Alice The Northern Irish Setter

There are lots of reasons why I don’t support Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) programs in Australia, and neither does our RSPCA.

TNR programs aim to stop a cat population from growing, in the hopes that it will shrink over time as the cats die a ‘natural’ death. Firstly, a ‘stable feral cat population’ isn’t an appropriate goal for most of Australia’s ecosystems, eradication of feral and roaming cats is, as much as that’s harsh to say. Secondly, a ‘natural’ death is without human intervention, and that’s not as pleasant as it sounds, especially in a country full of venomous things and very large birds of prey.

TNR programs can only work, to the degree that they do in the first place, if you couple it with public education about responsible pet ownership and low cost desexing of owned pets. It can never work on its own because the cat population will be continuously topped up from the owned cat population.

Given we have limited resources, we generally put most of those resources towards public education, desexing vouchers for those on low income, and trap and euthanise or shoot feral cats.

Sounds harsh. But our feral cats are often outright dangerous to humans, and if released they continue to eat wildlife. A desexed cat needs to eat less and will occupy territory that a younger, non-desexed cat now can’t have, potentially reducing their reproductive ability which is why some places still do it. But these animals are generally not just housecats that are ‘lost’. They’ve been adapted to our environment for multiple generations and we shouldn’t have any of them, especially with their ability to spread toxoplasma through our wildlife.

In suburban scenarios, for example where we have lots of factories, there are local council incentives for factories and businesses to take ownership of local cats they’d been feeding, whether for company or rodent control. These cats get desexed and microchipped, with the understanding that the business is responsible if it’s sick or injured and needs vet care. They often don’t get much care, but coming in for euthanasia beats dying slowly in a corner somewhere.

For the amount of time, money, professional services and effort we would need to apply to run TNRs successfully, we could better allocate that to targeting the owned cat population and removing the feral cats as much as possible. It’s tempting to think ‘all cats must be saved because they’re cats’ but the scale of the problem is just too big for that sort of one on one solution.

People also like to feed ‘stray’ cats because it makes them feel good inside, even though they never take responsibility for the rest of the cat’s health and welfare. Just giving an animal food is not enough to be caring for it, in my opinion. I find it really quite foreign that TNR seems to be such a big thing in the USA, but I guess you already have native feline predators. We don’t.

‘Feral’ cats in my experience are either semi-adapted wild things which will continue wreaking damage on the environment, or they’re really housecats out of their depth that desperately need a human custodian. It’s not fair in either situation to just release them back to the ‘wild’ to fend for themselves. Either they will do badly and suffer, or they will do well and cause our wildlife to suffer.

Can’t tag you because you’ve blocked me over this post. Thanks for doing that any trying to prevent me seeing the atrocious language in your reply. I had hoped you mistakenly thought you were being funny with that, but I guess not.

I have not done the research, I have read the research. Seen it presented at conferences. You’d probably be interested in them.

Sure, Australia has large predators that can eat cats, but not terribly many do.

Our birds of prey are geared towards herbivores, and will go for a rabbit before a cat. Cats prefer forested areas where the larger raptor species have a harder time hunting anyway.

Dingos are not everywhere or ubiquitous. They will hunt cats, but interestingly the cat population changes its behavior to only hunt when the dingoes are less active. There are still cats there hunting, it’s just at different times of the day and subsequently different things.

In fact, research suggests and basically proves that for improving biodiversity in Australian ecosystems and protecting our endangered mammals, removing the cats is the single best thing you can do, followed by introducing real dingoes. (Dingoes affect the larger grazers which eat the habitat of the smaller herbivores)

Most ‘dingoes’ running around Australia are really feral dog hybrids, which is a whole other problem. While they can kill a cat, cats are not their preferred prey.

Our crocodiles are only in a tiny portion of our continent. Also ambush predators, they hunt whatever comes to the water edge and given the choice, a larger thing is easier to grab and hold.

Areas of Australia, Tasmania for example, don’t have any predator bigger than a Tasmanian Devil, and their population is struggling enough as it is, so cats have a completely free reign there.

Just because a predator is capable of killing a cat, doesn’t mean they do so at a significant rate to suppress the population. If they did, maybe we wouldn’t have such a massive problem in the first place.

The spread of Toxoplasma is also a significant issue because Australian native animals have not co-evolved alongside that parasite. Cats can have impacts on our mammal populations beyond just predation.

In a perfect world we wouldn’t have feral cats roaming wild. I don’t think anyone disagrees with this, but we are affording these animals extra rights just because they’re cats and we like them. Nobody wants to kill them as a first choice, but when it comes down to feral, introduced cats versus their native or endangered prey, something has to give. And as much as I found euthanising all those ferals in Tasmania unpleasant, it was the better solution at the time. It’s not the cats’ faults, I have no malice against them, it’s human society’s systemic failures that put them there, and we’re just trying to clean up.

There is an alternative to both TNR programs and culling. It’s just extremely labor intensive.

