and the cats' supporters set up to take a terrible fall, its assassins could strike like murderers in the night at almost any moment by trapping and killing the cats. In the unlikely event that it does give Save a Gato any time at all in order to evacuate the cats to safety, that window of opportunity is destined to be an exceedingly brief one.

For example, back in 2014 when it decided to go after a TNR colony of at least thirty-three cats residing in Plum Beach, Brooklyn, it initially gave their caretakers only five days in order to remove them before it pledged to trap and kill them. That June 8th deadline was extended, however, first to June 20th and then later to June 30th.

Even so that was woefully insufficient time for the cats' caretakers to complete the herculean task before them. Nevertheless, Nancy Rogers and her helpers from K9 Kastle of Brooklyn were able to have trapped and removed twenty of the cats; the NPS sans doute killed the remainder.

She then stored the rescued cats in her garage until a veterinarian could check them out and afterwards they finally were placed at a new location of some sort "south" of the city. Regrettably, it is not known what ultimately became of them, especially inseparable Patches and Rusty. 

At that time the NPS posted signs on the property claiming that federal law prohibits the release and feeding of all animals as well as the establishment of TNR colonies on governmental property but all of that was a barefaced lie. Congress never has enacted such draconian legislation.

Banning cats and their caretakers from governmental property is merely an arbitrary rule that the NPS, USFWS, and other federal agencies have established in order to better facilitate the prosecution of their war against cats and their supporters. Unfortunately, with Congress and the courts being as corrupt as they are, it would be extremely difficult for cat advocates to prevail in a showdown with either branch of government.

 Eviction Notices in Plum Beach; Old San Juan Is Next

For example, the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) prevailed in court in its long-drawn-out battle with the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West and its world-famous polydactyls. (See Cat Defender post of January 24, 2013 entitled "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.")

Besides, it would cost Save a Gato at least a million bucks in order to so much as even assemble a legal team to contend with the NPS in court and the charity claims that it already is tapped out. It is a dangerous game to play, but the only language that the NPS and its fellow agencies understand is force.

For example, at the same time that the NPS was crapping all over the Plum Beach cats and their caretakers, it and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), also part of the Interior Department, were busily running like scalded hounds with their tails between their legs when Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his militiamen drew down on them. The NPS and BLM were attempting to evict him and his cows from federal land because he had not paid so much as a cent of rent since 1993. (See Cat Defender post of August 7, 2014 entitled "The National Park Service Racks Up a Major Victory by Expelling the Plum Beach Cats but It Is Thwarted in Its Burning Desire to Dance a Merry Little Jig on Their Graves.")

That in a nutshell is how that the NPS and the remainder of the national government operate. C'est-à- dire, whenever it comes to exterminating cats and other animals and pushing around their supporters they are big, strong, and courageous but whenever they encounter any group that is capable of defending itself and its property they show their true cowardly natures and run.

For instance, in addition to prosecuting America's endless spree of totally unjust imperialistic wars, every branch of the United States military exterminates cats and other animals everywhere that it is deployed. (See Cat Defender posts of January 19, 2006, November 14, 2006, August 6, 2007, and June 16, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Public Outcry Forces the Army Navy Country Club to Scrap Its Plans to Evict and Exterminate Its Long-Term Resident Felines," "The United States Military Is Killing Cats and Dogs by the Tens of Thousands as Imperialistic America Attempts to Conquer the World," "In a Marked Departure from Its Cat Killing Ways, the United States Air Force Hires Wizzo as Head Mouser at One of Its California Warehouses," and "Targeted for Elimination by the American War Machine and Cheney's Henchmen, Baghdad's Cats Are Befriended by an English Mercenary.")

Much like the NPS, the USFWS, and the remainder of the federal gang of thugs, the United States Army Corps of Engineers also exterminates cats in droves. (See Cat Defender post of April 17, 2010 entitled "Lake Lanier's Cats Face an Uncertain Future Following Their Ouster by the Liars and Defamers at the United States Army Corps of Engineers.")

Cats are not even allowed to set foot inside post offices but it is perfectly permissible for the bureau's deliverymen to intentionally run them down in the street with impunity. (See Cat Defender posts of February 11, 2009 and March 18, 2022 entitled, respectively, "The United States Postal Service Knuckles Under to the Threats and Lies of a Cat-Hater and Gives Sammy the Boot" and "Two Drivers for the United States Postal Service Deliberately Run Over Four Cats in New Galilee but They Are Allowed to Escape Justice and to Keep Their Jobs.")

Quite obviously, the entire federal government is determined to completely eradicate all cats, domesticated and homeless alike, from the United States and its foreign dominions just as Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the Cayman Islands, and other countries are already well on course toward accomplishing. (See Cat Defender posts of November 18, 2016 and March 23, 2007 entitled, respectively, "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages" and "Bird Lovers in South Africa Break Out the Champagne to Celebrate the Merciless Gunning Down of the Last of Robben Island's Cats," plus Phys.org, November 28, 2022, "Pest Eradication Success Stories from Subantarctic New Zealand" and Vice Media of Brooklyn, December 8, 2022, "The World's Most Infamous Tax Haven Is About to Kill Hundreds of Stray Cats.")

With their coffers overflowing with welfare dollars, their arsenals stockpiled with newer and deadlier poisons, high-powered shotguns, and advanced surveillance systems, and buffeted by having the likes of The New York Times to propagandize for them, there does not appear to be any way of stopping the despotic feds. (See Cat Defender posts of December 8, 2007 and July 9, 2018 entitled, respectively, "All the Lies That Fit: The Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support for James M. Stevenson" and "The Slimy, Underhanded, and Utterly Despicable New York Times Fabricates Another One-Sided, Scurrilous Screed Against Cats and This Time Around the Target of Its Libels Is a TNR Colony at the Googleplex in Mountain View.")

