21 January 2009

The dangers of kittens...

| johnboy
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[First filed: January 20, 2009 @ 15:54]

The RSPCA is reminding us all to do the right thing and de-sex our companion animals.

They’re also reminding us of the costs of not getting it done:

    “The current influx of kittens to RSPCA ACT has highlighted once again the fact that Canberra’s pet owners are not heeding the message that de-sexing pets is an essential part of pet ownership. RSPCA ACT has consistently reported on the damage which unwanted kittens can cause to the health of mother cats, the risks associated with dumped kittens becoming feral and hunting native fauna and the costs of managing the large population of unwanted cats and kittens by RSPCA ACT.

    There is another area of concern in relation to failure to de-sex pets and this has led to one of Australia’s major insurers to comment. Recent increases in the incidence of road deaths of pets, both dogs and cats, have highlighted an additional risk associated with failure to de-sex pets and that is the propensity for non de-sexed animals to roam. AAMI’s John Crommie recently highlighted the increase in injury and fatality relating to vehicle strike against domestic pets as an issue which is arising more and more. RSPCA ACT also noted the often high costs of vet care should such accidents occur.”

If you can’t afford the vet the RSPCA offer a discount service with a 30% discount for low income earners. Prices are listed on their website.

On the other hand with non-desexing you get kittens! And they’re SOO cute! These ones belong to my housemate, more gratuitous kitteh pix below.

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“we didn’t sleep much that night, and the fire never went out. found a large male kangaroo gutted the next morning, the only prints around it were cats.”

You know how big a cat would have to be to hunt down a kangaroo? It would be a lion. Maybe the feral cats have mutated into big fat lions. Or someone was smoking something by the fire that night. 😀

I am talking about the ‘domestic cat’ not feral cat, feral cats have lost their domestic gene. They have been let go in nature, national park and other place have and bred until the domestic gene is gone (2 generations).

I am glad that you had your gun to protect you in such a scary time, by the way why are you lighting fires in a national park, hope it was a designated area?

Vic Bitterman said :

GardeningGirl said :

Vic Bitterman said :

I’ve also eaten a fox. We shot it a few years ago, took the skin and were wondering what it would taste like.

Aren’t foxes carriers of hydatids?

Dunno, but you only get that from raw meat. Well cooked = no problems.

apart from the smell and taste…

Holierthanthou10:01 pm 21 Jan 09

da reel problem wiv kittehz iz not nviramntal but rava iz dat dey get inta ur interwebz an post onta ur bords

Vic Bitterman8:59 pm 21 Jan 09

GardeningGirl said :

Vic Bitterman said :

I’ve also eaten a fox. We shot it a few years ago, took the skin and were wondering what it would taste like.

Aren’t foxes carriers of hydatids?

Dunno, but you only get that from raw meat. Well cooked = no problems.

GardeningGirl7:25 pm 21 Jan 09

Vic Bitterman said :

I’ve also eaten a fox. We shot it a few years ago, took the skin and were wondering what it would taste like.

Aren’t foxes carriers of hydatids?

Delish said :

I have never heard of a domestic household cat killing off children or mauling them to death. I have heard all the ‘wife tales’ of cats suffocate people – when did you actually know someone that died of this? I have heard of shark attacks, dogs attacks but sorry no sleeping cat attacks…!

You’ve never heard of sleeping cat attacks? Geez, you should see my legs! Every time I shift in the night one of my cats thinks its playtime and attacks! Not to mention the regular scratches on my head when my old girl reaches out in the night to ‘check’ if i am still there (and thus steal a little more pillow).

Skidbladnir said :

I opened a cupboard containing a mother feral cat in an abandoned farmhouse once, and it was like that scene from Alien when the egg opens.
All vicious screaming death and angry pain, aimed straight at the face, before she ran away.

She was much bigger than the domestic tabby.

thanks skid. where is the keyboard cleaner now??

I opened a cupboard containing a mother feral cat in an abandoned farmhouse once, and it was like that scene from Alien when the egg opens.
All vicious screaming death and angry pain, aimed straight at the face, before she ran away.

She was much bigger than the domestic tabby.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

… but my morning she had turned into a dog.

… as they do.

Delish said :

It annoys me that people think they have the right to kill a domestic animal. I have never heard of a domestic household cat killing off children or mauling them to death. I have heard all the ‘wife tales’ of cats suffocate people – when did you actually know someone that died of this? I have heard of shark attacks, dogs attacks but sorry no sleeping cat attacks…!