As an example, the Big Ears Animal Sanctuary has cat enclosures for feral cats. Some cats are just unwanted, but many are feral, and are contained within a series of enclosures that have both an ‘inside’ house replica and an ‘outside’ area. They cannot hunt wildlife. They have food and shelter. The occasional one becomes more tolerant of people over time. They get care for the duration of their lives to a certain extent (anything that requires twice daily medication for life is a significant challenge in an untouchable cat).

So the cats aren’t hunting wildlife or spreading disease but still get to live out their lives. So what’s the problem?

Money.

this is a map showing the ratio of puppies ending up in shelters and rescues by state (x). it is a useful metric for measuring which areas are ending up with a surplus of unwanted puppies. yellow states have a high ratio of unwanted puppies, blue states have a low ratio of unwanted puppies.

this is a map (x) showing the percentage of people living in poverty in each state. darker-colored states have a higher percentage of people living in poverty.

do you notice any similarities between these two maps?

smug lectures on social media are not a meaningful solution to the underlying issue here. 

My ball python: :|

My ball python: :P

Y'all are why we have so many issues with COIs in purebred dogs. This knee jerk "cross breeding is WRONG because it makes NON PUREBRED DOGS" is ridiculous.

I just got an anon message asking me how I came up with my dogs’ names and I thought it was such a fun question, so reblog with a pic of your dogs and answer the questions above!  What are my dogs names: Pinkman, Bitsy, and Gimli in English; in American Sign Language Pinkman is the sign for PINK, Gimli is the sign for SHERIFF with a G, and Bitsy is an flat hand flapping open and closed on the top of your head (like her ears flapping in the breeze!) How I picked them: Pinkman was named after Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. We had been calling her Pinkie because of her nose, but I felt like just Pinkie was a little too delicate and feminine for who she was. Plus she has meth blue eyes!  

Gimli is a certified pre-owned dog so he came with the name and it suited him. 

Bitsy was SO hard to name! She went through a ton of other names (some of them you can see if you scroll back far enough on my blog). Oh from that movie Home with Rhianna made me cry so that was the top of the list and Osita because she looked like a little polar bear. My mom kept asking me where my little bit was, how the bit was, etc., and eventually we started calling her the Bit, then Bitsy. Plus Bit is the perfect name for a comedian’s dog! Her full name is technically Mary Elizabeth because I love 50′s-esque old lady nicknames for long formal names.

Nicknames: Pinkman has a TON of nicknames now though - the best part about a deaf dog is you can call it whatever you want in English! P, Pip, Peepers, Proboscis (shortened from Proboscis-haver because she likes to dart her tongue into my eye and I like to make up scientific-y sounding names for my pets), Flinkman (I misspoke one day and loved it), Pflanket (pronounced like blanket, she drapes herself across me so a Pflanket is a Flinkman blanket), Garbage (meant lovingly, inspired by the cat Dwight gives Angela in the Office) and probably a ton more. 

Gimli: Gimfish, Beagis (like beagle, which he is not lol), Biggie-piggy, Mr. Snoot, Glimothy Fishmas

Tilly was easy, his name was already planned out and it suited him at the time. Only downside we were told that HE was a SHE, but turns out that Tilly was actually a male budgie. By this time he already responded to his name and can now actually say his name, so, it stuck!

“The second a man gives me an ultimatum, the relationship is over.”

Source: [x]

Folks, listen. If you don’t like Hills, Purina, or Royal Canin then don’t feed it. But ffs stop telling people to drop their prescription diets out of the blue. Veterinary diets are MEDICINE. The equivalent of “Hills/Purina/Royal Canin sucks feed raw instead of your prescription diet” is “stop giving that heart medication and give this herb instead” (which I know plenty of people do anyway and that is equally bad so just don’t). But I think most of you can recognize that someone without a DVM telling another person to just stop a medication that is keeping their dog alive to switch to a supplement that may or may not work, is bad. So stop doing it for veterinary diets! With the Hills recall, I’ve still been seeing random people on the internet telling others to stop their prescription diets and just feed other brand/grain free/raw instead. NO. That diet was prescribed based on a diagnosis from a licensed veterinarian. That animal has a medical issue that requires a specific nutritional management (aka medicine) and Joe Shmo on the Internet is not qualified to be making changes to that medicine. Telling someone to switch from a veterinary diet without consulting their vet could literally kill their animal. So knock it off.

And before people jump on the “nutrition companies are obviously paying you off because those are the only diets you mentioned” train, chill. Hills, Purina, and Royal Canin veterinary diets are the only ones I’m mentioning because they’re the ones we have! I heard Blue Buffalo is making prescription diets but I’m skeptical if those will ever take off because it’s kind of a sketchy brand and veterinarians are often wary of new products. We aren’t talking about an everyday food for a healthy dog, we are talking about dogs with medical issues that need specific medicine. And by the way, food products are some of the least profitable items in a vet clinic so no vet is getting rich off of prescription diets. Oh, and I’ve also been seeing some of the “natural” brands making “renal formula”, “liver formula”, etc. That is NOT the same as a prescription diet! Feeding a random liver diet off the shelf when your dog has copper storage disease is NOT the same as feeding a prescription liver diet.

So... the dog's new coats came...