The Evacuated Cats Lined Up Outside Nancy Rogers' House 

The driving force behind the feds' crimes are, however, the scum-of-the-earth professors who strut and preen around the degree mills. Not only are they spearheading most of these eradication campaigns but, more importantly, they are indoctrinating their students to detest cats and their advocates. (See Cat Defender posts of March 3, 2006, October 20, 2008, July 18, 2011, and October 9, 2015 entitled, respectively, "A Cat-Hating Professor at UC-Davis and the BBC Call for the Extermination of Seventy-Eight-Million Feral Felines," "A Swedish Academy Bestows Its 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Yet Another Trio of Vivisectors Whose Discoveries Are Maiming and Killing Cats," "Evil Professor Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed," and "A Lynch Mob Comprised of Dishonest Eggheads from the University of Lincoln Issue Another Scurrilous Broadside Against Cats by Declaring That They Do Not Need Guardians in Order to Safeguard Their Fragile Lives.")

That sober assessment of the prevailing political climate in no way detracts from the absurdity and dishonesty of the NPS' argument that it is illegal to feed animals on governmental property. For example, since even ranchers who graze their herds on federal lands must feed their cows, sheep, and other animals during the winter months and at times of drought, that petit fait alone exposes the NPS at a liar.

Another poignant contradiction is the Smithsonian's feeding of not only all the animals that it incarcerates at its two zoos but also the cats that it exploits and kills as guinea pigs. The same logic is equally applicable to all governmental laboratories that practice vivisection.

There also is the example of Joe Biden feeding his dogs and cat at the White House. The contradictions in the NPS' dogma are almost endless.

To make a long story short, just about every animal is more than welcome on governmental property except cats. Likewise, all citizens, illegals, and tourists are welcome except, of course, TNR practitioners.

Like all tyrannical federal agencies, the NPS commits its heinous crimes largely in secret and far from the prying eyes of the public and that makes it difficult for outsiders to accurately gauge the scope and magnitude of its despicable crime. Even so, it likely has been involved in dozens of feline eradication campaigns.

Besides cats, it eradicated the pigs on Santa Rosa in 1991 and it killed more than two-thousand others on Santa Cruz, both located in the Channel Islands, between 2005 and 2008. (See the San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 2005, "Pig Eradication Out of Control.")

Its cruel and idiotic removal of the wild horses from Santa Cruz and the killing of the mice on Anacapa both turned out to have been disasters for the animals themselves as well as the islands. (See the Ventura County Star, November 23, 2022, "Preserving California History: Santa Cruz Island Horses at Home in Hidden Valley.")

In conclusion, there cannot be any disputing that the cats of Old San Juan are in grave peril. That is so much the case that their remaining time upon this earth could be measured in days if not indeed hours.

 The Inseparable Patches and Rusty: Where Are They Now?

With no outside help forthcoming from the likes of ACA and the Best Friends Animal Society of Kanab, Utah, their fate rests solely in the hands of Save a Gato and the kindhearted citizens of Old San Juan even though their mild response to the NPS' attack upon the cats has been anything but encouraging. Nevertheless, it is imperative that they immediately make contingency plans.

First of all, they need to assemble dozens of humane traps and a huge stockpile of canned meats, such as tuna, that can be used as bait. Above all, they need to be ready to go into action at almost any minute. Stamina also is important because they are going to be forced into working around the clock in order to evacuate as many cats as is possible before the NPS is able to get its filthy hands on them. The agency may even attempt to block their caretakers from entering the SJNHS.

Until some better alternative materializes, they are going to be forced into taking the cats home with them. Press reports have not broached the subject, but some of them surely have lived long enough around people that it may be possible to immediately place them in homes; others will need to be socialized.

For still others, Save a Gato may need to establish a new TNR colony away from Old San Juan. Above all, it must not bail out on them but rather it must act now in order to save them.

Once they are gone all that will remain will be the cat statue and the cat-themed chairs and it is going to be interesting to see what the NPS does with them. Most likely, it will order their removal as well; killers always attempt to erase their despicable crimes from both public view as well as the history books.

In any event, the residents of Old San Juan ought to consider erecting a nearby memorial to the cats in order to let the whole world know for all eternity what the thoroughly despicable NPS did to them. One way or the other and, now or later, the NPS must be brought to the altar of public accountability.

Finally, although the Spanish conquistadors exterminated millions of people in central and south America they never were known to have killed cats and that demonstrates that they at least had some scruples and that is considerably more than any halfway honest individual will ever be able to say about the NPS and the United States Government. For most Americans, this world, the moon and stars, and all the planets will never be enough in order to satisfy their greed and lust for blood. They are not only the world's biggest criminals but they also pose the number one threat to life on this planet.

One possible last-minute solution would be for the Puerto Ricans to quickly cast off the yankee imperialist yoke by declaring independence and therefore taking their rightful place within the family of nations. They then could tell the NPS to take a hike.

Independence also would enable them to develop closer ties with Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and that certainly would put a bee in Old Biden Bird's bonnet! That also would give him and his fellow avid practitioner of animalcide, Barack Obama, something to think about other than killing cats, horses, burros, bison, tule elk, bears, wolves, and scores of other animals who so richly deserve to be allowed to go on living. (See Cat Defender post of June 23, 2017 entitled "For Eight Long and Tortuous Years, Barack Obama and His Bloodthirsty Henchmen Within the Federal Bureaucracy Waged a Ruthless, No-Holds-Barred War on Cats.") 

Photos: Alejandro Granadillo of the Associated Press (the Old San Juan cats, traffic sign, protestors, cat-themed chairs, and statue) and Steve Solomonson of the Brooklyn Daily (Plum Beach eviction notices, the caged cats, and Patches and Rusty).