People are stupid how they go on about cats and not dogs… I think that they are murders – they have pack tendencies when out of their yards.

delish, wait until you are in a np, walking a trail with some friends and you find the spoor of a really big cat. the prints were really big, we thought it was a panther or something of its size, but, that night at camp, we saw probably the biggest feral cat, a tabby, wander past our tents. It was the size of a medium dog.

we didn’t sleep much that night, and the fire never went out. found a large male kangaroo gutted the next morning, the only prints around it were cats.

have shot ferals (cats, not people), some of them weren’t small, either.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy11:55 am 21 Jan 09

But BY morning…

Grrr…

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy11:55 am 21 Jan 09

I’ve also eaten a fox.

Me too, but my morning she had turned into a dog.

la mente torbida11:36 am 21 Jan 09

@Delish

What are you trying to say?

I admit I am a dog lover, not a cat lover. The people I worry about are the ones that don’t have affinity with anything.

Eating carnivores rarely works out well, although snake is OK.

Go figure. =-/

Vic Bitterman11:29 am 21 Jan 09

I ate cat once, in India many years ago. Can’t really recall how it tasted, apart from “OK”,and it was the meat that the curry came with.

Yes, I knew it was cat before I ate it, but it was allegedly bred for meat purposes and wasn’t someone’s pet.

I’ve also eaten a fox. We shot it a few years ago, took the skin and were wondering what it would taste like. Cue about an hour later, I know that fox tastes the same as eating the colour purple. If that makes any sense. Never again! 🙂

It annoys me that people think they have the right to kill a domestic animal. I have never heard of a domestic household cat killing off children or mauling them to death. I have heard all the ‘wife tales’ of cats suffocate people – when did you actually know someone that died of this? I have heard of shark attacks, dogs attacks but sorry no sleeping cat attacks…!

People are stupid how they go on about cats and not dogs… I think that they are murders – they have pack tendencies when out of their yards.

In the last month 2 children have died, a few more in hospital and what does the owners say – Oh it is not the dogs fault.

Didn’t someone put a post about their partner being attack by a ‘domestic dog’ and his pack buddy dog in Flynn?

Just to finish up on stupid mentality – Forde for example they have taken most tree’s if not all tree’s then turn around and say that cats have killed off the birds. What the…?

Surprise kitten is the coolest…….
If only i knew which one that was, They looked so much different when they were fresher.

hmmm…. i think i might go kill a kitten……

Interesting that every time someone starts talking about kittens and cats you get the “gun shooting”, “bag throwing into the river” crowd wanting to bring us all down. Next there’ll be talk of puppy strangling.

If those cat haters were really serious about saving the environment – they’d stop having babies.

omggggg JB those kittens are sooooooooooooo cute.

and vote #1 for whoever runs against justbands the generalising cat-hater.

Hi there, Michael Linke, CEO RSPCA ACT here. A couple of points:

Laws pertaining to cat containment in the ACT are in place at Forde and Bonner, which are 24 hour cat containment areas. Cat curfews can be announced by the government at any time.

See: http://www.domesticanimals.act.gov.au/Home.htm
and: http://www.tams.act.gov.au/live/pets/dgctfactsht/cats

No cat curfews are in place currently to my knowledge.

It is also law to desex a cat born after 21 June 2001.

The RSPCA is busy, busier than we have ever been, in 2008 we took in 1480 kittens, in 2007 the number was 1249. We homed 791 domestic kittens and euthanased 425 domestic kittens and 243 feral kittens in 2008. The 425 euthanised were euthanised for medical and humane grounds, which means no healthy domestic kitten was put to sleep. Every one of them went out desexed, wormed, vaccinated and micro chipped. Our stats are on our website.

We’re coping, but increases like we saw from 2007 to 2008 are not sustainable and sheltering facilities start to suffer from over crowding, disease control management, staff burnout and associated fatigue issues,. Both human fatigue and infrastructure fatigue.

The ACT government estimates that the roaming cart population in Canberra is close to the owned cat population, I think the split is 55% owned, 45% roaming. So if most of the roaming cats are not desexed, a pretty reasonable assumption, one way to reduce the influx of kittens is to desex the owned ones. This will only address the domestic influx. The feral/unowned/roaming cat/kitten influx will continue until this population is managed better.

