Coming here to say THANK YOU for spreading all this information about cats and their impact on the environment! It's stuff that people just... don't like to talk about. Even a lot of the folks I interact with in my community who also care for feral cat colonies want to stick their fingers in their ears and say "la la la la la" when it comes to talking about the absolute destruction that cats can cause to an ecosystem.
I guess they think acknowledging it will somehow make life more dangerous than it already is for the feral cats, as though we haven't had to fight efforts of mass euthanasia in the past (which doesn't even work, more cats just move in to fill the void, it's like cutting off the head of the Hydra)
It's so frustrating! They all just wanna preach the importance of spay/neuter (which, don't get me wrong, is extremely important) but ignore all the negative impact and I just want to grab them and shake them like BOTH CAN BE TRUE, KAREN!
So thank you again! You said in so many words what I struggle to convey to people WHO DEAL WITH THIS STUFF DAILY. It truly takes a village sometimes to address a massive issue like this and the more people educated about the issue, the better! THANK YOU!
👀 HI!
I'm just glad it came out coherent, 😅 and glad I didn't start a fight...
I literally think about this like all the time... I've tried to have this conversation a few times irl and it can be very frustrating. My grandmother's neighbor was supporting the feral cat population in that section of town and we would see them eat at her porch and go kill birds ten minutes later. I like cats, I really do, but I also like my local fauna.
There's a lot to talk about here and what you said about spaying/neutering and euthanasia for cat colonies not working is absolutely true as well. My parents have been trying to catch a feral cat for a while now, who was just continuously having litter after litter. They caught a lot of her kittens pretty early, and were able to get most of them homes (they kept a few) but there are so many cats in shelters and people just letting their cats roam around that the population doesn't go down enough or doesn't stay steady in a meaningful way.
And yeah it's really hard to talk to people who like volunteer at animal shelters sometimes because they are working with domesticated animals (this is MY experience with it anyway) like they're doing a good thing absolutely, but it's not the same thing as saving wildlife, and sometimes it's just really hard to talk to them about the impact that they're catch and release program is having on my local marsh. No one else cares about the muskrat population!(sort of jokingly)
Anyway, THANK YOU! for the ask! The last time I got to info dump like this was about Smokey the Bear and none of my friends asked me any questions for like 2 weeks. Lol