So, in addition to desexing your own cats, RSPCA needs to rely on people trapping roaming and feral cats to assist manage this population better. We hire out humane traps for that purpose. The other message in this is if you are thinking of surrendering your cat, bring it to RSPCA, an animal shelter or pound, don’t let it go. And finally, if you are feeding a “town cat”, why not adopt it, get it desexed, micro chipped and take responsibility for it, give it a bed at night! It will love you for it.

PreciousLilywhite5:32 pm 20 Jan 09

oooh. Can I name them????

The guy at the front is Control F, that’s Typo in the middle and up the back in stripes is Professor Terence Blogsworthy.

peterh said :

Holden Caulfield said :

Oops, I was replying to peterh at post #3.

mine are in a cat run. their life consists of sleeping all day, complaining about the lack of food at 7.30pm, and singing with their mates around the neighborhood, at 3am. they don’t get out and wander the streets, and as they are well fed, mice have no fear of them…

hmmm. maybe i could build a kid run…

Holden Caulfield said :

Oops, I was replying to peterh at post #3.

mine are in a cat run. their life consists of sleeping all day, complaining about the lack of food at 7.30pm, and singing with their mates around the neighborhood, at 3am. they don’t get out and wander the streets, and as they are well fed, mice have no fear of them…

I myself am dealing with kittens right now. Someone was kind enough to dump them in a dumpster at the kaleen shops – very responsible!!!
Grrr!
So now, in the middle of kitten season I am also trying to rehome 2 female ginger cats – which is going to be tough – esp to the right home.

By law, cats have to be kept inside at night.

But please, desex your cats, whether male or female. Its so deistressing to see so many kittens about. The RSPCA as well as several animal groups in the ACT aren’t coping. The level of euthanasia is horrendous. Please do the right thing – for everyone.

Those pictures need hilarious, mispelt captions asap..

puppies seem to be less of a problem.

I haven’t asserted anything outrageous, other than asking if you live in a sharehouse full of oestrogen. giggly young women, who were previously all busying themselves over the pregnant cat, and are now agog over her big-eyed kittens.

When will there be puppy stories?

Our neighbours 2 doors down got a tomcat a few years back,,,never had him desexed.
They used to let him out at night so he could ‘roam’ but he used to just sit on our fence and howl all night.
Then they would complain about our dog barking.
Told them our dog was barking at their cat and to keep it inside.

One night Mr Tomcat slipped on the fence and our dog had a midnight snack.
Was a terrible noise for about 30 seconds, then all had a good night sleep.

GardeningGirl4:46 pm 20 Jan 09

justbands said :

When I run the city (country, world…whatever), cats will be banned. Evil, destructive little monsters that they are. Won’t be an issue then.

When I rule the world cat runs will be compulsory.
I love cats and I believe they are valuable companion animals (haven’t studies shown stroking a pet lowers blood pressure, etc?) but they can’t help their instincts. I also love the wild creatures that visit my garden and I’m tired of the visits from the local and apparently very well fed feline.
Btw as a gardener, toxoplasmosis is another concern.

Granny – I wish. 1 girl,3 blokes..! If the tables were turned in my house gender-wise I’m sure there’d be way more kittens! 😉

They seem to be on their second set of names, but whoever takes them will be free to name them again.

I don’t have that much to do with the cats in this house.

Holden Caulfield4:44 pm 20 Jan 09

justbands said :

> Only if you give in to them and allow them to continually get away with bad behaviour

No, ALL of them. That’s the most frustrating thing about cat owners… “Awww…Tiddums would never hurt a bird or small animal”. Wrong. Tiddums is a cold, heartless killer of birds & small animals…like all cats are.

I never said otherwise, I was referring to the 3am cat chorus. If you’re going to selective quote someone, at least have the decency to use a tiny bit of context, y’know, so your posts are believeable and not just taken as rants with no reason.

FWIW, we have two cats, one is 14, the other is 5. Their kill count over their life amounts to about a dozen mice, a couple of rats and three sparrows. It’s not ideal, I agree, and we endeavour to keep our cats in at night, which we do 95% of the time for the younger cat and 100% for the elder one. However, as you can see, for the 5% of the time we don’t succeed with with the one cat, the damage, while not excusable, is hardly upsetting the balance of the ecosystem. (Yes, I know ours aren’t the only cats in the village.)

Even if our yard was caged in the mice and rats would still be there for the kill, so in our situation, we’re talking about a few sparrows over a 5 year time span. DANGER, DANGER!

(Note: the elder cat is absolutely no danger to birds, she’s too daft for that, if you don’t believe me you’re welcome to come and watch her try to catch one. It’s almost as slapstick as an Abbot and Costello routine! She’s a very good mouser though.)

That said, I do acknowledge your point, regardless of your apparently extreme attitude, and if our cats behaviour was extreme then we’d look at working out a plan B.

Awww, I like the brownish coloured one with the stripes on it’s front legs. Which is the cutest and most favourite? Have you named them?

There’s nothing wrong with men that live in a house full of women, Skidbladnir! It happens all the time at our house.

😛

Primal said :

Correction, Tiddums is a warm, loving, cute, cuddlywuddly killer of birds & small animals!

And do we really want to be neck deep in birds and small animals? I think not. As for Skidbladnir’s outrageous assertions, I shall treat them with the contempt they so richly deserve.

aww!! i want the grey one!! so.freekin’.cute.
*cursing the boyfriend for being so responsible and not leting us get one until we get back from our travels!* 😉

justbands said :

Tiddums is a cold, heartless killer of birds & small animals…like all cats are.

Correction, Tiddums is a warm, loving, cute, cuddlywuddly killer of birds & small animals!

But…
On the other hand with non-desexing you get kittens! And they’re SOO cute!
…doesn’t sound like the typical man who lives in a sharehouse full of 20-35yo men.

I have a theory, but you may not like it.

Kittehs are ALWAYS newsworthy.

So, you live in the same house as a woman with at least 4 kittens? =-/

Skidbladnir said :

Jb: I was just curious, as you’re now kittenblogging about a housemate’s cat offspring, and were having a “the manbooks are outside of their designated category space!” moment a few days back.

Hey this is a legitimate news story!

Jb: I was just curious, as you’re now kittenblogging about a housemate’s cat offspring, and were having a “the manbooks are outside of their designated category space!” moment a few days back.

> Only if you give in to them and allow them to continually get away with bad behaviour

No, ALL of them. That’s the most frustrating thing about cat owners… “Awww…Tiddums would never hurt a bird or small animal”. Wrong. Tiddums is a cold, heartless killer of birds & small animals…like all cats are.

tylersmayhem4:17 pm 20 Jan 09

Good grief – when will people bloody learn!

Skidbladnir said :

Is your sharehouse full of say, 20-25yr old women?

The racism accusation was levelled here, not at home.

If they’re slagging me off it’s behind my back where I like it.

Holden Caulfield4:15 pm 20 Jan 09

Oops, I was replying to peterh at post #3.

Is your sharehouse full of say, 20-25yr old women?

Holden Caulfield4:15 pm 20 Jan 09

Only if you give in to them and allow them to continually get away with bad behaviour. Yes, it’s true that dogs have masters and cats have servants, but with some structure and discipline I see no reason why cats can’t be well behaved.

Back OT, I’d never even consider having a cat without having it desexed, I just wouldn’t want to deal with the kittens, despite their cuteness.

> Fortunately good and fluffy kittens will always triumph over your black hearted evil.

Good & fluffy kittens grow to be cold, heartless killers. Seriously, they should not be allowed in Australia….or at least only under strict conditions, with cat fences keeping them contained, locked inside at night, etc.

Aww.

my cat’s cuter.

Skidbladnir said :

RiotACT has descended into sexism, debauchery, and Kittenblogging?

PS: Desex your cats, because its better than a sack with some bricks in it.

Apparently I was racist yesterday too!

justbands said :

When I run the city (country, world…whatever), cats will be banned. Evil, destructive little monsters that they are. Won’t be an issue then.

Fortunately good and fluffy kittens will always triumph over your black hearted evil.

RiotACT has descended into sexism, debauchery, and Kittenblogging?

PS: Desex your cats, because its better than a sack with some bricks in it.

and they start off being fluffy and cute, and end up becoming large, sleeping all the day, and the night, except when the cat chorus starts at 3am.

When I run the city (country, world…whatever), cats will be banned. Evil, destructive little monsters that they are. Won’t be an issue then.

LOL Cats!

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